The baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with
Doctor Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians,
like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her
existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being almost a
part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse the child who had
been born in the college.
'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him, 'I ought
to be her godfather.'
The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said, 'Perhaps you
wouldn't object to really being her godfather?'
'Oh! _I_ don't object,' replied the turnkey, 'if you don't.'
Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon, when the
turnkey, being relieved, was off the lock; and that the turnkey went up to the
font of Saint George's Church, and promised and vowed and renounced on her
behalf, as he himself related when he came back, 'like a good 'un.'
This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the child, over and
above his former official one. When she began to walk and talk, he became fond
of her; bought a little arm-chair and stood it by the high fender of the lodge
fire-place; liked to have her company when he was on the lock; and used to bribe
her with cheap toys to come and talk to him. The child, for her part, soon grew
so fond of the turnkey that she would come climbing up the lodge-steps of her
own accord at all hours of the day. When she fell asleep in the little armchair
by the high fender, the turnkey would cover her with his pocket-handkerchief;
and when she sat in it dressing and undressing a doll which soon came to be
unlike dolls on the other side of the lock, and to bear a horrible family
resemblance to Mrs Bangham--he would contemplate her from the top of his stool
with exceeding gentleness. Witnessing these things, the collegians would express
an opinion that the turnkey, who was a bachelor, had been cut out by nature for
a family man. But the turnkey thanked them, and said, 'No, on the whole it was
enough to see other people's children there.' At what period of her early life
the little creature began to perceive that it was not the habit of all the world
to live locked up in narrow yards surrounded by high walls with spikes at the
top, would be a difficult question to settle. But she was a very, very little
creature indeed, when she had somehow gained the knowledge that her clasp of her
father's hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key opened;
and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it, his feet must
never cross that line. A pitiful and plaintive look, with which she had begun to
regard him when she was still extremely young, was perhaps a part of this
discovery.
With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with something
in it for only him that was like protection, this Child of the Marshalsea and
the child of the Father of the Marshalsea, sat by her friend the turnkey in the
lodge, kept the family room, or wandered about the prison-yard, for the first
eight years of her life. With a pitiful and plaintive look for her wayward
sister; for her idle brother; for the high blank walls; for the faded crowd they
shut in; for the games of the prison children as they whooped and ran, and
played at hide-and-seek, and made the iron bars of the inner gateway 'Home.'
Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high fender in
the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window, until, when she
turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between her and her friend, and
she would see him through a grating, too. 'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey
said once, after watching her, 'ain't you?'
'Where are they?' she inquired.
'Why, they're--over there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague flourish
of his key. 'Just about there.'
'Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?'
The turnkey was discomfited. 'Well,' he said. 'Not in general.'
'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own particular
request and instruction.
'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies, and
there's'--the turnkey hesitated, being short of floral nomenclature--'there's
dandelions, and all manner of games.'
'Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?'
'Prime,' said the turnkey.
'Was father ever there?'
'Hem!' coughed the turnkey. 'O yes, he was there, sometimes.'
'Is he sorry not to be there now?'
'N-not particular,' said the turnkey.
'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd within. 'O
are you quite sure and certain, Bob?'
At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the
subject to hard-bake: always his last resource when he found his little friend
getting him into a political, social, or theological corner. But this was the
origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two curious companions made
together. They used to issue from the lodge on alternate Sunday afternoons with
great gravity, bound for some meadows or green lanes that had been elaborately
appointed by the turnkey in the course of the week; and there she picked grass
and flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards, there were
tea-gardens, shrimps, ale, and other delicacies; and then they would come back
hand in hand, unless she was more than usually tired, and had fallen asleep on
his shoulder.
In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a
question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained undetermined on
the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath his little property of
savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could it be so 'tied up' as
that only she should have the benefit of it? His experience on the lock gave him
such an acute perception of the enormous difficulty of 'tying up' money with any
approach to tightness, and contrariwise of the remarkable ease with which it got
loose, that through a series of years he regularly propounded this knotty point
to every new insolvent agent and other professional gentleman who passed in and
out.
'Supposing,' he would say, stating the case with his key on the professional
gentleman's waistcoat; 'supposing a man wanted to leave his property to a young
female, and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else should ever be able to make
a grab at it; how would you tie up that property?'
'Settle it strictly on herself,' the professional gentleman would
complacently answer.
'But look here,' quoth the turnkey. 'Supposing she had, say a brother, say a
father, say a husband, who would be likely to make a grab at that property when
she came into it--how about that?'
'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim on
it than you,' would be the professional answer.
'Stop a bit,' said the turnkey. 'Supposing she was tender-hearted, and they
came over her. Where's your law for tying it up then?'
The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce his law
for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it all his life,
and died intestate after all.
But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen. The
first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished, when her
pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that time the
protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him, became embodied in
action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon herself a new relation towards
the Father.
At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting her
livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But this made her
so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and began to be
sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through this little gate, she
passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.
What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister,
in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the wretched truth it
pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with many mysteries. It is
enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were,
and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest.
Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not
of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the
lowliest way of life!
With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the one so
strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits
of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in prisons; born
and bred in a social condition, false even with a reference to the falsest
condition outside the walls; drinking from infancy of a well whose waters had
their own peculiar stain, their own unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child
of the Marshalsea began her womanly life.
No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not
unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what humble
consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the matter of
lifting and carrying; through how much weariness and hopelessness, and how many
secret tears; she drudged on, until recognised as useful, even indispensable.
That time came. She took the place of eldest of the three, in all things but
precedence; was the head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its
anxieties and shames.
At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down in
words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and
how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by snatches of a few
weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother
sent to day-schools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was
no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well--no one better--that a
man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his
own children.
To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own
contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared a
dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the dancing-master's art,
and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen years old, the Child of the
Marshalsea presented herself to the dancing-master, with a little bag in her
hand, and preferred her humble petition.
'If you please, I was born here, sir.'
'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancing-master, surveying the
small figure and uplifted face.
'Yes, sir.'
'And what can I do for you?' said the dancing-master.
'Nothing for me, sir, thank you,' anxiously undrawing the strings of the
little bag; 'but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to teach my
sister cheap--'
'My child, I'll teach her for nothing,' said the dancing-master, shutting up
the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever danced to the Insolvent
Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so apt a pupil, and the
dancing-master had such abundant leisure to bestow upon her (for it took him a
matter of ten weeks to set to his creditors, lead off, turn the Commissioners,
and right and left back to his professional pursuits), that wonderful progress
was made. Indeed the dancing-master was so proud of it, and so wishful to
display it before he left to a few select friends among the collegians, that at
six o'clock on a certain fine morning, a minuet de la cour came off in the
yard--the college- rooms being of too confined proportions for the purpose--in
which so much ground was covered, and the steps were so conscientiously
executed, that the dancing-master, having to play the kit besides, was
thoroughly blown.
The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's continuing
his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to try again. She
watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness of time a milliner
came in, and to her she repaired on her own behalf.
'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the door of the
milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: 'but I was born here.'
Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the milliner sat
up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the dancing-master had said:
'Oh! You are the child, are you?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner, shaking her
head.
'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'
'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before you? It has
not done me much good.'
'Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who comes
here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn just the same.'
'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.
'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'
'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.
'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of the
Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers, which came
so often in her way. The milliner--who was not morose or hard-hearted, only
newly insolvent--was touched, took her in hand with goodwill, found her the most
patient and earnest of pupils, and made her a cunning work-woman in course of
time.
In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the Father of
the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of character. The more Fatherly
he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he became on the
contributions of his changing family, the greater stand he made by his forlorn
gentility. With the same hand that he pocketed a collegian's half-crown half an
hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that streamed over his cheeks if any
reference were made to his daughters' earning their bread. So, over and above
other daily cares, the Child of the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of
preserving the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together.
The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more
how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty--on
whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown
no particular sense of being ruined at the time when that calamity fell upon
him, further than that he left off washing himself when the shock was announced,
and never took to that luxury any more. He had been a very indifferent musical
amateur in his better days; and when he fell with his brother, resorted for
support to playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra.
It was the theatre in which his niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture
there a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted the task
of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have accepted an
illness, a legacy, a feast, starvation-- anything but soap.
To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary for
the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the Father.
'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a good
deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.'
'You surprise me. Why?'
'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and
looked after.'
'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and look
after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You all go out so
much; you all go out so much.'
This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that Amy
herself went out by the day to work.
'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to
Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it may be
as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born here as I was,
you know, father.'
'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose that
Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should, too. So, you
and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way. Good, good. I'll not
meddle; don't mind me.'
To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs Bangham in
executing commissions, and out of the slang interchange with very doubtful
companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task. At eighteen he would have
dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour, from penny to penny, until
eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom he derived anything useful or good,
and she could find no patron for him but her old friend and godfather.
'Dear Bob,' said she, 'what is to become of poor Tip?' His name was Edward,
and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls.
The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of poor Tip,
and had even gone so far with the view of averting their fulfilment, as to sound
Tip in reference to the expediency of running away and going to serve his
country. But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn't seem to care for his
country.
'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with him.
Suppose I try and get him into the law?'
'That would be so good of you, Bob!'
The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as they
passed in and out. He put this second one so perseveringly that a stool and
twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the office of an attorney
in a great National Palladium called the Palace Court; at that time one of a
considerable list of everlasting bulwarks to the dignity and safety of Albion,
whose places know them no more.
Tip languished in Clifford's Inns for six months, and at the expiration of
that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets, and
incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back again.
'Not going back again?' said the poor little anxious Child of the Marshalsea,
always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank of her charges.
'I am so tired of it,' said Tip, 'that I have cut it.'
Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs
Bangham succession, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend, got him
into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade, into the law again,
into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a stockbroker's, into the law again,
into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general
dealer's, into a distillery, into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry
goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into
the docks. But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he
had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison
walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling; and to prowl about
within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod, purposeless, down-at-heel way;
until the real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their fascination over him,
and brought him back.
Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her brother's
rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes, she pinched and
scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he was tired of nothing to
do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he graciously consented to go to
Canada. And there was grief in her bosom over parting with him, and joy in the
hope of his being put in a straight course at last.
'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when you
have made your fortune.'
'All right!' said Tip, and went.
But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool.
After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so
strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back again.
Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at the expiration
of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever. At length,
after another interval of successorship to Mrs Bangham, he found a pursuit for
himself, and announced it.
'Amy, I have got a situation.'
'Have you really and truly, Tip?'
'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more, old
girl.'
'What is it, Tip?'
'Why, you know Slingo by sight?'
'Not the man they call the dealer?'
'That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give me a berth.'
'What is he a dealer in, Tip?'
'Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.'
She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him once. A
whisper passed among the elder collegians that he had been seen at a mock
auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for massive silver, and
paying for them with the greatest liberality in bank notes; but it never reached
her ears. One evening she was alone at work--standing up at the window, to save
the twilight lingering above the wall--when he opened the door and walked in.
She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any questions. He saw
how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry.
'I am afraid, Amy, you'll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!'
'I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?'
'Why--yes.'
'Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well, I am
less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip.'
'Ah! But that's not the worst of it.'
'Not the worst of it?'
'Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back, you
see; but--DON'T look so startled--I have come back in what I may call a new way.
I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in now, as one of the regulars.'
'Oh! Don't say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don't, don't!'
'Well, I don't want to say it,' he returned in a reluctant tone; 'but if you
can't understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in for forty
pound odd.'
For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She cried,
with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill their father if
he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's graceless feet.
It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring him to
understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside himself if he knew
the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and altogether a fanciful
notion. He yielded to it in that light only, when he submitted to her
entreaties, backed by those of his uncle and sister. There was no want of
precedent for his return; it was accounted for to the father in the usual way;
and the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip,
supported it loyally.
This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea at
twenty-two. With a still surviving attachment to the one miserable yard and
block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and fro in it
shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out to every
one. Since she had begun to work beyond the walls, she had found it necessary to
conceal where she lived, and to come and go as secretly as she could, between
the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she had never slept in her
life. Her original timidity had grown with this concealment, and her light step
and her little figure shunned the thronged streets while they passed along them.
Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all things
else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father, and the prison,
and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on.
This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going home
upon a dull September evening, observed at a distance by Arthur Clennam. This
was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; turning at the end of
London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint George's
Church, turning back suddenly once more, and flitting in at the open outer gate
and little court-yard of the Marshalsea.
|