The Chaplain of the Fleet

“You are now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling pleasantly, “married fast and firm, one to the other. I congratulate you. Marriage in the case of sailors and sailors’ wives is a condition of peculiar happiness, as you will all of you presently discover. The husband, at the outset, is liable for the debts of his wife” – here the men looked sheepishly at each other – “this no doubt will be brought home to all of you. There are several brave gentlemen of the sea now languishing in the Fleet Prison through inability to pay off these encumbrances. They will continue to lie there for the whole term of their lives, these unfortunate men. Husbands are also liable for the debts incurred by their wives while they are abroad” – here one or two of the men murmured something about London Port and giving it a wide berth, which I did not understand. “As for the wives of seafaring men, their blessings and privileges are also peculiar and numerous. They will have to remain at home and pray for the safety of the husbands whom they will see perhaps once every five years or so: they will, in this widowed state, be able to practise many Christian virtues which those who enjoy the constant presence of a husband are less often called upon to illustrate: such are patience under privation, resignation, and hope. Most of them will find the allowance made to them by their husbands insufficient or irregularly paid. If any of them marry again, or be already married, it is, let me tell you, a hanging matter. Yea, there are already in Newgate hard by, several unfortunate women cast for execution who have married again while their husbands were at sea. Lying in the cells they are, waiting for the cart and the gallows!” Here the women looked at one another and trembled, while their cheeks grew pale. “It is too late now. Should there be any woman here who has committed the crime of bigamy, let that woman know that it is too late for aught but repentance. The gallows awaits her. You are now therefore, my friends, bound to each other. I trust and hope that these marriages have not been hastily or lightly entered upon. You have heard the duties of husband to wife and wife to husband, in the words of the service duly read to you by a clergyman of the Church of England. Go now, perform those duties: be bright and shining examples of temperance, fidelity, and virtue. Should any man among you find that his marriage hath led him, through such a cause as I have indicated, to the King’s Bench, or the Fleet, or the Compter; should he have to exchange, against his will, the free air of the sea for the confinement of a gaol, and the rolling deck for the narrow courtyard; should he see himself reduced (having never learned any handicraft or trade) to starvation through these liabilities of his wife, or should any woman among you have hereafter to stand her trial for bigamy either for this work newly accomplished or for any future crime of the same nature, it will then be your comfort to reflect that you were not married by an irregular, self-constituted, self-styled Fleet parson, but by an ordained clergyman and a Doctor of Divinity. Wherefore, I wish you well. Now go, less noisily than you came. But the noise I impute to your ignorance, as not knowing the quality of the man into whose presence you so rudely pushed. As for the marriage feast, see that you enjoy it in moderation. Above all, let your liquors be good. To which end – I speak it purely out of my benevolence and for the good of head and stomach – you will find the rum at the Bishop Blaize cheap and wholesome. Be not tempted to prefer the Rainbow or the Naked Boy, where the liquor is deplorable; and perhaps, in an hour or so, I may look in and drink your healths. Roger, turn them out.”

They went away sheepish and crestfallen, who had come noisy and triumphant. I was ashamed, thinking of my father, and yet lost in wonder, looking at my uncle who had so easily tamed this savage crew.

“I am glad,” said the Doctor, when they had gone, “that this chance did not become the windfall of an irregular and unlicensed practitioner. They cannot say that I warned them not. Well, let them have their way. A few days more and the men will be afloat again, all their money gone; and the women – ”

“Will they starve, sir?” I asked.

“I doubt it much,” he replied. “Come, child, I have a thought of a plan for thee. Follow me. And you, good woman, come with us that you may see your charge in safety.”

The thing that I had seen was like a dream – the appearance of the disorderly sailors and the women whom they married; the words of the service read solemnly in this unhallowed room; the exaction of the money beforehand; the bleeding faces and marks of the recent fight; the exhortation of the Doctor; the disappearance of the actors; the swollen nose, black eye, and the importance of the clerk reading the responses – what strange place was this whereunto I had been led? One pitied, too, the poor fellows on whom Fate had bestowed such wives. I thought, child as I was, how terrible must be life encumbered with such women! Womanlike, I was harder on the women than the men. Yet truly, women are what men make them.

“Follow me, child.”

He led us out of the house, turning to the right. In the market was a lot of country people who were standing about a stall. And we heard a voice: “There’s the Doctor – there goes the great Dr. Shovel.”

My uncle drew himself up to his full height, and stalked grandly along with the eyes of the people upon him. “See,” he seemed to say, by the swelling folds of his gown, “see my fame, how widespread it is – my reputation, how great!”

He stopped at the corner of Fleet Lane, where the houses were no longer taverns, and announcements of marriages were no longer to be seen. It was a house of three stories high, with a door which, like all the doors in that neighbourhood, stood ever open.

Here the Doctor stopped and addressed Mrs. Gambit —

“You spoke of safety. I am about to confide this child to the care of two gentlewomen, poor, but of good birth and character, whom unjust laws and the wickedness of men have condemned to imprisonment. I know of no better guardians; but you shall satisfy yourself before you go away. Wait a moment while I confer with the ladies.”

We stayed below for ten minutes. Then my uncle came down the stairs, and bade me return with him to be presented to the ladies, who had kindly accepted the charge, on condition, he said, of my good conduct.

I followed him, Mrs. Gambit keeping close to me. We stopped at a door on the first floor. The room was poor and shabby: the furniture, of which there was not much, was old and worn: there was no carpet: a white blind was half drawn over the window: the place, to judge by the presence of a saucepan, a kettle, and a gridiron, was apparently a kitchen as well as a sitting-room: all, except a great portrait of a gentleman, in majestic wig and splendid gown, which hung over the fireplace, was mean and pinched. Two ladies, of fifty or thereabouts, stood before me, holding out hands of welcome.

They were both exactly alike, being small and thin, with hollow cheeks, bright eyes, and pointed features like a pair of birds: they wore white caps, a sort of grey frock in cheap stuff: their hair was white: their hands were thin, with delicate fingers, transparent like the fingers of those who have been long in bed with sickness: they were of the same height, and appeared to be of the same age – namely, fifty or thereabouts. My first thought, as I looked at them, was that they had not enough to eat – which, indeed, like all first thoughts, was correct, because that had generally been the case with these poor creatures.

“Kitty,” said the Doctor, taking me by the hand, “I present you to Mrs. Esther Pimpernel” – here the lady on the left dipped and curtsied, and I also, mighty grave – “and to Mrs. Deborah Pimpernel” – here the same ceremony with the lady on the right. “Ladies, this is my niece Kitty Pleydell, daughter of my deceased sister Barbara and her husband Lawrence Pleydell of pious memory. I trust that in consenting thus generously to receive this child in your ward and keeping, you will find a reward for your benevolence in her obedience, docility, and gratitude.”

“Doctor,” murmured Mrs. Esther, in a voice like a turtledove’s for softness, “I am sure that a niece of yours must be all sensibility and goodness.”

“Goodness at least,” said her sister, in sharper tones.

I saw that the difference between the sisters lay chiefly in their voices.

“She will, I trust, be serviceable to you,” said the Doctor, waving his hand. “She hath been well and piously brought up to obedient ways. Under your care, ladies, I look for a good account of her.”

“Dear and reverend sir,” Mrs. Esther cooed, “we are pleased and happy to be of use to you in this matter. No doubt little miss, who is well grown of her years, will repay your kindness with her prayers. As for us, the memory of your past and present goodness – ”

“Tut, tut!” he replied, shaking his great head till his cheeks waggled, “let us hear no more of that. In this place” – here he laid his right hand upon his heart, elevating his left, and leaning his head to one side – “in this place, where infamy and well-deserved misery attend most of those who dwell in it, it is yours, as it should be mine, to keep burning continually the pure flame of a Christian life.”

“How sweet! how noble!” murmured the sisters.

Was it possible? The man whom we had just seen reading the service of Mother Church, which my father had taught me to regard as little less sacred than the words of the Bible itself, in a squalid room, reeking with the fumes of rum and stale tobacco, before a gang of half-drunken sailors, assumed naturally and easily, as if it belonged to him, the attitude and language of one devoted entirely to the contemplation and practice of virtue and good works. Why, his face glowed with goodness like the sun at noonday, or the sun after a shower, or, say, the sun after a good action. The Doctor, indeed, as I learned later, could assume almost any character he pleased. It pleased him, not out of hypocrisy, but because for a time it was a return to the promise of his youth, to be with these ladies the devout Christian priest. In that character he felt, I am convinced, the words which came spontaneously to his lips: for the moment he was that character. Outside, in the Fleet Market, he was the great Dr. Shovel – great, because among the Fleet parsons he was the most successful, the most learned, the most eloquent, the most important. In his own room he married all comers, after the manner we have seen; and it raised the envy of his rivals to see how the crowd flocked to him. But in the evening he received his friends, and drank and talked with them in such fashion as I never saw, but of which I have heard. Again, it raised their envy to witness how men came from all quarters to drink with the Doctor. At that time he was no longer the Christian advocate, nor the clergyman; he was a rollicking, jovial, boon companion, who delighted to tell better stories, sing better songs, and hold better talk – meaning more witty, not more spiritual talk – than any of those who sat with him. I have never been able to comprehend what pleasure men, especially men of mature years, can find in telling stories, and laughing, drinking, smoking tobacco, and singing with one another. Women find their pleasures in more sober guise: they may lie in small things, but they are innocent. Think what this world would be were the women to live like the men, as disorderly, as wastefully, as noisily!

“Now, good woman,” said my uncle to Mrs. Gambit, “are you satisfied that my niece is in safe hands?”

“The hands are good enough,” replied the woman, looking round her; “but the place – ”

“The place is what it is,” said the Doctor sharply; “we cannot alter the place.”

“Then I will go, sir.”

With that she gave me my parcel of money, kissed me and bade me farewell, curtsied to the ladies, and left us.

“I shall send up, ladies,” said the Doctor, “a few trifles of additional furniture: a couple of chairs, one of them an arm-chair – but not for this great, strong girl, if you please – a bed, a shelf for books; some cups and saucers we shall provide for you. And now, ladies, I wish you good-morning. And for your present wants – I mean the wants of this hungry country maid, who looks as if mutton hung in toothsome legs on every verdant hedge – this will, I think, suffice;” he placed money in Mrs. Esther’s hand – I could not but think how he had earned that money – and left us.

When he was gone the two ladies looked at each other with a strange, sad, and wistful expression, and Mrs. Esther, with the guineas in her hand, burst into tears.

CHAPTER VI

HOW KITTY BEGAN TO ENJOY THE LIBERTIES OF THE FLEET

Her tears disconcerted me extremely. What did she cry for? But she presently recovered and dried her eyes. Then she looked at me thoughtfully, and said —

“Sister, I suppose this child has been accustomed to have a dinner every day?”

“Surely,” replied Mrs. Deborah. “And to-day we shall dine.”

To-day we should all dine? Were there, then, days when we should all go hungry?

“You must know, my dear,” Mrs. Esther explained in a soft, sad voice, “that we are very poor. We have, therefore, on many days in a week to go without meat. Otherwise we should have to do worse” – she looked round the room and shuddered – “we should have to give up the independence of our solitude. Hunger, my child, is not the worst thing to bear.”

“A piece of roasting-beef, sister,” said Mrs. Deborah, who had now assumed a hat and a cloak, “with a summer cabbage, and a pudding in the gravy.”

“And I think, sister,” said Mrs. Esther, her eyes lighting up eagerly, “that we might take our dinner – the child might like to take her dinner – at twelve to-day.”

While Mrs. Deborah went into the market, I learned that the two sisters had taken no food except bread and water for a week, and that their whole stock now amounted to two shillings in money and part of a loaf. What a strange world was this of London, in which gentlewomen had their lodging in so foul a place and starved on bread and water!

“But,” she repeated with a wan smile, “there are worse things than hunger. First, we must pay our rent. And here we are at least alone; here we may continue to remember our breeding.”

Before Mrs. Deborah returned, I also learned that they were chiefly dependent on a cousin for supplies of money, which were made to them grudgingly (and indeed he was not rich), and that the Doctor had provided for my maintenance with the offer of so large a weekly sum that it promised to suffice for the wants of all.

“We are,” said Mrs. Esther, “but small eaters; a little will suffice for us. But you, child, are young; eat without fear, eat your fill; the money is for you, and we shall grudge you nothing.”

While the beef was roasting I noticed how their eyes from time to time, in spite of themselves, would be fixed upon the meat with a hungry and eager look. Nor had I any enjoyment of the meal till I had seen their pangs appeased. After the plenty of the Vicarage and the Hall, to think of bread and water, and not too much bread, for days together! Yet, hungry as they were, they ate but little; it shamed me to go on eating, being always a girl of a vigorous appetite and hard-set about the hour of noon; it shamed me at first, also, to observe their ways of thrift, so that not the least crumb should be wasted. Mrs. Deborah read my thoughts.

“In this place,” she said, “we learn to value what it takes money to procure. Yet there are some here poorer than ourselves. Eat, child, eat. For us this has been, indeed, a feast of Belteshazzar.”

Dinner over, we unpacked my box, and they asked me questions. I found that they were proud of their birth and breeding; the portrait over the fire was, they told me, that of their father, once Lord Mayor of London, and they congratulated me upon being myself a Pleydell, which, they said, was a name very well known in the country, although many great city families might be ignorant of it.

“No gift, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “is so precious as gentle blood. Everything else may be won, but birth never.”

All day long there went on the same dreadful noise of shouting, crying, calling, bawling, rolling of carts, cracking of whips, and trampling of horses’ feet. In the evening I asked, when the sun went down, but the noise decreased not, if it was always thus.

“Always,” they replied. “There is no cessation, day or night. It is part,” said Mrs. Deborah, “of our punishment. We are condemned, child; for the sin of having a negligent trustee, we go in captivity, shame, and degradation all our lives.”

“Nay,” said her sister, “not degradation, sister. No one but herself can degrade a gentlewoman.”

Truly, the noise was terrible. When I read in the “Paradise Lost,” of fallen angels in their dark abode, I think of Fleet Market and the Fleet Rules. It began in the early morning with the rolling of the carts: all day long in the market there was a continual crying of the butchers: “Buy, buy, ladies – buy! Rally up, ladies – rally up!” There were quarrels unceasing and ever beginning, with fights, shouting and cursing: the fish-women quarrelled at their stalls; the poultry-wives quarrelled over their baskets; the porters quarrelled over their burdens; the carters over the right of way; the ragamuffin boys over stolen fruit. There was nothing pleasant, nothing quiet, nothing to refresh; nothing but noise, brawling, and contention. And if any signs of joy, these only drunken laughter from open tavern-doors.

Thus I began to live, being then a maid of sixteen years and seven months, in the Rules and Liberties of the Fleet Prison; surely as bad a place, outside Newgate Prison, as could be found for a girl brought up in innocence and virtue. For, let one consider the situation of the Rules. They include all those houses which lie between the ditch, or rather the market, on the west, and the Old Bailey on the east – fit boundaries for such a place, the filthy, turbid ditch and the criminal’s gaol – and Fleet Lane on the north to Ludgate Hill on the south. These streets are beyond and between the abodes of respectability and industry. On the east was the great and wealthy City with the merchants’ houses; on the west the streets and squares where the families of the country had their town residence; on the south, the river; on the north, the dark and gloomy streets of Clerkenwell, where thieves lay in hiding and the robbers of the road had their customary quarters. Why, Jonathan Wyld himself, the greatest of villains, lived hard by in Ship Court. Is there, anywhere, in any town, an acre more thickly covered with infamy, misery, starvation, and wretchedness?

If we walked abroad, we could not go north because of Clerkenwell, where no honest woman may trust herself: if we went south we had to walk the whole length of the market, past the marrying taverns, so that shame fell upon my heart to think how my uncle was one of those who thus disgraced his cloth: when we got to the end, we might walk over the Fleet Bridge, among the noisy sellers of quack medicines, pills, powders, hot furmety, pies, flounders, mackerel, and oysters; or on Ludgate Hill, where the touts of the Fleet parsons ran up and down, inviting couples to be married, and the Morocco men went about, book in hand, to sell their lottery shares. The most quiet way when we took the air was to cross Holborn Bridge, and so up the hill past St. Andrew’s Church, where, if the weather were fine, we might go as far as the gardens of Gray’s Inn, and there sit down among the trees and feel for a little the joy of silence.

Said Mrs. Deborah, one day, when we two had sat there, under the trees, for half an hour, listening to the cawing of the rooks —

“Child, the place” – meaning the Rules – “is the City of Destruction after Christian and Christiana, and the boys, and Mercy, were all gone away.”

We lived in one room, which was both kitchen and parlour. We had no servant; the Doctor’s provision kept us in simple plenty; we cleaned and dusted the place for ourselves; we cooked our dinners, and washed our dishes; we made our dresses; we did for ourselves all those things which are generally done by a servant. Mrs. Esther said that there was no shame in doing things which, if left undone, would cause a gentlewoman to lose her self-respect. ’Twas all, except the portrait of her father, that she had left of her former life, and to this she would cling as something dearer than life.

There were other lodgers in the house. All who lodged there were, of course, prisoners “enjoying” the Rules – who else would live in the place? On the ground-floor was Sir Miles Lackington, Baronet. He was not yet thirty, yet he had already got rid of a great and noble estate by means of gambling, and now was compelled to hide his head in this refuge, and to live upon an allowance of two guineas made weekly to him by a cousin. This, one would have thought, was a disgrace enough to overwhelm a gentleman of his rank and age with shame. But it touched him not, for he was ever gay, cheerful, and ready to laugh. He was kind to my ladies and to me; his manners, when he was sober, were gentle; though his face was always flushed and cheeks swollen by reason of his midnight potations, he was still a handsome fellow; he was careless of his appearance as of his fortune; he would go with waistcoat unbuttoned, wig awry, neckcloth loose, ruffles limp; but however he went it was with a laugh. When he received his two guineas he generally gave away the half among his friends. In the evening they used to carry him home to his room on the ground-floor, too drunk to stand.

I soon got to know him, and we had frequent talks. He seemed to be ever meeting me on the stairs when I went a-marketing; he called upon us often, and would sit with me during the warm summer afternoons, when the sisters dropped off to sleep. I grew to like him, and he encouraged me to say freely what I thought, even to the extent of rating him for his profligate practices.

“Why,” he would say, laughing, “I am at the lowest – I can go no lower; yet I have my two guineas a week. I have enough to eat, I drink freely: what more can I want?”

I told him what his life seemed to me.

He laughed again at this, but perhaps uneasily.

“Does it seem so terrible a thing,” he said, leaning against the window with his hands in his pockets, “to have no cares? Believe me, Kitty, Fortune has brought me into a harbour where winds and tempests never blow. While I had my estate, my conscience plagued me night and morning. And yet I knew that all this must fly. Hazard doth always serve her children so, and leaves them naked. Well – it is gone. So can I play no more. But he who plays should keep sober if he would win. Now that I cannot play, I may drink. And again, when, formerly, I was rich and a prodigal, friend and enemy came to me with advice. I believe they thought the Book of Proverbs had been written specially to meet my case, so much did they quote the words of Solomon, Agar, and Lemuel. But, no doubt, there have been fools before, and truly it helpeth a fool no whit to show him his folly. ‘As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable in the mouth of fools.’ I remember that proverb. Now that Hazard hath taken all, there is no longer occasion for advice. Child, you look upon one who hath thrown away his life, and yet is happier in his fall and repents not. For I make no doubt but that, had I my fortune back, ’twould fly away again in the same fashion.”

He concluded with an allusion to the Enemy of Mankind, for which I rebuked him, and he laughed, saying —

“Pretty Puritan, I will offend no more.”

Had I been older and more experienced, I should have known or suspected why he came so often and met me daily. Kitty had found favour in the sight of this dethroned king. He loved the maid: her freshness, her rosy cheeks, her youth, her innocence pleased him, I suppose. We know not, we women, for what qualities there are in us that we are loved by men, so that they will commit so many follies for our sake.

“Thou art such a girl, sweet Kitty,” he said to me, one day, “so pretty and so good, as would tempt a man wallowing contentedly in the pigsties of the world, to get up, wash himself, and go cleanly, for thy sake. Yet what a miserable wretch should I be did I thus learn to feel my own downfall!”