DESSEIN’S.
I arrived by the night-mail packet from Dover.The passage had been rough, and the usual consequences had ensued.I was disinclined to travel farther that night on my road to Paris, and knew the Calais hotel of old as one of the cleanest, one of the dearest, one of the most comfortable hotels on the continent of Europe.There is no town more French than Calais.That charming old "Hotel Dessein,"with its court, its gardens, its lordly kitchen, its princely waiter--a gentleman of the old school, who has welcomed the finest company in Europe--have long been known to me.I have read complaints in The Times, more than once, I think, that the Dessein bills are dear.A bottle of soda-water certainly costs--well, never mind how much.I remember as a boy, at the "Ship" at Dover (imperante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being paid, Ihad but 12s.left after a certain little Paris excursion (about which my benighted parents never knew anything), ordering for dinner a whiting, a beefsteak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7s., glass of negus 2s., waiter 6d., and only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the guard and coachman on the way to London! And I WAS a sinner.I had gone without leave.What a long, dreary, guilty forty hours' journey it was from Paris to Calais, I remember! How did I come to think of this escapade, which occurred in the Easter vacation of the year 1830? I always think of it when I am crossing to Calais.Guilt, sir, guilt remains stamped on the memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that it is liberated of this old peccadillo.I met my college tutor only yesterday.We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel.He had the very next room to mine.After he had gone into his apartment, having shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to knock at his door and say, "Doctor Bentley, I beg your pardon, but do you remember, when I was going down at the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I was going to spend my vacation? And I said, With my friend Slingsby, in Huntingdonshire.Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess that I told you a fib.I had got 20L.and was going for a lark to Paris, where my friend Edwards was staying." There, it is out.The Doctor will read it, for I did not wake him up after all to make my confession, but protest he shall have a copy of this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his lodge.
They gave me a bedroom there; a very neat room on the first floor, looking into the pretty garden.The hotel must look pretty much as it did a hundred years ago when HE visited it.I wonder whether he paid his bill? Yes: his journey was just begun.He had borrowed or got the money somehow.Such a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give generously--nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom he relieved.I don't believe a word he says, but I never accused him of stinginess about money.That is a fault of much more virtuous people than he.Mr.Laurence is ready enough with his purse when there are anybody's guineas in it.Still when Iwent to bed in the room, in HIS room; when I think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour.What if I should see his lean figure in the black-satin breeches, his sinister smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight (for I am in bed, and have popped my candle out), and he should say, "You mistrust me, you hate me, do you? And you, don't you know how Jack, Tom, and Harry, your brother authors, hate YOU?" I grin and laugh in the moonlight, in the midnight, in the silence."O you ghost in black-satin breeches and a wig! I like to be hated by some men," I say."Iknow men whose lives are a scheme, whose laughter is a conspiracy, whose smile means something else, whose hatred is a cloak, and I had rather these men should hate me than not.""My good sir," says he, with a ghastly grin on his lean face, "you have your wish.""Apres?" I say."Please let me go to sleep.I shan't sleep any the worse because--""Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you?" (This is only by way of illustration, my good sir; the animals don't bite me now.All the house at present seems to me excellently clean.)"'Tis absurd to affect this indifference.If you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles bite, they keep you from sleep.""There are some men who cry out at a flea-bite as loud as if they were torn by a vulture," I growl.
"Men of the genus irritabile, my worthy good gentleman!--and you are one.""Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say; and I dare say make a great shouting and crying at a small hurt.""You are ashamed of that quality by which you earn your subsistence, and such reputation as you have? Your sensibility is your livelihood, my worthy friend.You feel a pang of pleasure or pain?
It is noted in your memory, and some day or other makes its appearance in your manuscript.Why, in your last Roundabout rubbish you mention reading your first novel on the day when King George IV.
was crowned.I remember him in his cradle at St.James's, a lovely little babe; a gilt Chinese railing was before him, and I dropped the tear of sensibility as I gazed on the sleeping cherub.""A tear--a fiddlestick, MR.STERNE," I growled out, for of course Iknew my friend in the wig and satin breeches to be no other than the notorious, nay, celebrated Mr.Laurence Sterne.
"Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt you, mon ami? If not, I pity you.Yes, he was beautiful.I was in London the year he was born.I used to breakfast at the 'Mount Coffee-house.' I did not become the fashion until two years later, when my 'Tristram' made his appearance, who has held his own for a hundred years.By the way, mon bon monsieur, how many authors of your present time will last till the next century? Do you think Brown will?"I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the ghost give a ghastly snigger).
"Brown!" I roared."One of the most over-rated men that ever put pen to paper!""What do you think of Jones?"