The Chaplain of the Fleet

On the fifth day, Mrs. Deborah gave herself up, and contemplated her end in a becoming spirit of cheerfulness. She comforted her sister with the hope that she, too, would before long join her in a world “where there is no noise, my dear, no fighting, no profane swearing, no dirt, no confusion, no bawling, no starving, no humiliation. There shall we sit in peace and quiet, enjoying the dignity and respect which will be no doubt paid to two Christian gentlewomen.”

“I might have known it,” sighed poor Mrs. Esther in her tears. “Only a week ago a strange dog howled all night below our window. I should have known it for a warning, sent for you, my dear, or me, or for Kitty. It cannot have been meant for Sir Miles, for the poor gentleman, being in his cups, would not notice it: nor to Mr. Stallabras, for he sets no store by such warnings.”

“It was for me,” said Mrs. Deborah with resignation, while Mrs. Esther went on recollecting omens.

“Last night I heard the death-watch. Then, indeed, sister, I gave you up.”

“It was a message for me,” said the sick woman, as if she had been Christiana in the story.

“And this morning I heard a hen crow in the market – a hen in a basket. Alas! who can have any doubt?”

“It is but six weeks,” said Mrs. Deborah, feebly, “since a hearse on its way to a funeral stopped before our door. I remember now, but we little thought then, what that meant.”

“I saw, only a fortnight ago,” continued Mrs. Esther, “a winding-sheet in the tallow. I thought it pointed at Kitty, but would not frighten the child. Sister, we are but purblind mortals.”

Far be it from me to laugh at beliefs which have so deep a root in Englishwomen’s hearts: nor is it incredible to those who believe in the divine interference, that signs and warnings of death should be sent beforehand, if only to turn the thoughts heavenward and lead sinners to repent. But this I think, that if poor Mrs. Deborah had not accepted these warnings for herself, she might have lived on to a green old age, as did her sister. Being, therefore, convinced in her mind that her time was come, she was only anxious to make due preparation. She would have been disappointed at getting well, as one who has packed her boxes for a long journey, but is told at the last moment that she must wait.

As she grew weaker, her brain began to wander. She talked of Bagnigge Wells, of Cupid’s Garden, the entertainments of her father’s company, and the childish days when everything was hopeful. While she talked, Mrs. Esther wept and whispered to me —

“She was so pretty and merry! Oh! child, if you could have seen us both in our young days – if you could have seen my Deborah with her pretty saucy ways; her roguish smile, her ready wit made all to love her! Ah! me – me – those happy days! and now! My dear Deborah, it is well that thou shouldst go.”

This was on the morning of Mrs. Deborah’s last day in life. In the afternoon her senses returned to her, and we propped her up, pale and weak, and listened while she spoke words of love and farewell to be kept sacred in the memory of those who had to go on living.

“For thirty years, dear sister,” she murmured, while their two thin hands were held in each other’s clasp – “for thirty years we have prayed daily unto the Lord to have pity upon all prisoners and captives, meaning more especially, ourselves. Now, unto me hath He shown this most excellent mercy, and calleth me away to a much better place than we can imagine or deserve. I had thought it would be well if He would lead us out of this ward to some place where, in green lanes and fields, we might meditate for a space in quiet before we died. I should like to have heard the song of the lark and seen the daisies. But God thinks otherwise.”

“Oh, sister – sister!” cried Mrs. Esther.

“’There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,’” said Mrs. Deborah. “Kitty, child,” she turned her pale face to me, “be kind to my sister.”

We wept together. Outside there was the usual tumult of the market – men buying and selling, with shouts and cries; within, three women weeping, and one dying.

“Go, dear,” said she who was dying; “call the Doctor. He hath been very generous to us. Tell him I would receive the last offices from his hands.”

The Doctor came. He read the appointed service in that deep voice of his, which was surely given him for the conversion of the wicked. The tears streamed down his face as he bent over the bed, saying in the words of the Epistle appointed – “’My daughter, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; and scourgeth every child whom He receiveth.’”

In the evening the poor lady died, being released from her long imprisonment by that Royal Mandate, the Will of God.

We buried her in the green and pleasant churchyard of Islington. It is a sweet spot, far removed from the noise of London; and though her poor remains feel nothing, nor can hear any more the tumult of crowds, it is good to think that round her are no streets, only the few houses of the village. She lies surrounded by fields and trees; the daisies grow over her grave, the lark sings above the church; she is at rest and in peace.

CHAPTER XV

HOW MRS. ESTHER WAS DISCHARGED

After poor Mrs. Deborah’s death my lessons came to a sudden stop, and have never been resumed. Some of that perspicacity of style which I have often admired in our modern divines might have fallen to my lot, to enrich this narrative, had I continued in my course of single and double book-keeping.

“I am not clever,” said Mrs. Esther, “like Deborah. She was always the clever one as well as the beauty. That gave her a right to her little temper, poor dear. I cannot teach astronomy, because one star is to me exactly like another. Nor do I know aught about book-keeping, except that it is a very useful and necessary science. Therefore, Kitty, thou must go untaught. For that matter, I think you know as much as a woman need ever know, which is to read, to write – but one ought not to expect of a woman such exactness in spelling as of a scholar – and to cipher to such a moderate degree as may enable her to add up her bills. But it grieves me to think you are growing up so tall and straight without learning how to make so much as a single cordial, or any strong waters. And with our means, what chance of teaching you to toss a pancake, fold an omelette, or dish a Yorkshire pudding?”

It was then that we began to console ourselves for my ignorance, our troubles, and even, I bear mind, for our late loss, by reading “Clarissa,” a book which the Doctor, ever watchful in the interests of virtue, presented to Mrs. Esther with a speech of condolence. He said that it was a work whose perusal could not fail most strongly to console her spirit and to dispose her for resignation; while for purity of morals, for justice of observation, and for knowledge of the human heart, it was unequalled in any language. He then made a digression, and compared the work with the ancient Greek romances. Adventure, he said, was to be found in Heliodorus, and the story told by Apuleius of Cupid and Psyche was exquisitely pathetic; yet none of the earlier writers could be compared, or even named in the same breath, with Mr. Richardson, who reminded him especially of Sophocles, in the tenderness with which he prepared the minds of his audience for the impending tragedy which he could not alter or abate, seeing that it was the will of Necessity. There was nothing, he went on to say, more calculated to inspire or to strengthen sentiments of virtue in the breasts of the young – and especially in the young of the feminine sex – than a contemplation of Clarissa’s virtue and Lovelace’s wickedness. We were greatly edified by these praises, coming from so great a scholar and one so eminently fitted to discourse on virtue. We received the work, prepared (so far as I was concerned) to partake of food for reflection of the satisfying kind (so that the reader quickly lays aside the work while he meditates for a few days on what he has read) which is supplied by the pious “Drelincourt on Death.” Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs,” or Young’s “Night Thoughts.”

“After dinner, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “you shall read it aloud to me. Do not stop if I shut my eyes in order to hear the better. These good books should be carefully listened to, and read very slowly. Otherwise their lessons may be overlooked, and this would be a sad pity after all the good Doctor’s trouble in first reading the book for us. What scholarship, Kitty! and what a passion, nay, what an ardour, for virtue animates that reverend heart!”

I cannot but pause here to ask whether if Mr. Richardson had chosen to depict to the life the character of a clergyman, who had fallen into such ways as my uncle, with his sins, his follies, his degradation, the Doctor would himself have laid it to heart? Alas! I fear not. We know not ourselves as we are: we still go dreaming we are something better than we seem to others: we have a second and unreal self: the shafts of the satirist seem to pierce the hearts of others. I am sure that many a Lovelace, fresh from the ruin of another Clarissa (if, indeed, there could be another creature so incomparable), must have read this great romance with tears of pity and indignation. Otherwise the race of Lovelaces would long since have become extinct.

We received, therefore, “Clarissa,” expecting edification, but not joy. We even put it aside for a week, because Mrs. Esther hardly felt herself, at first, strong enough to begin a new book, which might flood her mind with new ideas and make her unsettled. At last, however, she felt that we must no longer postpone obeying the Doctor.

“Only a short chapter, my dear, to begin with. Heavens! how shall we struggle through eight long volumes?”

I shall be ever thankful that it was my duty to read these dear delightful pages of this great romance. You may judge of our joy when we read on, day after day, hurrying over household work in the morning, neglecting our walks abroad, and wasting candlelight in the evening the more to enjoy it. We laid aside the book from time to time while we wept over the author’s pathetic scenes. Oh, the horrid usage of poor Clarissa! Was ever girl more barbarously served? Was ever man so wicked as her lover? Were parents ever so blinded by prejudice? Had girl ever so unkind a brother – ever so perverse a sister? I thought of her all day long, and at night I dreamed of her: the image of Clarissa was never absent from my brain.

Everything in the book was as real to me as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, or those of Christian on his pilgrimage from the City of Destruction. So long as the reading of this immortal book lasted – we read page after page twice, thrice, or four times over, to get out of them the fullest measure of sympathy, sorrow, and delight – we loved with Clarissa: her sorrows were ours: we breathed and talked Clarissa: Mrs. Esther even prayed, I believe – though the book was already printed, and therefore it was too late for prayer – that the poor, sweet innocent, might escape the clutches of her wicked lover, who, sure, was more a demon than a man: we carried the thought of Clarissa even to church with us.

We invited our friends to share with us this new-found joy. Solomon Stallabras was always ready to weep with us over a dish of tea. Never any man had a heart more formed for the tenderest sensibility. Pity that his nose was so broad and so much turned up, otherwise this natural tenderness might have been manifested in his countenance. While I read he gazed upon my face, and was fain, from time to time, to draw forth his handkerchief and wipe the tears from his streaming eyes.

“Stop, Miss Kitty!” he would say: “let us pause awhile: let us come back to virtue and ourselves. It is too much: the spectacle of so much youth and beauty, so much innocence – the fate of our poor Clarissa – read by a nymph whose lot is so below her merits – it is too much, Mrs. Pimpernel – it is indeed!”

In some way, while I read, this poet, whose imagination, as became his profession, was strong, mixed up Clarissa with myself, and imagined that my ending might be in some way similar to that of the heroine. Now, with Solomon Stallabras, to think was to believe. Nothing was wanting but a Lovelace. I believe that he waited about the market in hopes of finding him lurking in some corner. Perhaps he even suspected poor Sir Miles. Had he found him, he assured Mrs. Esther, he fully intended to pierce him to the heart with a spit or skewer from one of the butcher’s stalls; adding that it would be sweet for him to die, even from the cart at Tyburn, for my sake. But no Lovelace was trying to make me leave my shelter with Mrs. Esther.

Sometimes Sir Miles Lackington came to join in the reading, but we found him wanting in sensibility. Without that quality, Richardson’s novels cannot be enjoyed. He inclined rather to the low humour which makes men enjoy Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” or Smollett’s “Peregrine Pickle” – works full, no doubt, of a coarse vitality which some men like, but quite wanting in the delicate shades of feeling that commend an author to the delicacy of gentlewomen. And to think that old Samuel Richardson was nothing but a printer by trade! Heaven, which denied this most precious gift of creation to such tender and poetic souls as that of Solomon Stallabras, vouchsafed to bestow it upon a printer – a mechanical printer, who, if he was not paid for setting up type himself, yet employed common workmen, superintended their labours, paid them their wages, and put profits into his purse. It seems incredible, but then Shakespeare was only an actor.

“The sunshine of genius,” said Solomon, “falls upon the children of the lowly as well as those of the rich. I am myself a scion of Fetter Lane.”

Sometimes, indeed, Sir Miles Lackington was so wanting in delicacy and so rude as to laugh at us for our tears.

“You cry over Richardson,” he said; “but if I were to bring you ‘Tom Jones’ I warrant you would laugh.”

“’Tom Jones,’” said Mrs. Esther, “is clearly a work of coarseness. Ladies do not wish to laugh. The laws of decorum forbid unrestrained mirth to females of good breeding. Fielding may suit the pewter pots of the tavern; Richardson goes best with the silver service of the mansion.”

We looked about us as if our room was the mansion and our cupboard was lined with silver dishes.

Sir Miles laughed again.

“Give me a pewter mug well filled and often filled,” he said, “with ‘Tom Jones’ to bear it company, and I ask no more. ‘Clarissa,’ and the silver service may remain with you, ladies. Strange, however, that folk should prefer a printer to a gentleman. Why, Fielding comes of an honourable house.”

“Gentle blood,” replied Mrs. Esther, “does not, unfortunately, always bring the gifts of poetry and sensibility. You are yourself of gentle birth, Sir Miles, yet you own that you love not Richardson. Many great authors have been of lowly extraction, and Mr. Stallabras was saying finely but yesterday, that the sunshine of genius falls upon the children of the poor as often as upon those of the rich.”

Solomon inclined his head and coloured; Sir Miles laughed again in his easy fashion.

“But,” he said, “Mr. Richardson knows nothing about the polite ton. His men are master tradesmen disguised in swords and scarlet coats; they are religious tradesmen, wicked tradesmen, and so forth; but they are not gentlemen; they cannot talk, think, or walk, write, or act like gentlemen. If we want to read about polite society, let us at least ask gentlemen to write for us.”

Sir Miles read little, yet his judgment was generally right, and since I have seen the society of which Richardson wrote, I have learned that he was right in this case; for Richardson, pathetic and powerful as he is, had certainly never been among the class whose manners and conversation he attempted to portray.

Presently we finished “Clarissa,” with floods of tears. I believe that no book was ever written which has caused so many tears as this work. Just then it was about the end of the year: we had already eaten our Christmas plum porridge in the darkest and deadest time of the year, the time when fogs fall over the town by day and stop all work: when nights are long and days short: when the market was quiet at night because it was too cold to stand about or to lie in the open: when all the fighting and brawling were over before five o’clock, and the evenings were tranquil though they were long. It was just after we ended our book, and were still tearful under its influence, that our deliverance came to us.

I think it was on the 31st of December in that same year of grace, seventeen hundred and fifty, in which I had come to the Liberties, and twenty-nine full years with some eleven months since the poor ladies had been incarcerated. I well remember the day, though not certain of the date. It was evening: we had finished work: supper was on the table when we should care to take it – bread and an excellent Dutch cheese; the candle was extinguished, and we were sitting before the fire. Mrs. Esther was talking, as women love sometimes to talk, about the little things they remember: she was telling me – not for the first time – of the great frost of 1714, when she was a young girl, and of the fair which they held upon the ice; of the dreadful scare there was in 1718 from the number of highwaymen and footpads, for whose apprehension the Government offered as much as £100 a head; of Orator Henley, who began to preach in Clare Market shortly after the ladies came to the Fleet; of the dreadful storm in 1739, which killed the famous colony of sparrows in the Mile End Road; of the long frost of 1739, when from Christmas unto February the poor watermen and fishermen could not earn a single penny; of the fever of 1741; of the banishment of papists before the Pretender’s landing, in 1744; of the great Rebellion of 1745, when the city so nobly did its duty.

“My dear,” she said, “we, that is the citizens, because the prisoners of the Fleet and the persons who enjoy the Liberties could hardly be expected to contribute money or aught but prayers – and most of the poor creatures but little used to praying! – raised twelve thousand shirts with as many garments to correspond, ten thousand woollen caps (to serve, I suppose, as nightcaps for our brave fellows when they slept in the open air), ten thousand pairs of stockings, twelve thousand gloves, a thousand blankets – which only makes one blanket for twelve men, but I hope they took turns about – and nine thousand spatterdashes. There was a camp on Finchley Common, of which we heard but did not visit; the militia were kept in readiness – a double watch was set at every one of the city gates; there were some in the Liberties, who thought that a successful invasion of England might lead to the burning of account-books, registers, ledgers, and warrants, in which case we might all get out and keep out. For my own part, my dear, and for my sister Deborah’s part, I am happy to say that we preferred the Protestant succession even to our own freedom, and wished for no such lawless ending to a captivity however unjust, but prayed night and day for the confusion of the young Pretender. Happily our prayers were answered, and great George preserved.”

Then we talked of the past year, how it had brought Mrs. Esther a daughter – as she was good enough to say – and taken away a sister. She cried a little over her loss, but presently recovered, and taking my hand in hers, said many kind and undeserved things to me, who had been often petulant and troublesome: as that we must not part, who had been so strangely brought together, unless my happiness should take me away from the Fleet (I thought, then, of my husband, and wondered if he would ever come to take me away), and then said that as we were at New Year’s Eve, we should make good resolutions for the next year, which were to be kept resolutely, not broken and thrown away; that for her part, she designed, if I agreed and consented to the change, to call me niece, and I should call her aunt, by which mutual adoption of each other our affection and duty one towards the other would be strengthened and founded, as it were, on a sure and stable basis.

“Not, my dear,” she added, “that you can ever call yourself a Pimpernel – an honour granted to few – or that you should ever wish to change your name; but in all other respects you shall be the same as if you were indeed my own niece, the daughter of my brother (but I never had one) or sister (but I had only one, and she was as myself). Truly the Pleydells are a worthy family, of whom we have no need to be ashamed.”

I was assuring her that nothing could alter my love and gratitude for her exceeding kindness, when we heard footsteps and voices on the stairs, and presently a knock at the door, and the Doctor stood before us. Behind him were Sir Miles Lackington and Solomon Stallabras.

“Madam,” said the Doctor, “I wish you a good evening, with the compliments of the season. Merry as well as happy may you be next year.”

I declare that directly I saw his face, my heart leaped into my mouth. I knew that he was come with great and glorious news. For his eyes glowed with the light of some suppressed knowledge, and a capacious smile began with his lips and glowed over the vast expanse of his ruddy cheeks.

“Merry, Doctor – no. But happy if God will.”

“Ta! ta! ta! we shall see,” he replied. “Now, madam, I have a thing to say which will take some time to say. I have taken the liberty of bringing with me a bottle of good old port, the best to be procured, which strengthens the nerves and acts as a sovereign cordial in cases of sudden excitement. Besides, it is to-night New Year’s Eve, when all should rejoice.” He produced the bottle from under his gown and placed it on the table. “I have also taken the liberty to bring with me our friends and well-wishers, Sir Miles Lackington and Mr. Stallabras, partly to – to – ” here he remembered that a corkscrew was not likely to be among our possessions – “to draw the cork of the bottle, a thing which Sir Miles does with zeal and propriety.” The Baronet with great gravity advanced and performed the operation by a dexterous handling of the poker, which detached the upper part of the neck. “So,” continued the Doctor; “and partly that they too, who have been so long our true and faithful friends, may hear what I have to say, and so that we may all rejoice together, and if need be, sing psalms with merry hearts.”

Merry hearts? Were we to sing psalms with merry hearts in the place where for thirty years every day had brought with it its own suffering and disgrace to this poor lady?

Yet, what news could the Doctor have which made his purple face so glad, as if the sunlight instead of our fire of cannel coal was shining full upon it?

“Kitty child,” he went on, “light candles: not one candle – two candles, three candles, four candles – all the candles you have in the place; we will have an illumination. Sir Miles, will you please to sit? Mr. Stallabras, will you take Kitty’s chair? She will be occupied in serving. Glasses, child, for this honourable company. Why” – he banged his fist upon the table, but with consideration, for it was not so strong as his own great table – “why, I am happier this night than ever I have been before, I think, in all my life. Such a story as I have to tell!”

I placed on the table the three candlesticks which formed all our stock, and set candles in them and lit them. I put out such glasses as we had, and then I stood beside Mrs. Esther’s chair and took her hand in mine. I knew not what to expect, yet I was certain that it was something very good for Mrs. Esther. Had it been for me, the Doctor would have sent for me; or for himself, he would have told it without this prodigality of joy. Surely it must be for my good patron and protector! My pulses were bounding, and I could see that Mrs. Esther, too, was rapidly rising to the same excitement.

“Certain I am,” said Sir Miles, “that something has happened. Doctor, let us quickly congratulate you. Let us drink your health. I burn to drink some one’s health.”

“Should something have happened,” said the poet, “I would it were something good for ladies who shall be nameless.”

“Stay,” said the Doctor. He stood while the rest were sitting. He thus increased the natural advantage of his great proportions. “We are not yet come to the drinking of healths. But, Mrs. Pimpernel, I must first invite you, before I go on with what I have to say, to take a glass of this most generous vintage. The grapes which produced it grew fat and strong in thinking of the noble part they were about to fulfil: the sunshine of Spain passed into their juices and filled them with the spirit of strength and confidence: that spirit lies imprisoned in the bottle before us – ”