The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most comfortable of landladies as she opened one door of the carriage; ‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.

Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended from the vehicle.  Thomas, now just able to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews.  With this distinguished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, looking exceedingly grim.

‘Francis,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘what do you think of this place?’

‘I think,’ returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, ‘it is everything we expected.’

‘Hah!’ said Thomas Idle.

‘There is the sea,’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of window; ‘and here,’ pointing to the lunch on the table, ‘are shrimps.  Let us—’ here Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of something, and looked in again,—‘let us eat ’em.’

The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out to survey the watering-place.  As Chorus of the Drama, without whom Thomas could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to have the following report screwed out of him.

In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.

‘But,’ Thomas Idle asked, ‘where is it?’

‘It’s what you may call generally up and down the beach, here and there,’ said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.

‘Proceed,’ said Thomas Idle.

It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what you might call a primitive place.  Large?  No, it was not large.  Who ever expected it would be large?  Shape?  What a question to ask!  No shape.  What sort of a street?  Why, no street.  Shops?  Yes, of course (quite indignant).  How many?  Who ever went into a place to count the shops?  Ever so many.  Six?  Perhaps.  A library?  Why, of course (indignant again).  Good collection of books?  Most likely—couldn’t say—had seen nothing in it but a pair of scales.  Any reading-room?  Of course, there was a reading-room.  Where?  Where! why, over there.  Where was over there?  Why, there!  Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft, next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder outside, to get up by.  That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the idea of a weaver’s shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was his look out.  He was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to the company.

‘By-the-by,’ Thomas Idle observed; ‘the company?’

Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.  Where were they?  Why, there they were.  Mr. Idle could see the tops of their hats, he supposed.  What?  Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen’s and four ladies’?  Yes, to be sure.  Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not to be expected to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.

Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be idle here.  In the course of some days, he added, that there were three fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen who never fished.  That they got their living entirely by looking at the ocean.  What nourishment they looked out of it to support their strength, he couldn’t say; but, he supposed it was some sort of Iodine.  The place was full of their children, who were always upside down on the public buildings (two small bridges over the brook), and always hurting themselves or one another, so that their wailings made more continual noise in the air than could have been got in a busy place.  The houses people lodged in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital accordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as its shells were, and all empty—as its shells were.  Among them, was an edifice of destitute appearance, with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you might buy anything you wanted—supposing what you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child’s wheelbarrow.  The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and made their lamentations louder.  This donkey was the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense.

The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally wound up, by looking out of window, looking in again, and saying, ‘But there is the sea, and here are the shrimps—let us eat ’em.’

There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views—on fine days—of the Scottish coast.  But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from.  Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of disinterestedness, became every day more ready to walk to Maryport and back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a preferable place.

Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, ‘My mind misgives me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask it to be idle with you.’

‘Judge, then,’ returned Francis, adopting the style of the story-book, ‘with what success.  I go to a region which is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, “Willyou come and be idle with me?”  And it answers, “No; for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I can’t be idle with you.”  Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the pastrycook’s shop at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to those murky and black- dusty streets, “Will you come and be idle with me?”  To which they reply, “No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a limited public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and can’t enjoy ourselves with any one.”  So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the Post-master, “Will you come and be idle with me?”  To which he rejoins, “No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed through the window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can’t get out, and I can’t get in, and I have no space to be idle in, even if I would.”  So, the boy,’ said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, ‘comes back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.’

But it may, not unreasonably, be asked—while Francis Goodchild was wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual observation of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest creature in existence all the time—how did Thomas Idle, crippled and confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of the day?

Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours, but passively allowed the hours to get through him.  Where other men in his situation would have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept and rested his body.  Where other men would have pondered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas dreamed lazily of his past life.  The one solitary thing he did, which most other people would have done in his place, was to resolve on making certain alterations and improvements in his mode of existence, as soon as the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had all passed away.  Remembering that the current of his life had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple of industry, his present ideas on the subject of self-reform, inclined him—not as the reader may be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for a new existence of enterprise and exertion—but, on the contrary, to