Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2176 page)

To the firm and benevolent rule of the present proprietor of Scilly, the islanders are indebted for the prosperity which they now enjoy. It was not the least pleasant part of a very delightful visit, to observe for ourselves, under our host’s guidance, all that he had done, and was doing, for the welfare and the happiness of the people committed to his charge. From what we had heard, and from what we had previously observed for ourselves, we had formed the most agreeable impressions of the social condition of the islanders; and we now found the best of these impressions more than confirmed. When the present proprietor first came among his tenantry he found them living miserably and ignorantly. He has succoured, reformed, and taught them; and there is now, probably, no place in England where the direr hardships of poverty are so little known as in the Scilly Islands.

I might write more particularly on this topic; but I am unwilling to run the risk of saying more on the subject of these good deeds than the good-doer himself would sanction. And besides, I must remember that the object of this narrative is to record a holiday-cruise, and not to enter into details on the subject of Scilly; details which have already been put into print by previous travellers. Let me only add then, that our sojourn in the islands terminated with the close of our stay in the house of our kind entertainer. It had been blowing a gale of wind for two days before our departure; and we put to sea with a doubled-reefed mainsail, and with more doubts than we liked to confess to each other, about the prospects of the return voyage.

However, lucky we had been hitherto, and lucky we were to continue to the end. Before we had been long at sea, the wind began to get capricious; then to diminish almost to a calm; then, towards evening, to blow again, steadily and strongly, from the very quarter of all others most favourable to our return voyage. “If this holds,” was the sentiment of the Brothers Dobbs, as we were making things snug for the night, “we shall be back again at Mangerton before we have had time to get half through our victuals and drink.”

The wind did hold, and more than hold: and the Tomtit flew, in consequence, as if she was going to give up the sea altogether, and take to the sky for a change. Our homeward run was the most perfect contrast to our outward voyage. No tacking, no need to study the charts, no laggard luxurious dining on the cabin hatch. It was too rough for anything but picnicking in the cockpit, jammed into a corner, with our plates on our knees. I had to make the grog with one hand, and clutch at the nearest rope with the other — Mr. Migott holding the bowl while I mixed, and the man at the helm holding Mr. Migott. As for reading, it was hopeless to try it; for there was breeze enough to blow the leaves out of the book — and singing was not to be so much as thought of; for the moment you opened your mouth the wind rushed in, and snatched away the song immediately. The nearer we got to Mangerton, the faster we flew. My last recollection of the sea, dates at the ghostly time of midnight. The wind had been increasing and increasing, since sunset, till it contemptuously blew out our fire in the cabin, as if the stove with its artful revolving chimney had been nothing but a farthing rushlight. When I climbed on deck, we were already in the Bristol Channel.

That last view at sea was the grandest view of the voyage. Ragged black clouds were flying like spectres all over the sky; the moonlight streaming fitful behind them. One great ship, shadowy and mysterious, was pitching heavily towards us from the land. Backward out at sea, streamed the red gleam from the lighthouse on Lundy Island; and marching after us magnificently, to the music of the howling wind, came the great rollers from the Atlantic, rushing in between Hartland Point and Lundy, turning over and over in long black hills of water, with the seething spray at their tops sparkling in the moonshine. It was a fine breathless sensation to feel our sturdy little vessel tearing along through this heavy sea — jumping stern up, as the great waves caught her — dashing the water gaily from her bows, at the return dip — and holding on her way as bravely and surely as the largest yacht that ever was built. After a long look at the sublime view around us, my friend and I went below again; and in spite of the noise of wind and sea, managed to fall asleep. The next event was a call from deck at half-past six in the morning, informing us that we were entering Mangerton Bay. By seven o’clock we were alongside the jetty again, after a run of only forty-three hours from the Scilly Islands.

Thus our cruise ended; and thus we falsified the predictions of our prudent friends, and came back with our right side uppermost. “Here’s luck to you, gentlemen!” — was the toast which our honest sailor-brothers proposed, when we met together later in the day, and pledged each other in a parting cup. “Here’s luck,” we answered, on our side — ”luck to the Brothers Dobbs; and thanks besides for hearty companionship and faithful service.” And here, in the last glass with one cheer more, — here’s luck to the vessel that carried us, our lively little Tomtit! Tiny home of joyous days, may thy sea-fortunes be happy, and thy trim sails be set prosperously for many a year still, to the favouring breeze!

With those good wishes, our holiday trip closed at the time — as the record of it closes here. With those last words, the book is shut up; the reader is released; and the writer drops his pen.

THE END.

“ My dear friend, I have seen everything in Rouen, and I am heartily tired of it ! “

“ Tired of Rouen ! You ought to be ashamed of yourself ! Tired of a city so celebrated in history; which has such churches, such houses, such wonderful relics of antiquity in every street ! a city where Corneille was born, and Joan of Arc burnt ! a city which is mentioned by the great Ptolemy as Rotomagus, by the Peutinger Table as Ratu- magus, and by Ammianus Marcellinus in the more plural form of
 
Rotomagi ! Tired of Rouen, indeed ! Pooh, pooh, nonsense ! It’s a joke, and a very bad one, too ! “

The first speaker in the above dialogue was the writer of the present narrative; the second, his travelling companion and friend, Mr. Scumble, an amateur artist of signal ability, whose name the public cannot fail to recognise, when it is stated that he was the painter of that celebrated picture, entitled, “ Landscape — - sunset,” which hung in the last Academy Exhibition but one, at the top of the Miniature Room, near the corner, on the left hand side as you go in. Besides his accomplishments as an artist, Mr. Scumble was an enthusiastic antiquarian: set him down before an old house, or an old church, and he was as happy as a hungry man set down before a good dinner. However, this latter phase of his character has been already sufficiently developed in the dialogue above reported, to which I now beg leave to return, confessing to the reader, as well as to Mr. Scumble, the humiliating truth — - I was tired of Rouen !

I was tired of seeing the same toppling, quaint old houses in every part of the town; I was tired of innumerable Gothic churches, every one of which was sure to be under repair somewhere, and to have an ugly scaffolding hiding its beauties at the exact point where you most wished to behold them; I was tired of incessantly passing the birth- place of Corneille, a rickety, rotten building, which we were always sure to walk by accidentally, either going out, or coming home; I was tired of bad smells in the small streets, and of shabby shops in the large; I was tired of meeting, in the dull Boulevards and the moulder- ing melancholy squares, the same surly Frenchmen over and over again — - those grim, barbarian grand-children of the polite people who still live before us, immortal, in the travelling experiences of Lawrence Sterne !

I was tired — - doubly tired — - of dining at the
table d’hôte
of our inn, where I sat opposite to a gaunt, hungry-looking English governess, who would improve herself by talking bad French to every one about her; where I had for my side companion, a corpulent German, who would comb his beard out smooth, between every one of the courses, from the soup to the dessert.

I was tired, again, of the
restaurant
on the quay, to which we re- treated from the hotel. If I looked down the room, I saw nothing but a miserable, lean old woman, who presided over the place, displaying
 

her tawny neck and shoulders in a blue muslin ball dress, as she sat behind the counter serving out lumps of sugar, tooth-picks, and small change for the after-dinner wants of her customers. Then, if I looked out of the window, I saw nothing but a small plot of dusty ground, planted with dusty trees, up and down which there paced slowly and solemnly a little troop of French officers, all laced in so tight at the waist, that it was a perfect marvel how they managed to walk at all — - one fat captain in particular being fast buttoned up and girded in all down his body, until he was black in the face, and looked likely to explode every moment under the excessive compression of his own regimentals ! But, enough of the monotony and melancholy of a long stay at Rouen — -
 
when I told Mr. Scumble that I was tired of it, I told him the truth, and had good reason for telling it.

Our conversation took place during a sultry evening in August, in the garden of a coffee-house fronting the Seine. This garden was about the length and breadth of the street area of an ordinary London house — - it was, in fact, a mere strip of ground reclaimed from the road- way, from which it was only separated by some dwarf palings. The verdure clothing this calm and pleasing retreat was contained in two wooden chests filled with mould, from one of which sprang erect a cedar of Lebanon — - an infant cedar, two feet high. From the other arose a creeper, languishing in the last stage of vegetable atrophy. These two plants were constantly watered, clipped, pruned, examined at all possible points, referred to on all possible occasions by the master of the coffee- house, who spoke with more pride of his garden than of anything else in his possession. He pointed out the cedar of Lebanon to us the first time we passed through the dwarf palings and ordered a cup of coffee.

He was an old soldier — - a
vieux sabreur
, as he called himself — - and had served under Napoleon. He had fought in Italy and Egypt, at Austerlitz and Wagram, and through part of the battles in Spain. And now, after having seen all the carnage, the horror, the glory of war; after having lived through the convulsions of nations, and the wrecks of dynasties, here he was, at the end of his life, occupied in watering a plant or two in a strip of garden, and peaceably keeping a coffee-house in his native town. What contrasts there are in this wonderful exist- ence of ours ! — - how variously and how often the scenes of strife and peace, of action and repose, can shift backwards and forwards, though the stage that shows them lasts after all but a few short years !

This
vieux sabreur
was a good fellow in his way — - confident and hearty in his manners; oratorical and bombastic in his talk; and ready to eulogise his native town, as superior to every other place on the sur- face of the earth. Finding my accomplished companion, Mr. Scumble, by no means so entertaining as usual on the subject of Rouen, and not feeling particularly interested by his account of the ancient appellations given to the town by Ptolemy and the Peutinger Table, I determined to amuse myself a little with the old soldier, and risk an attack on his local prejudices, by telling him, as I had told Mr. Scumble, that I had seen everything in Rouen, and was heartily tired of it.

“ See everything over again ! “ cried the
vieux sabreur
, setting down his watering-pot with a bang, beneath the cedar of Lebanon — - “ You can- not see too much ! ascend once more the eminence of Mont St. Cathe- rine — - look down — - “
Mille bombes !
“ (I translate the veteran literally, except in his oaths) — - “
Mille bombes !
what do you behold beneath you?

you may look on it for ever ! — - is it Rome? is it Venice? is it Alex- andria? is it Jericho? — - No ! a thousand times, no ! — - it is better than all ! for it is Rouen ! “