Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint George, in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and the world is none the worse without it.
It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms;environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.
Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown the strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be considered a little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as ever; which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other cells that are not at all strong, and with other blind alleys that are stone-blind. Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors (who received them with open arms), except at certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about. On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking out again as soon as he hadn't done it--neatly epitomising the administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight little, island.
There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.
He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he doubted its being worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear--like all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock said--that he was going out again directly.
He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate style; with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands--rings upon the fingers in those days--which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail. His principal anxiety was about his wife.
'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much shocked, if she should come to the gate to-morrow morning?'
The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of 'em was and some of 'em wasn't. In general, more no than yes.
'What like is she, you see?' he philosophically asked: 'that's what it hinges on.'
'She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed.'
'That,' said the turnkey, 'is agen her.'
'She is so little used to go out alone,' said the debtor, 'that Iam at a loss to think how she will ever make her way here, if she walks.'
'P'raps,' quoth the turnkey, 'she'll take a ackney coach.'
'Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. 'Ihope she will. She may not think of it.'
'Or p'raps,' said the turnkey, offering his suggestions from the the top of his well-worn wooden stool, as he might have offered them to a child for whose weakness he felt a compassion, 'p'raps she'll get her brother, or her sister, to come along with her.'
'She has no brother or sister.'
'Niece, nevy, cousin, serwant, young 'ooman, greengrocer.--Dash it!
One or another on 'em,' said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand the refusal of all his suggestions.
'I fear--I hope it is not against the rules--that she will bring the children.'
'The children?' said the turnkey. 'And the rules? Why, lord set you up like a corner pin, we've a reg'lar playground o' children here. Children! Why we swarm with 'em. How many a you got?'
'Two,' said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip again, and turning into the prison.
The turnkey followed him with his eyes. 'And you another,' he observed to himself, 'which makes three on you. And your wife another, I'll lay a crown. Which makes four on you. And another coming, I'll lay half-a-crown. Which'll make five on you. And I'll go another seven and sixpence to name which is the helplessest, the unborn baby or you!'
He was right in all his particulars. She came next day with a little boy of three years old, and a little girl of two, and he stood entirely corroborated.
'Got a room now; haven't you?' the turnkey asked the debtor after a week or two.
'Yes, I have got a very good room.'
'Any little sticks a coming to furnish it?' said the turnkey.
'I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by the carrier, this afternoon.'
'Missis and little 'uns a coming to keep you company?' asked the turnkey.
'Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered, even for a few weeks.'
'Even for a few weeks, OF course,' replied the turnkey. And he followed him again with his eyes, and nodded his head seven times when he was gone.