strictly speaking, there were only six poor travellers; but, being a traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as i hope to be, i brought the number up to seven. this word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door?
richard watts, esq.
by his will, dated 22 aug. 1579,
founded this charity
for six poor travellers,
who not being rogues, or proctors,
may receive gratis for one night,
lodging, entertainment,
and fourpence each.
it was in the ancient little city of rochester in kent, of all the good days in the year upon a christmas-eve, that i stood reading this inscription over the quaint old door in question. i had been wandering about the neighbouring cathedral, and had seen the tomb of richard watts, with the effigy of worthy master richard starting out of it like a ship’s figure-head; and i had felt that i could do no less, as i gave the verger his fee, than inquire the way to watts’s charity. the way being very short and very plain, i had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door.
“now,” said i to myself, as i looked at the knocker, “i know i am not a proctor; i wonder whether i am a rogue!”
upon the whole, though conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces which might have had smaller attraction for a moral goliath than they had had for me, who am but a tom thumb in that way, i came to the conclusion that i was not a rogue. so, beginning to regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the worshipful master richard watts, i stepped backward into the road to survey my inheritance.
i found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. the silent high street of rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. it is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick building, as if time carried on business there, and hung out his sign. sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in rochester, in the old days of the romans, and the saxons, and the normans; and down to the times of king john, when the rugged castle—i will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then—was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.
i was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. while i was yet surveying it with growing content, i espied, at one of the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly appearance, whose eyes i caught inquiringly addressed to mine. they said so plainly, “do you wish to see the house?” that i answered aloud, “yes, if you please.” and within a minute the old door opened, and i bent my head, and went down two steps into the entry.
“this,” said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on the right, “is where the travellers sit by the fire, and cook what bits of suppers they buy with their fourpences.”
“o! then they have no entertainment?” said i. for the inscription over the outer door was still running in my head, and i was mentally repeating, in a kind of tune, “lodging, entertainment, and fourpence each.”
“they have a fire provided for ’em,” returned the matron—a mighty civil person, not, as i could make out, overpaid; “and these cooking utensils. and this what’s painted on a board is the rules for their behaviour. they have their fourpences when they get their tickets from the steward over the way,—for i don’t admit ’em myself, they must get their tickets first,—and sometimes one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or what not. sometimes two or three of ’em will club their fourpences together, and make a supper that way. but not much of anything is to be got for fourpence, at present, when provisions is so dear.”
“true indeed,” i remarked. i had been looking about the room, admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the street through the low mullioned window, and its beams overhead. “it is very comfortable,” said i.
“ill-conwenient,” observed the matronly presence.
i liked to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of master richard watts. but the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that i protested, quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement.
“nay, ma’am,” said i, “i am sure it is warm in winter and cool in summer. it has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. it has a remarkably cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out into the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all rochester’s heart. and as to the convenience of the six poor travellers—”
“i don’t mean them,” returned the presence. “i speak of its being an ill-conwenience to myself and my daughter, having no other room to sit in of a night.”
this was true enough, but there was another quaint room of corresponding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry: so i stepped across to it, through the open doors of both rooms, and asked what this chamber was for.
“this,” returned the presence, “is the board room. where the gentlemen meet when they come here.”
let me see. i had counted from the street six upper windows besides these on the ground-story. making a perplexed calculation in my mind, i rejoined, “then the six poor travellers sleep upstairs?”
my new friend shook her head. “they sleep,” she answered, “in two little outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always been, ever since the charity was founded. it being so very ill-conwenient to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going to take off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of a room for ’em there, to sit in before they go to bed.”
“and then the six poor travellers,” said i, “will be entirely out of the house?”
“entirely out of the house,” assented the presence, comfortably smoothing her hands. “which is considered much better for all parties, and much more conwenient.”
i had been a little startled, in the cathedral, by the emphasis with which the effigy of master richard watts was bursting out of his tomb; but i began to think, now, that it might be expected to come across the high street some stormy night, and make a disturbance here.
howbeit, i kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the presence to the little galleries at the back. i found them on a tiny scale, like the galleries in old inn-yards; and they were very clean.
while i was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that the prescribed number of poor travellers were forthcoming every night from year’s end to year’s end; and that the beds were always occupied. my questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back to the board room so essential to the dignity of “the gentlemen,” where she showed me the printed accounts of the charity hanging up by the window. from them i gathered that the greater part of the property bequeathed by the worshipful master richard watts for the maintenance of this foundation was, at the period of his death, mere marsh-land; but that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed and built upon, and was very considerably increased in value. i found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenue was now expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscription over the door; the rest being handsomely laid out in chancery, law expenses, collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other appendages of management, highly complimentary to the importance of the six poor travellers. in short, i made the not entirely new discovery that it may be said of an establishment like this, in dear old england, as of the fat oyster in the american story, that it takes a good many men to swallow it whole.
“and pray, ma’am,” said i, sensible that the blankness of my face began to brighten as the thought occurred to me, “could one see these travellers?”
“well!” she returned dubiously, “no!”
“not to-night, for instance!” said i.
“well!” she returned more positively, “no. nobody ever asked to see them, and nobody ever did see them.”
as i am not easily balked in a design when i am set upon it, i urged to the good lady that this was christmas-eve; that christmas comes but once a year,—which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us the whole year round we shall make this earth a very different place; that i was possessed by the desire to treat the travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot wassail; that the voice of fame had been heard in that land, declaring my ability to make hot wassail; that if i were permitted to hold the feast, i should be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours; in a word, that i could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known at a pinch to keep others so, although i was decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a brother, orator, apostle, saint, or prophet of any denomination whatever. in the end i prevailed, to my great joy. it was settled that at nine o’clock that night a turkey and a piece of roast beef should smoke upon the board; and that i, faint and unworthy minister for once of master richard watts, should preside as the christmas-supper host of the six poor travellers.
i went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the turkey and roast beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could settle to nothing for thinking of the poor travellers. when the wind blew hard against the windows,—it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully,—i pictured them advancing towards their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. i painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in little heightening touches. i made them footsore; i made them weary; i made them carry packs and bundles; i made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what was written there; i made them lose their way; and filled their five wits with apprehensions of lying out all night, and being frozen to death. i took up my hat, and went out, climbed to the top of the old castle, and looked over the windy hills that slope down to the medway, almost believing that i could descry some of my travellers in the distance. after it fell dark, and the cathedral bell was heard in the invisible steeple—quite a bower of frosty rime when i had last seen it—striking five, six, seven, i became so full of my travellers that i could eat no dinner, and felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals of my fire. they were all arrived by this time, i thought, had got their tickets, and were gone in.—there my pleasure was dashed by the reflection that probably some travellers had come too late and were shut out.
after the cathedral bell had struck eight, i could smell a delicious savour of turkey and roast beef rising to the window of my adjoining bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where the lights of the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the castle wall. it was high time to make the wassail now; therefore i had up the materials (which, together with their proportions and combinations, i must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own i was ever known to keep), and made a glorious jorum. not in a bowl; for a bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught with cooling and slopping; but in a brown earthenware pitcher, tenderly suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. it being now upon the stroke of nine, i set out for watts’s charity, carrying my brown beauty in my arms. i would trust ben, the waiter, with untold gold; but there are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded by another, and drinks that i make myself are those strings in mine.
the travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and ben had brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should make a roaring blaze. having deposited my brown beauty in a red nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vineyards, spice forests, and orange groves,—i say, having stationed my beauty in a place of security and improvement, i introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving them a hearty welcome.
i found the party to be thus composed. firstly, myself. secondly, a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which i judged him to have something to do with shipbuilding. thirdly, a little sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and deep womanly-looking eyes. fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the absent buttons on his waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an englishman in speech, who carried his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from geneva, and travelled all about the continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and seeing new countries,—possibly (i thought) also smuggling a watch or so, now and then. sixthly, a little widow, who had been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, scared, and solitary. seventhly and lastly, a traveller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete,—a book-pedler, who had a quantity of pamphlets and numbers with him, and who presently boasted that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could sell in a twelvemonth.
all these i have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. i presided, and the matronly presence faced me. we were not long in taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the following procession:
myself with the pitcher.
ben with beer.
inattentive boy with hot plates. inattentive boy with hot plates.
the turkey.
female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot.
the beef.
man with tray on his head, containing vegetables and sundries.
volunteer hostler from hotel, grinning,
and rendering no assistance.
as we passed along the high street, comet-like, we left a long tail of fragrance behind us which caused the public to stop, sniffing in wonder. we had previously left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young man connected with the fly department, and well accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle which ben always carries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to watts’s charity, where they would be received (he was further instructed) by the sauce-female, who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion.
all these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual manner. i never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and gravy;—and my travellers did wonderful justice to everything set before them. it made my heart rejoice to observe how their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. while their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this smug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain.
when supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the table, there was a general requisition to me to “take the corner;” which suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here made of a fire,—for when had i ever thought so highly of the corner, since the days when i connected it with jack horner? however, as i declined, ben, whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table apart, and instructing my travellers to open right and left on either side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at table. he had already, in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they had been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the high street, disappeared, and softly closed the door.
this was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of wood. i tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the chimney,—rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down again. meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into the shade, i filled the glasses, and gave my travellers, christmas!—christmas-eve, my friends, when the shepherds, who were poor travellers, too, in their way, heard the angels sing, “on earth, peace. good-will towards men!”
i don’t know who was the first among us to think that we ought to take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of us anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. we then drank to the memory of the good master richard watts. and i wish his ghost may never have had worse usage under that roof than it had from us.
it was the witching time for story-telling. “our whole life, travellers,” said i, “is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. i, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that i scarce know which is which. shall i beguile the time by telling you a story as we sit here?”
they all answered, yes. i had little to tell them, but i was bound by my own proposal. therefore, after looking for awhile at the spiral column of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which i could have almost sworn i saw the effigy of master richard watts less startled than usual, i fired away.
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