Out of Town

"Out of Town" is a lesser-known work by Charles Dickens, written in 1851. It is a travel narrative that depicts a journey through the English countryside, capturing the sights, sounds, and experiences encountered along the way. The text reflects Dickens' keen observations and his love for the rural landscape, as well as his thoughts on social issues of the time. Through vivid descriptions and engaging character interactions, Dickens invites readers to appreciate the beauty and charm of the natural world, while also highlighting the contrasts between urban and rural life.

• Short story

								
SITTING, on a bright September morning, among my books and papers at my
open window on the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have the sky and
ocean framed before me like a beautiful picture.  A beautiful picture,
but with such movement in it, such changes of light upon the sails of
ships and wake of steamboats, such dazzling gleams of silver far out at
sea, such fresh touches on the crisp wave-tops as they break and roll
towards me—a picture with such music in the billowy rush upon the
shingle, the blowing of morning wind through the corn-sheaves where the
farmers’ waggons are busy, the singing of the larks, and the distant
voices of children at play—such charms of sight and sound as all the
Galleries on earth can but poorly suggest.

So dreamy is the murmur of the sea below my window, that I may have been
here, for anything I know, one hundred years.  Not that I have grown old,
for, daily on the neighbouring downs and grassy hill-sides, I find that I
can still in reason walk any distance, jump over anything, and climb up
anywhere; but, that the sound of the ocean seems to have become so
customary to my musings, and other realities seem so to have gone aboard
ship and floated away over the horizon, that, for aught I will undertake
to the contrary, I am the enchanted son of the King my father, shut up in
a tower on the sea-shore, for protection against an old she-goblin who
insisted on being my godmother, and who foresaw at the font—wonderful
creature!—that I should get into a scrape before I was twenty-one.  I
remember to have been in a City (my Royal parent’s dominions, I suppose),
and apparently not long ago either, that was in the dreariest condition.
The principal inhabitants had all been changed into old newspapers, and
in that form were preserving their window-blinds from dust, and wrapping
all their smaller household gods in curl-papers.  I walked through gloomy
streets where every house was shut up and newspapered, and where my
solitary footsteps echoed on the deserted pavements.  In the public rides
there were no carriages, no horses, no animated existence, but a few
sleepy policemen, and a few adventurous boys taking advantage of the
devastation to swarm up the lamp-posts.  In the Westward streets there
was no traffic; in the Westward shops, no business.  The water-patterns
which the ’Prentices had trickled out on the pavements early in the
morning, remained uneffaced by human feet.  At the corners of mews,
Cochin-China fowls stalked gaunt and savage; nobody being left in the
deserted city (as it appeared to me), to feed them.  Public Houses, where
splendid footmen swinging their legs over gorgeous hammer-cloths beside
wigged coachmen were wont to regale, were silent, and the unused pewter
pots shone, too bright for business, on the shelves.  I beheld a Punch’s
Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted.  It was
deserted, and there were none to heed its desolation.  In Belgrave Square
I met the last man—an ostler—sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat,
eating straw, and mildewing away.

If I recollect the name of the little town, on whose shore this sea is
murmuring—but I am not just now, as I have premised, to be relied upon
for anything—it is Pavilionstone.  Within a quarter of a century, it was
a little fishing town, and they do say, that the time was, when it was a
little smuggling town.  I have heard that it was rather famous in the
hollands and brandy way, and that coevally with that reputation the
lamplighter’s was considered a bad life at the Assurance Offices.  It was
observed that if he were not particular about lighting up, he lived in
peace; but that, if he made the best of the oil-lamps in the steep and
narrow streets, he usually fell over the cliff at an early age.  Now, gas
and electricity run to the very water’s edge, and the South-Eastern
Railway Company screech at us in the dead of night.

But, the old little fishing and smuggling town remains, and is so
tempting a place for the latter purpose, that I think of going out some
night next week, in a fur cap and a pair of petticoat trousers, and
running an empty tub, as a kind of archæological pursuit.  Let nobody
with corns come to Pavilionstone, for there are breakneck flights of
ragged steps, connecting the principal streets by back-ways, which will
cripple that visitor in half an hour.  These are the ways by which, when
I run that tub, I shall escape.  I shall make a Thermopylæ of the corner
of one of them, defend it with my cutlass against the coast-guard until
my brave companions have sheered off, then dive into the darkness, and
regain my Susan’s arms.  In connection with these breakneck steps I
observe some wooden cottages, with tumble-down out-houses, and back-yards
three feet square, adorned with garlands of dried fish, in one of which
(though the General Board of Health might object) my Susan dwells.

The South-Eastern Company have brought Pavilionstone into such vogue,
with their tidal trains and splendid steam-packets, that a new
Pavilionstone is rising up.  I am, myself, of New Pavilionstone.  We are
a little mortary and limey at present, but we are getting on capitally.
Indeed, we were getting on so fast, at one time, that we rather overdid
it, and built a street of shops, the business of which may be expected to
arrive in about ten years.  We are sensibly laid out in general; and with
a little care and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a
very pretty place.  We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our
air is delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild
thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, on the faith of
a pedestrian, perfect.  In New Pavilionstone we are a little too much
addicted to small windows with more bricks in them than glass, and we are
not over-fanciful in the way of decorative architecture, and we get
unexpected sea-views through cracks in the street doors; on the whole,
however, we are very snug and comfortable, and well accommodated.  But
the Home Secretary (if there be such an officer) cannot too soon shut up
the burial-ground of the old parish church.  It is in the midst of us,
and Pavilionstone will get no good of it, if it be too long left alone.

The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel.  A dozen years ago, going
over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you used to be dropped upon
the platform of the main line Pavilionstone Station (not a junction
then), at eleven o’clock on a dark winter’s night, in a roaring wind; and
in the howling wilderness outside the station, was a short omnibus which
brought you up by the forehead the instant you got in at the door; and
nobody cared about you, and you were alone in the world.  You bumped over
infinite chalk, until you were turned out at a strange building which had
just left off being a barn without having quite begun to be a house,
where nobody expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you
were come, and where you were usually blown about, until you happened to

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