It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction.  I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject.  When I first made acquaintance with Calais it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness—­who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach—­who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.  Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational.  I know where it is beforehand, I keep a look-out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know—­and I can bear—­its worst behaviour.

Malignant Calais!  Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and discouraging hope!  Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!  In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair.  Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility.  The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there—­roll, roar, wash!—­Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it.  It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially commended to the infernal gods.  Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives under the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!

Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover.  I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.  It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town.  Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much-esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting.  I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour.  I know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat.  Beshrew the Warden likewise for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round.  Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough, without the officious Warden’s interference?