SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE(谁的行礼)

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SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

SOMEBODY'S

LUGGAGE

by Charles Dickens

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

CHAPTER I--HIS LEAVING IT

TILL CALLED FOR

The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a

family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all

Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer

a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of hereby in a

friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto JOSEPH, much

respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E.C., than

which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of man, or a

more amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether considered in

the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being, do not exist.

In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open to

confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied by the

term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an explanation.

It may not be generally known that the person as goes out to wait is NOT a

Waiter. It may not be generally known that the hand as is called in extra, at

the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, or the Albion, or otherwise, is

NOT a Waiter. Such hands may be took on for Public Dinners by the

bushel (and you may know them by their breathing with difficulty when in

attendance, and taking away the bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are

NOT Waiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking,

or the brokering, or the green-grocering, or the pictorial- periodicalling, or

the second-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,--you cannot lay

down those lines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or

evening, and take up Waitering. You may suppose you can, but you cannot;

or you may go so far as to say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay

down the gentleman's- service when stimulated by prolonged

incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and here it may be remarked that

Cooking and Incompatibility will be mostly found united), and take up

Waitering. It has been ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek

under, at home, he will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjam or any

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

similar establishment. Then, what is the inference to be drawn respecting

true Waitering? You must be bred to it. You must be born to it.

Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,--if of the adorable

female sex? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that is a

Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.

You were conveyed,--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise

developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside,--you were conveyed, by

surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and

General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful

sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution.

Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant Waiter) in the

profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known to be married would ruin the

best of businesses,--it is the same as on the stage. Hence your being

smuggled into the pantry, and that--to add to the infliction--by an

unwilling grandmother. Under the combined influence of the smells of

roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your

earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch

you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother's

shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind

surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold

gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of

soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances

you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more

unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking

you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At

length she was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared

much sooner. When your brothers began to appear in succession, your

mother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously been a smart

dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been flowing), and

haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for him, through all

weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back door of the Royal Old

Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George the Fourth), where your

father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father

took but little,--excepting from a liquid point of view. Your mother's object

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

in those visits was of a house- keeping character, and you was set on to

whistle your father out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come

or not come, however, all that part of his existence which was

unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was

acknowledged by your mother to be a close secret, and you and your

mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and would

scarcely have confessed under torture that you know your father, or that

your father had any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he

was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child.

Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father's having

a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin,--

a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-

rack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't match each other or

anything else, and no daylight,--caused your young mind to feel convinced

that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it,

and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt

convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career,

what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your

mother in open broad daylight,--of itself an act of Madness on the part of a

Waiter,--and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family's bed),

with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in

vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night,

when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being,

"Two and two is five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the parochial

department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave

by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from

their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired in a

white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of benevolence at

The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature

on what you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too

often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the

glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you

dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to

polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a

heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly

speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of

knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling plate-

washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the

corner-box partition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was

out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the Waiter that you find

yourself.

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the

calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest in

which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No,

we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever

show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be termed

indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of

mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which

except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you

was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day

and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the more voracious

all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your

business, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and

sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of

argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease

and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you

about cuts of this, and dishes of that,--each of 'em going on as if him and

you and the bill of fare was alone in the world. Then look what you are

expected to know. You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly

attend everywhere. "What's this, Christopher, that I hear about the

smashed Excursion Train? How are they doing at the Italian Opera,

Christopher?" "Christopher, what are the real particulars of this business at

the Yorkshire Bank?" Similarly a ministry gives me more trouble than it

gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston, the constant and wearing

connection into which I have been brought with his lordship during the

last few years is deserving of a pension. Then look at the Hypocrites we

are made, and the lies (white, I hope) that are forced upon us! Why must a

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

sedentary-pursuited Waiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and

to have a most tremendous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it

would be half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn't take on to

have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!) with

Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as the months of

August, September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself in

my own private bosom for the way in which I make believe to care

whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing (much their wings, or

drumsticks either, signifies to me, uncooked!), and whether the partridges

is plentiful among the turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or

anything else you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other

Waiter of my standing, holding on by the back of the box, and leaning

over a gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing

these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in life

entirely depended on 'em.

I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable

point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done us!

Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in our right-

hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat- tails, or whether

it is human nature (which I were loth to believe), what is meant by the

everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that fable get into

circulation? Who first put it about, and what are the facts to establish the

unblushing statement? Come forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to

the Waiter's will in Doctors' Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet

this is so commonly dwelt upon--especially by the screws who give

Waiters the least--that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit's

sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when of the

two we are much more likely to go into a union. There was formerly a

screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer had quitted that

establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant staff out of his own

pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its bitterest height. Never soaring

above threepence, and as often as not grovelling on the earth a penny

lower, he yet represented the present writer as a large holder of Consols, a

lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to dilate

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

to other customers on the allegation that the present writer put out

thousands of pounds at interest in Distilleries and Breweries. "Well,

Christopher," he would say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth, half

a moment before), "looking out for a House to open, eh? Can't find a

business to be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?"

To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation taken

wing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long

eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of

the Waitering, found himself under the obligation to fall into it through so

many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that

capacity towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence?

When he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,

with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all keeping step

in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only

inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransacked high

and low for property, and none was found! How could it be found, when,

beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and

pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not yet disposed of,

though he had ever been through life punctual in clearing off his

collections by the month), there was no property existing? Such, however,

is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of Old Charles, at the

present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters' Company,

in Blue Anchor Road (identified sitting at the door of one of 'em, in a

clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John's

hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to the

grisly dart, and when his portrait was painted in oils life- size, by

subscription of the frequenters of the West Country, to hang over the

coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting those who contended

that what is termed the accessories of such a portrait ought to be the Bank

of England out of window, and a strong-box on the table. And but for

better-regulated minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude

of drawing,--and carrying their point,--it would have been so handed down

to posterity.

I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I hope

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my

duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on the

general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular question.

At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned

notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for the question on

which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no

House as commits itself to that eminently Un- English act of more than

foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,--I repeat, at a

momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and

not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being

attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do next.

Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my present

establishment. Stipulations were necessary on my part, emendations were

necessary on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I

entered on a new career.

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a

general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners

drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away another time. We

are a Private Room or Family business also; but Coffee-room principal.

Me and the Directory and the Writing Materials and cetrer occupy a place

to ourselves--a place fended of up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-

room, in what I call the good old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned

style is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and

solely dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-

born Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business

untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add,

that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough,

both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.)

When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-

conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a

angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly- minded), a heap

of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid in the course of the

day,

"What are them things in 24 B?"

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

To which she answered with a careless air, "Somebody's Luggage."

Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, "Whose

Luggage?"

Evading my eye, she replied,

"Lor! How should I know!"

- Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness, though

acquainted with her business.

A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one

extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the waist of it, or

anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to decide which of the

extremities.

On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett so

distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as towards

myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency be suspected

on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as "Mrs.," and having

formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married. Readers are

respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was not a waitress, but

a chambermaid. Now a chambermaid MAY be married; if Head, generally

is married,--or says so. It comes to the same thing as expressing what is

customary. (N.B. Mr. Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is "the

Bush.")

Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the

future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.

"For instance," I says, to give her a little encouragement, "who is

Somebody?"

"I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher," answers Pratchett,

"that I haven't the faintest notion."

But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should have

doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to be

discriminated from an affidavit.

"Then you never saw him?" I followed her up with.

"Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if she

had just took a pill of unusual circumference,--which gave a remarkable

force to her denial,--"nor yet any servant in this house. All have been

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Somebody left his

Luggage here before then."

Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.)

"confirmation strong." So it had really and truly happened. Miss Martin is

the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and though higher than I

could wish considering her station, is perfectly well-behaved.

Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill against

this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage had been

lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year. The bedstead is a four-

poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, as I once said,

probably connected with more than 24 Bs,-- which I remember my hearers

was pleased to laugh at, at the time.

I don't know why,--when DO we know why?--but this Luggage laid

heavy on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had

got and been up to. I couldn't satisfy my thoughts why he should leave so

much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out within a

day or two and turned it over, and the following were the items:- A black

portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a

hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick. It was all very dusty

and fluey. I had our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and

though he habitually wallows in dust,--swims in it from morning to night,

and wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves for the

purpose,--it made him sneeze again, and his throat was that hot with it that

it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp's draft.

The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put back

when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,--previous to which

it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought it was turning

into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,--I say, instead of having it

put back, I had it carried into one of my places down-stairs. There from

time to time I stared at it and stared at it, till it seemed to grow big and

grow little, and come forward at me and retreat again, and go through all

manner of performances resembling intoxication. When this had lasted

weeks,-- I may say months, and not be far out,--I one day thought of

asking Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She

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SOMEBODY'SLUGGAGE1SOMEBODY'SLUGGAGEbyCharlesDickensSOMEBODY'SLUGGAGE2CHAPTERI--HISLEAVINGITTILLCALLEDFORThewriterofthesehumblelinesbeingaWaiter,andhavingcomeofafamilyofWaiters,andowningatthepresenttimefivebrotherswhoareallWaiters,andlikewiseanonlysisterwhoisaWaitress,wouldwishtoofferafewwordsrespect...

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