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The Floating Press - Charles Dickens

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32 pages

English

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Over the course of his career, Charles Dickens wrote a series of Christmas-themed short stories that were serialized in popular magazines of the era. "The Holly Tree Inn," like many of these tales, reflects on the deeper meaning of the holiday, using the loneliness of the solitary traveler as a lens through which to examine society.

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775419488
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE HOLLY-TREE INN
THREE BRANCHES
* * *
CHARLES DICKENS

*

The Holly-Tree Inn Three Branches First published in 1855 ISBN 978-1-775419-48-8 © 2010 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
*
First Branch—Myself Second Branch—The Boots Third Branch—The Bill
First Branch—Myself
*
I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man.Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever didsuppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which Ihave never breathed until now.
I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable placesI have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon orreceived, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solelybecause I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But Iwill leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.
That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries inthe Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man andbeast I was once snowed up.
It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from AngelaLeath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery thatshe preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freelyadmitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, thoughI was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural,and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that Iresolved to go to America—on my way to the Devil.
Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolvingto write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing andforgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the postwhen I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,—Isay, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as Icould with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I helddear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.
The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers forever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, ofcourse, and was miserably cold, and experienced that generalall-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usuallyfound inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.
How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out ofthe Temple! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, asif the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; thebleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers,trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light andwarmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for suchcustomers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (thewind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my facelike a steel whip.
It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. ThePost-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool,weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had theintervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, andhad resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) onthe farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my havingfirst seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy wasgratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before myexpatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out beforemy resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried intofull effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner,lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particularsby-and-by—took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.
There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there werestage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with someother people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as avery serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat on the fastest ofthese, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with myportmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington,where I was to join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, whocarried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, told me about the hugeblocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river,having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardensover to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether thebox-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to myunhappiness. I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite sofar gone as to wish to be frozen to death.
When I got up to the Peacock,—where I found everybody drinking hot purl,in self-preservation,—I asked if there were an inside seat to spare. Ithen discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gaveme a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, sincethat coach always loaded particularly well. However, I took a littlepurl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I wasseated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious ofmaking a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey.
It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, pale,uncertain ghosts of houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then itwas hard, black, frozen day. People were lighting their fires; smoke wasmounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling forHighgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring ofiron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to havegrown old and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages andhomesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards. Out-door work was abandoned,horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers loungedabout, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing firesinside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem tolike them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with theirchubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitarycoach going by. I don't know when the snow begin to set in; but I knowthat we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark,"That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day." Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.
The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. Iwas warm and valiant after eating and drinking,—particularly afterdinner; cold and depressed at all other times. I was always bewilderedas to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses. Thecoach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without amoment's intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatestregularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, witha precision that worried me to death. While we changed horses, the guardand coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoesin the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselveswithout being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as itdarkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horsestumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,—which was thepleasantest variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and snowed,and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we wenton in this manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great NorthRoad, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again. And it snowedand snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.
I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we oughtto have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, andthat our case was growing worse every hour. The drift was becomingprodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and thefields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us,we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that mightsink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside.