CHAPTER I - IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER
Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a
Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope
to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due
at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door?
RICHARD WATTS, Esq.
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity
for Six poor Travellers,
who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,
May receive gratis for one Night,
Lodging, Entertainment,
and Fourpence each.
It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good
days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this
inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering
about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts,
with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's
figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger
his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very
short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the
quaint old door.
"Now," said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, "I know I am not a
Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!"
Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces
which might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had
had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclusion
that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning to regard the establishment as in
some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and
share alike, by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward
into the road to survey my inheritance.
I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with
the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door),
choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The
silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and
timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer
old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign.
Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old
days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to the
times of King John, when the rugged castle--I will not undertake to say
how many hundreds of years old then--was abandoned to the centuries of
weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the
ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.
I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While
I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of the
upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly
appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said
so plainly, "Do you wish to see the house?" that I answered aloud, "Yes,
if you please." And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my
head, and went down two steps into the entry.
