The Chaplain of the Fleet

I resolved to be beforehand with the Doctor. I would myself choose the time: I would tell him all: I would assure him that, innocent as I had been in intention, I would never, never seek to assert any rights over him; that he was free, and could go seek a wife where he pleased. Ah! should he please to go elsewhere, it were better had I never been born.

Then, whatever moment I might choose for the confession, I could think of none which could be chosen as favourable to myself. I might write to him. That would be best; I would write: for how could a girl bear to see that face, which had always looked upon her with kindness and affection, suddenly grow hard and stern, and reproach her for her great wickedness with looks of horror and indignation? It seemed better to write. But, for reasons which will presently appear, that letter was never written.

My lord returned. He called upon us next forenoon, and informed us, looking grave and downcast, that he proposed to hold his garden-party in Durdans Park on the next day. People had come from Vauxhall to decorate the trees, and there would be fireworks, with supper, and concert of horns.

I asked him, deceitfully, if his business in London had prospered. He replied that it had not turned out so favourably as he hoped: and then he checked himself and added that, to be sure, his affairs were of no interest to us.

Said Mrs. Esther —

“Your lordship will not, I hope, believe that anything which contributes to your happiness is so indifferent to us.”

He bowed, and we began to talk again about his fête.

His invitations included all the visitors of respectability at Epsom. Nancy, out of pure kindness, had gone about inquiring of every one if he was invited; and, if not, she got him an invitation at once. We did not, indeed, include the tallow-chandlers and hosiers of London, who frequented Epsom that year in great numbers, but took up their own end of the Assembly Rooms, and mostly walked on the New Parade. But we included all who could claim to belong to the polite world, because nothing is more humiliating than to be omitted from such a festivity at a watering-place. I have known a lady of fashion retire from Bath in mortification, being forgotten at a public tea, and never again show her face at that modish but giddy town.

The company were to assemble at five o’clock, the place of meeting being fixed in that part of Durdans Park most remote from the mansion, where the great trees of birch and elm make such an agreeable wilderness that one might fancy one’s self in some vast forest. We were escorted by Sir Miles Lackington, who came because all his brother gamblers had deserted the card-room for the day; and Mr. Stallabras – Solomon – was dressed in another new coat (of purple), and wore a sword with a surprisingly fine hilt. He also had a pair of shoe-buckles in gold, given him by his female Mæcenas, the widow of the brewer, in return for a copy of verses. He was greatly elated, never before having received an invitation from a person of such exalted rank.

“Now, indeed,” he said, “I feel the full sweetness of fame. This it is, Miss Kitty, to be a poet. His society is eagerly sought by the Great: he stands serene upon the giddy height of fashion, ennobled by the Muses (who possess, like our own august sovereign, the right of conferring rank): he takes his place as an equal among those who are ennobled by birth. No longer do I deplore that obscurity of origin which once seemed to shut me out of the circles of the polite. Fetter Lane may not be concealed in my biography: it should rather be held up to fame as the place in which the sunshine of Apollo’s favour (Apollo, Miss Kitty, was the sun-god as well as the god of poets, which makes the image appropriate) – the sunshine of Apollo has once rested during the birth of an humble child. It was at number forty-one in the second pair back, a commodious garret, that the child destined to immortality first saw the light. No bees (so far as I can learn) played about his cradle, nor did any miracles of precocious genius foreshadow his future greatness. But, with maternal prescience, his mother named him Solomon.”

All this because Nancy made Lord Chudleigh send him an invitation! Yet I doubt whether his lordship had ever read one of his poems.

“It is a great blessing for a man to be a poet,” said Sir Miles, smiling. “If I were a poet I dare say I should believe that my acres were my own again. If I were a poet I should believe that luck would last.”

“Does the name of Kitty cease to charm?” I asked.

Yes, it was true: Sir Miles had lost his five hundred guineas, won of the nabob, and was now reduced to punt at a guinea a night. This hardship made him melancholy.

“Yet,” he said, plucking up, “if I cannot play, I can drink. Why, my jolly poet,” slapping Solomon on the shoulder, “we will presently toast Miss Kitty as long as his lordship’s champagne lasts.”

Mrs. Esther said that she saw no reason why, because one vice was no longer possible, another should take its place.

“Madam,” said the baronet, “it is not that I love one more than the other. When the purse is full, Hazard is my only queen. When the purse is empty, I call for the bowl.”

In such converse we entered the park, and followed in the procession of visitors, who flocked to the place of meeting, where, under the trees, like another Robin Hood, Lord Chudleigh stood to receive his guests.

Kind fortune has taken me to many feasts and rejoicings since that day, but there are none to which my memory more fondly and tenderly reverts; for here, amid the sweet scent of woodland flowers, under the umbrageous trees, while the air of the Downs, fragrant and fresh, fanned our cheeks, my lord became my lover, and I knew that he was mine for ever, in that sweet bond of union which shall only be exchanged by death for another of more perfect love, through God’s sweet grace. Ah, day of days! whose every moment lives eternally in our hearts! Sometimes I think that there will hereafter be no past at all, but that the sinner shall be punished by the ever-present shame of his sins, and the saints rewarded by the continual presence of great and noble thoughts.

Horns were stationed at various parts of the park, and while we drank tea, served to us at rustic tables beneath the trees, these answered one another in lively or plaintive strains. The tea finished, we danced to the music of violins, on a natural lawn, as level as a bowling-green, which seemed made for the feet of fairies. After an hour of minuets, the country dances began, and were carried on until sunset. Then for a while we roamed beneath the trees, and watched the twilight grow darker, and presently rose the great yellow harvest moon.

“In such a scene,” said Solomon, who was discoursing to a bevy of ladies, “man shrinks from speaking; he is mute: his tongue cleaves to his palate” – at all events, the poet was not mute – “here nature proclaims the handiwork of the Creator.” He tapped his forehead reflectively.

“Great Nature speaks: confused the sceptic flies;Rocks, woods, and stars sing truth to all the skies.”

All the while the concert of the horns charmed the ear, while the romantic aspect of the woods by night elevated the soul. When we returned to our lawn we were delighted and surprised to find coloured lamps hanging from the trees, already lit, imparting a look most magical and wonderful, so that we cried aloud for joy. Nor was this all: the tables were laid for supper with every delicacy that our noble host could think of or provide.

Everybody was happy that evening. I think that even Peggy Baker forgot her jealousies, and forgave me for the moment when Lord Chudleigh gave as a toast “The Queen of the Wells,” and all the gentlemen drained a bumper in honour of Kitty Pleydell.

While the supper went on, a choir of voices sang glees and madrigals. Never was party more enchanting: never was an evening more balmy: never were guests more pleased or host more careful for them.

After supper more lamps were lit and hung upon the trees: the violins began again, and country dances set in.

Now while I looked on, being more delighted to see than to dance – besides, my heart was strangely moved with what I now know was a presentiment of happiness – Lord Chudleigh joined me, and we began to talk, not indifferently, but, from the first, gravely and seriously.

“You will not dance, Miss Kitty?” he asked.

“No, my lord,” I replied; “I would rather watch the scene, which is more beautiful than anything I have ever dreamed of.”

“Come with me,” he said, offering me his hand, “to a place more retired, whence we can see the gaiety, without hearing too much the laughter.”

They should have been happy without laughing: the cries of merriment consorted not with the scene around us.

Outside the circle of the lamps the woods were quite dark, but for the light of the solemn moon. We wandered away from the noise of the dancers, and presently came to a rustic bench beneath a tree, where my lord invited me to rest.

It was not so dark but that I could see his face, which was grave and unlike the face of an eager lover. There was sadness in it and shame, as belongs to one who has a thing to confess. Alas! what ought to have been the shame and sadness of my face?

“While they are dancing and laughing,” he said, “let us talk seriously, you and I, Miss Kitty.”

“Pray go on, my lord,” I said, trembling.

He began, not speaking of love, but of general things: of the ambition which is becoming to a man of rank: of the serious charge and duties of his life: of the plans which he had formed in his own mind worthily to pass through the years allotted to him, and to prepare for the eternity which waits us all beyond.

“But,” he said sadly, “we wander in the dark, not knowing which way to turn: and if we take a wrong step, whether from inadvertence or design, the fairest plan may be ruined, the most careful schemes destroyed.”

“But we have a guide,” I said, “and a light.”

“We follow not our leader, and we hide the light. Addison hath represented life under the image of a bridge, over which men are perpetually passing. But the bridge is set everywhere with hidden holes and pitfalls, so that he who steps into one straightway falls through and is drowned. We are not always drowned by the pitfalls of life, but, which is as bad, we are maimed and broken, so that for the rest of our course we go halt.”

“I pray, my lord,” I said, “that you may escape these pitfalls, and press on with the light before you to the goal of your most honourable ambition.”

“It is too late,” he said sadly. “Miss Kitty, you see in me the most wretched of mortals, who might, I would sometimes venture to think, have become the most happy.”

“You wretched, Lord Chudleigh?” – oh, beating heart! – “you wretched? Of all men you should be the most happy.”

“I have tried,” he said, “to escape from the consequences of a folly – nay, a crime. But it is impossible. I am fast bound and tied.” He took my hand and held it, while he added: “I may not say what I would: I may not even think, or hope, or dream of what might have been.”

“Might have been, my lord?”

“Which cannot, now, ever be. Kitty, I thought after I discovered that it was impossible that I would not return any more to Epsom Wells; in the country, or away on foreign travel, I might in time forget your face, your voice, your eyes – the virtues and graces which sit so well in a form so charming – the elevated soul – ”

“My lord! my lord!” I cried, “spare me – Yet,” I added, “tell me all that is in your mind. If I cannot rid you of your burden, at least I may soothe your sorrow.”

“The matter,” he replied, “lies in a few words, Kitty. I love you, and I may not ask you to be my wife.”

I was silent for a while. He stood before me, his face bent over mine.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I have been a fool – nay, worse than a fool, a knave; because I am tied by bonds which I cannot break: and I am unworthy of so much goodness and virtue.”

“Oh!” I cried, “you know not. How can you know? I am none of the things which you imagine in me. I am a poor and weak girl; if you knew me you would surely think so too. I cannot bear that you should think me other than what I am.”

“Why, my angel, your very modesty and your tears are the proof that you are all I think, and more.”

“No,” I cried. “If I told you all: if I could lay bare my very soul to you, I think that you could” – I was going to add, “love me no longer,” but I caught myself up in time – “that you could no longer think of me as better, but rather as worse, than other girls.”

“You know,” he said, “that I love you, Kitty. You have known that for some time – have you not?”

“Yes, my lord,” I replied humbly; “I have known it, and have felt my own unworthiness. Oh, so unworthy, so unworthy am I that I have wept tears of shame.”

“Nay – nay,” he said. “It is I who am unworthy. My dear, there is nothing you could tell me which would make me love you less.”

I shook my head. There was one thing which I had to tell. Could any man be found to forgive that?

“I came back here resolved to tell you all. If I could not ask for your love, Kitty, I might, at the very least, win your pity.”

“What have you to tell me, my lord?”

It was well that the night was so dark that my face could not be seen. Oh, telltale cheeks, aglow with fear and joy!

“What have you to tell me?” I repeated.

“It is a story which I trust to your eyes alone,” he said. “I have written it down. Before we part to-night I will give it to you. Come” – he took my hand again, but his was cold – “come, we must not stay longer. Let me lead you from this slippery and dangerous place.”

“One moment” – I would have lingered there all night to listen to the accents of his dear voice. “If you, my lord, have a secret to tell to me, I also have one to tell you.”

“Nay,” he replied. “I can hear none of your pretty secrets. My peace is already destroyed. Besides,” he added desperately, “when you have read what I have written you will see that it would be idle to waste another thought upon me.”

“I will read it,” I said, “to-night. But, my lord, on one promise.”

“And that is?”

“That you will not leave Epsom without my knowledge. Let me speak with you once more after I have read it, if it is only to weep with you and to say farewell.”

“I promise.”

“And – oh, my lord! if I may say it – since your lordship may not marry me, then I, for your sake, will never marry any other man.”

“Kitty!”

“That is my promise, my lord. And perhaps – sometimes – you will give a thought to your poor – fond Kitty.”

He caught me in his arms and showered kisses upon my cheeks and lips, calling me his angel and a thousand other names, until I gently pushed him from me and begged him to take me back to the company. He knelt at my feet and took my hand in his, holding it in silence. I knew that he was praying for the blessing of Heaven upon my unworthy head.

Then he led me back to the circle of lights, when the first person we met was Miss Peggy Baker.

“Why, here,” she cried, looking sharply from one to the other, “are my lord and Miss Pleydell. Strange that the two people we have most missed should be found at the same time – and together, which is stranger still.”

Nancy left her swains and ran to greet me.

“My dear,” she whispered, “you have been crying. Is all well?”

“I am the happiest woman and the most unhappy in the world,” I said. “I wish I were in my bed alone and crying on my pillow;” and she squeezed my hand and ran back to her lovers.

My lord himself walked home with us. We left before the party broke up. At parting he placed in my hand a roll of paper.

“Remember,” I whispered; “you have promised.”

He made no answer, but stooped and kissed my fingers.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW MY LORD MADE HIS CONFESSION

It was not a long manuscript. I kissed the dear handwriting before I began.

“To the Queen of my Heart,” it began.

“Dearest Girl, – Since I first had the happiness of worshipping at your shrine I have learned from watching your movements, listening to your voice, and looking at your face, something of what that heavenly beauty must have been like which, we are told, captivated and drove mad the ancients, even by mere meditation and thought upon it.”

Did ever girl read more beautiful language?

“And by conversations with you, even in the gay assembly or on the crowded Terrace, I have learned to admire and to love that goodness of heart which God hath bestowed upon the most virtuous among women. I say this in no flattery or desire to pay an empty compliment, but sincerely, and out of the respect and admiration, as well as the love, which I have conceived for one who is, I dare maintain, all goodness.”

O Kitty, Kitty! to read this with blushing cheeks and biting conscience! Surely it must make people good to be believed good; so that, by a little faith, we might raise and purify all mankind!

“It is my purpose to-night, if I find an opportunity, to tell you that I am the most wretched man in the world, because by a fatal accident, of which I must presently force myself to speak, I am for ever shut out from the happiness which it was, I believe, the intention of a merciful Providence to confer upon me. Yet am I also fortunate, and esteem myself happy in this respect, that I have for once in my life been in the presence of as much female beauty and virtue as was ever, I believe, found together in one human soul. To tell you these things, to speak of my love, is an alleviation of suffering. To tell the cause of this unhappiness is worse than to plunge a knife into my heart. Yet must it be told to your ear alone.

“Last year, about the early summer, a rumour began to run through the coffee-houses that there was a man of extraordinary wit, genius, and humour to be met with in the Liberties, or Rules, of the Fleet Prison. These Rules, of which you know nothing” – oh, Kitty! nothing! – “are houses, or lodgings, lying in certain streets adjacent to the Fleet Market, where prisoners for debt are allowed, on payment of certain fees, and on finding security, to reside outside the prison. In fact they are free, and yet being, in the eyes of the law, still prisoners, they cannot any more be arrested for debt. Among these prisoners of the Rules was a certain Reverend Gregory Shovel, a man of great learning, and a Doctor of Divinity of Cambridge, a divine of eloquence and repute, once a fashionable preacher, who, being of extravagant and luxurious habits, which brought him into expenditure above his means, at last found himself a prisoner in the Fleet; and presently, through the influence of friends, was placed in the enjoyment of the Rules.

“Here, whether because he had exhausted the generosity of his friends, or because he craved for action, or for the baser purposes of gain, he became that most unworthy thing, a Fleet parson – one of a most pestilent crew who go through the form of marriage for all comers, and illegally bind together for life those whom Heaven, in mercy and knowledge, had designed to be kept asunder.

“I believe that, by his extraordinary ability and impudence, coupled with the fact that he really was, what his rivals chiefly pretended to be, a clergyman of the Established Church of England and Ireland, he has managed to secure the principal part of this nefarious trade to himself, and has become what he has named himself, ‘the Chaplain of the Fleet.’

“This person attracted to himself, little by little, a great gathering of followers, admirers, or friends. No one, I suppose, could be the friend of one who had so fallen; therefore the men who thronged to his lodgings, nearly every night in the week, were drawn thither by the fashion of running after a man who talked, sang, told stories, and kept open house in so desperate a quarter as the Fleet Market, and who yet had the manners of a gentleman, the learning of a scholar, and the experience of a traveller.

“It was for this reason, solely for curiosity, that on one fatal evening last year I entreated Sir Miles Lackington, a former friend of my father’s and myself, to present me to the Doctor. You have made the acquaintance of Sir Miles. He was once, though perhaps the fact has not been made known to you by him, also a prisoner of the Rules. To this had he been brought by his inordinate love of gambling, by which he had stripped himself, in six months, of as fine an estate as ever fell to the lot of an English gentleman, and brought himself to a debtor’s prison. Sir Miles, who, when he could no longer gamble, showed signs of possessing virtues hitherto unsuspected in him, offered, on the occasion of borrowing a few guineas of me, to conduct me, if I wished to spend an evening with the Doctor, as he is called, to the house which this Doctor either owns or frequents.

“I am not a lover of that low humour and those coarse scenes depicted by Mr. Fielding and Dr. Smollet. I do not delight in seeing drunken men sprawl in the gutter, nor women fight upon Fleet Bridge, nor bears baited, nor pickpockets and rogues pilloried or flogged. But I was promised something very different from these scenes. I was to meet, Sir Miles told me, a remarkable man, who could narrate, declaim, preach, or sing a drinking song, just as he was in the vein.

“I accepted the invitation, the strangeness of which affected my curiosity rather than excited my hopes. I was to witness, I thought, the spectacle of a degraded wretch who lived by breaking the law, for each offence being liable to a penalty of not less than a hundred pounds. It would be, I expected, such a sight as that which the drunken Helot once presented to the virtuous Spartan youth.

“We made our way through a mean and filthy neighbourhood, by the side of a market heaped with cabbage-stalks, past houses where, through the common panes of green glass set in leaden frames, one might see a rushlight or a tallow candle feebly glimmering, for a crew of drunken men to shout songs and drink beside.

“The room into which I was led opened off the street, and was of fair proportions, but low. In it was a table, at the head of which, in a vast wooden chair, sat a man who looked, though perhaps he was not, the biggest man I had ever seen. Some tall men have small hands, or narrow shoulders, or small heads; Doctor Shovel is great all over, with a large and red face, a silk cassock, a full and flowing wig, clean bands, and a flowered morning-gown very large and comfortable.

“He seemed struck with some astonishment on hearing my name, but presently recovered, and invited me to sit at his right hand. Sir Miles sat at his left. The room was pretty full, and we found that the evening had already begun by the exhaustion of the first bowl of punch. The guests consisted of gentlemen who came, like myself, to see and converse with the famous Doctor: and of prisoners who, like Sir Miles, were living in the Rules.

“As the punch went round, the talk grew more jovial. That is to say, the talk of the Doctor, because no one else said anything. He talked continuously; he talked of everything. He seemed to know everything, and to have been everywhere. When he was not talking he was singing. At intervals he smoked a pipe of tobacco, which did not interrupt his talk; and he never ceased sending round the punch. I found that the visitors were expected to provide this part of the entertainment.

“I am sure that the kindest-hearted of women will believe me when I tell her that I am no drunkard. Yet there are times when, owing to the foolish custom of calling for toasts, no heeltaps, and a brimming glass, the most careful head may be affected. Nor can I plead inexperience in the dangers of the bottle, after three years at St. John’s, Cambridge, where the Fellows of the Society, and the noblemen and gentlemen commoners on the Foundation, drank freely at every college feast of the college port and the punch sent up from the butteries. I had been like other young men, but I trust that your imagination will not picture Lord Chudleigh carried away from the combination-room and put to bed by a couple of the college gyps. Yet, worse still, I have to present that spectacle before your eyes, not at a grave and reverend college feast, but in the dissolute Liberties of the Fleet.

“The atmosphere of the room was close and hot, with the smell of the tobacco and the fumes of the punch bowl. Presently I found that my eyes were beginning to swim and my head to reel. I half rose to go, but the Doctor, laying his hand upon me, cried, with a great oath, that we should not part yet.