This article has been transcribed from a copy of the Cardiff Times in the online collection of scanned Welsh newspapers 1804-1919 in the National Library of Wales, with grateful recognition of the free access accorded to all readers. Paragraph breaks have been introduced for easier reading.
Samuel’s breathless narrative contains allusions to Dickens’s Little Dorrit (‘Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT) and Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance (‘The policeman’s lot is not a happy one’.) — David Skilton
‘Never mind the train – stop and have another little game at pool.’
TOLD you in my last, sir, about that miserable suburban resident having to run like a champion sprinter gone wrong for his train every morning. Well, sir, that is nothing to what he has to do at what I may call the town end of the line. He generally arrives late at the office of his employer either because he has missed his train or because it is late. And all day long he is literally haunted by the thought of catching the train back. He is supposed to leave at 6 p.m., we will say. Well, of course, the only proper train is one that leaves at 5.50, and there is not another till 6.50, so he must either break into his employer's time to the extent of fifteen minutes or wait fifty minutes. The suburban railways manage these things beautifully – they understand the art of how not to do it if people ever did. Poor man; as each afternoon wears itself out the thought of that train haunts him. He has a nervous dread of anyone coming in to see him on business after 5 30, and he perpetually shuffles with his office coat, knowing full well that at the last moment he will have to change with a celerity only equalled by that of the ‘quick-change’ merchant of the music-halls. He is nervously excited in his manner, and consequently by no means fitted for any business requiring a cool head and singleness of purpose. As the hour of leaving comes, somebody of course comes in to detain him, and the odds are that he gives grievous offence to some good customer of the firm by bustling that person out of the place – all in order that he may catch that infernal train. His rush to the station suggests a Hindoo running ‘amuck.’ He dives into the waistcoats of fat gentlemen leisurely polling along; he floors dilatory errand lads and match boys, he dodges past hawkers, he leaves his change with newsboys in his hurry, and he finally arrives about ten minutes too soon – or sixty seconds too late. In the former case, he is so exhausted by his run that he must needs have one or two refreshers. Oh, these refreshers at railway stations, sir, what a ‘seet [amount] o' brass’ they do run away with. The man who lives in the suburbs, sir, usually spends as much in waiting about for trains as would pay all his rates and taxes – and a bit more – in town. Should be miss his train, he still needs a refresher and a shelter, for has he not fifty minutes to wait? And it is pretty certain that at the station buffet he will meet with two or more slaves of the time table like himself, and, should he do so – look out – for a sultry, who-cares-for-the-cat, damp sort of evening.
Only an hour and a quarter to wait.
But do you think that, after being persuaded to ‘journey round the town a bit,’ he is thoroughly happy! Not a bit of it – he is still thinking of trains. If he should go to the theatre he always has to leave the building just as the plot of the piece has reached its most exciting point – just as the heroine in white, with her back hair down, is pointing with a very rigid forefinger to the somewhat unmanageable door R. U. E. [Right Upstage Exit] and bidding the entirely self-possessed society villain, with his black moustache, his cigarette, and his Inverness cape, ‘begone, never more to cross the theresh-old of me husband's house,’ or something of the same sort. A nice critical time to leave the theatre, I can tell you. And what havoc that miserable man does work amongst his fellow occupants of the stalls. He bumps fat men, treads on the toes of ladies, sits on the lap (by a sudden stumble) of an adipose lady with a black silk dress and a red-hot temper, excites the wrath of the thin gentleman in spectacles who cries out ‘horder’ – with a very big ‘h’ – catches a wire of his umbrella in the trimming of a lady's mantilla, and generally earns the deserved execration of all the audience within fifty seats of him. It is just the same if he is at his club. Of course he must dine at a more expensive rate than he would have done at home, and just as he is in the midst of a game of billiards and simply ‘chawing up’ [chewing up] that odious cad Cucker, he remembers his train and has to cry ‘off’ and to pay forfeit. Go where he will, the memory of that fatal ‘last’ train rises before him. And, oh, for economy! The sticks, and umbrellas, and pipes, and books that he leaves behind him in railway carriages come to a pretty figure in the aggregate the cost of ‘refreshments’ nearly ruins him, indigestion – through eating the alternate layers of deal and mahogany shavings labelled ‘ham sandwiches’ at station bars – racks him, and as for the midday ‘put-off’ meal he is induced to take each noon at the office, be begins to think that it is about as expensive as dining at a first-class restaurant.
‘Lor, gracious, why, the fish pond is a comin into the back kitchen.’
But to the Bijou residence – is that a disappointment? Well, I should smile – rather! No decent school near it for the children – nothing in between a national school, where the young ones acquire little save a good round Yorkshire ‘Thah,’ ‘Hah,’ and ‘Nah’ style of pronunciation, and a Dame's school. No butcher's shop, except once a week; no provision shop where anything is apparently sold except ‘dip’ candles and sandy looking sugar. As a consequence of these two latter defects the wretched resident of the suburbs lives in a perpetual state of carrying multitudinous parcels and a mysterious black bag, which he several times leaves behind him in the train. Possibly as he is, at the town end, hurrying off to the station, he buys en route a pound or two of chops, which are flimsily wrapped up, and which excite the derision of his fellow passengers when he drops one or two out of the parcel on to the carriage floor. And his wife, poor thing, burdens him with commissions daily. As he impatiently stands wishing to rush off to that eternal train, she says, ‘You must not forget to bring a nice little joint, about eight pounds, four ounces of pepper, a pound of tea, the brooch I left to be mended (and mind the man doesn't charge you too much), a box of paper and envelopes, the knife I left to be ground, and – let me see, oh, you must get this Berlin [embroidery] wool matched, and see you get the right shade, and mind and remember the marmalade and that jacket I left to be cleaned, and change the books at the library and get something nice, and by all means bring the baking powder, and a box of tacks and – – here the victim rushes wildly off, for he hears the shrieking of the train in the distance.
The old lady passenger who will relate the history of her hopeful boy to the bored sub-urban traveller.
Naturally be forgets about the most important item of the lot as be returns, and then there is consequent domestic unpleasantness. The charming little teas on the lawn that he has planned are marred by ear-wigs and other creeping things to such an extent that he begins to believe that his particular Bijou residence has a monopoly of all the stock of such interesting commodities that nature has on hand. He has gone to frightful expense by calling in the painters and decorators (‘three men and a boy’ for about a fortnight), but where the new wall papers do not peel off through the damp they fade from the action of the sun, and the woodwork seems so rotten that it sucks up all the successive coats of paint like the painters themselves suck up their ‘'lowance’ of beer. The fish pond, it is found, does not confine its weedy beauties to the outside of the tenement, but shows a disposition to step inside the kitchen cellar, and there is a mouldy sort of smell about it, and a nasty green stagnant luminousness about its surface which carries with it rather more than a hint of typhoid. The diminutive lawn is always either a veritable ‘bog’ or suggestive of the ‘'ard 'igh road,’ as the Cockney called it, and the unhappy tenants find that the house has as part of its advantages about as many draughts as can be found in a dram-shop. As for the lady of the house – her lot is not a happy one. When any intrepid traveller, a friend of former years, heroically ventures as far as the domicile, ‘and a nice little dinner’ is an urgent necessity, nothing of course can be bought in the village, the last pound of steak from the bone having been acquired by the parson. That poor lady is in a perpetual state of ‘falling back’ upon ham and eggs (what a fearful thing to ‘fall back’ upon, to be sure) or tinned meat that tastes of tin. But how can I continue this grim recital, sir? How can I do so when every word I write recalls such bitter memories. I endured such a life, sir, for two long years, and during that period I lost more ‘last’ trains than ever railway accidents smashed. I ‘padded the hoof’ home at midnight and during the still watches of the night or I braved bankruptcy by staying at hotels where I was charged an ‘extra’ for coughing or sneezing; I –– well, I finally removed.
Last modified 1 March 2022