What Christmas Is In The Company Of John Doe. By Charles Dickens.
I have kept (among a store of jovial, genial, heart-stirring returns of the season) some very dismal Christmasses. I have kept Christmas in Constantinople, at a horrible Pera hotel, where I attempted the manufacture of a plum-pudding from the maccaroni-soup they served me for dinner, mingled with some Zante currants, and a box of figs I had brought from Smyrna; and where I sat, until very late at night, endeavoring to persuade myself that it was cold and “Christmassy” (though it wasn't), drinking Levant wine, and listening to the howling of the dogs outside, mingled with the clank of a portable fire-engine, which some soldiers were carrying to one of those extensive conflagrations which never happen in Constantinople oftener than three times a day. I have kept Christmas on board a Boulogne packet, in company with a basin, several despair-stricken females, and a damp steward; who, to all our inquiries whether we should be “in soon,” had the one unvarying answer of “pretty near,” to give. I have kept Christmas, when a boy, at a French boarding-school, where they gave me nothing but lentils and bouilli for dinner, on the auspicious day itself. I have kept Christmas by the bed-side of a sick friend, and wished him the compliments of the season in his physic-bottles (had they contained another six months' life, poor soul!) I have kept Christmas at rich men's tables, where I have been uncomfortable; and once in a cobbler's shop, where I was excessively convivial. I have spent one Christmas in prison. Start not, urbane reader! I was not sent there for larceny, nor for misdemeanor: but for debt.
It was Christmas-eve; and I—my name is Prupper—was taking my walks abroad. I walked through the crowded Strand, elate, hilarious, benignant, for the feast was prepared, and the guests were bidden. Such a turkey I had ordered! Not the prize one with the ribbons—I mistrusted that; but a plump, tender, white-breasted bird, a king of turkeys. It was to be boiled with oyster-sauce; and the rest of the Christmas dinner was to consist of that noble sirloin of roast beef, and that immortal cod's head and shoulders! I had bought the materials for the pudding, too, some half-hour previously: the plums and the currants, the citron and the allspice, the flour and the eggs. I was happy.
Onward, by the bright grocers' shops, thronged with pudding-purchasers! Onward, by the book-sellers', though lingering, it may be, for a moment, by the gorgeous Christmas books, with their bright binding, and brighter pictures. Onward, by the pastry cooks'! Onward, elate, hilarious, and benignant, until, just as I stopped by a poulterer's shop, to admire the finest capon that ever London or Christmas saw, a hand was laid on my shoulder!
“Before our sovereign lady the Queen”—“by the grace of God, greeting”—“that you take the body of Thomas Prupper, and him safely keep”—“and for so doing, this shall be your warrant.”
These dread and significant words swam before my dazzled eyelids, dancing maniac hornpipes on a parchment slip of paper. I was to keep Christmas in no other company than that of the once celebrated fictitious personage, supposed to be the familiar of all persons similarly situated—John Doe.
I remember with horror, that some fortnight previously, a lawyers's clerk deposited on my shoulder a slip of paper, which he stated to be the copy of a writ, and in which her Majesty the Queen (mixed up for the nonce with John, Lord Campbell) was pleased to command me to enter an appearance somewhere, by such a day, in order to answer the plaint of somebody, who said I owed him some money. Now, an appearance had not been entered, and judgment had gone by default, and execution had been obtained against me. The Sheriff of Middlesex (who is popularly, though erroneously, supposed to be incessantly running up and down in his bailiwick) had had a writ of fieri facias, vulgarly termed a fi. fa. against my goods; but hearing, or satisfying himself by adroit espionage, that I had no goods, [pg 387] he had made a return of nulla bona. Then had he invoked the aid of a more subtle and potential instrument, likewise on parchment, called a capias ad satisfaciendum, abbreviated in legal parlance into ca. sa., against my body. This writ he had confided to Aminadab, his man; and Aminadab, running, as he was in duty bound to do, up and down in his section of the bailiwick, had come across me, and had made me the captive of his bow and spear. He called it, less metaphorically, “nabbing me.”
Mr. Aminadab (tall, aquiline-nosed, oleaginous, somewhat dirty; clad in a green Newmarket coat, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a purple satin neckcloth with gold flowers, two watch-guards, and four diamond rings)—Mr. Aminadab proposed that “something should be done.” Would I go to White-cross-street at once I or to Blowman's, in Cursitor-street? or would I just step into Peele's Coffee-house for a moment? Mr. Aminadab was perfectly polite, and indefatigably suggestive.
The capture had been made in Fleet-street; so we stepped into Peele's, and while Mr. Aminadab sipped the pint of wine which he had obligingly suggested I should order, I began to look my position in the face. Execution taken out for forty-five pounds nine and ninepence. Ca. sa., a guinea; fi. fa., a guinea; capture, a guinea; those were all the costs as yet. Now, some days after I was served with the writ, I had paid the plaintiff's lawyer, on account, thirty pounds. In the innocence of my heart, I imagined that, by the County Court Act, I could not be arrested for the balance, it being under twenty pounds. Mr. Aminadab laughed with contemptuous pity.
“We don't do business that way,” said he; “we goes in for the whole lot, and then you pleads your set-off, you know.”
The long and the short of the matter was, that I had eighteen pounds, twelve shillings, and ninepence, to pay, before my friend in the purple neckcloth would relinquish his grasp; and that to satisfy the demand, I had exactly the sum of two pounds two and a half-penny, and a gold watch, on which a relation of mine would probably advance four pounds more. So, I fell to writing letters, Mr. Aminadab sipping the wine and playing with one of his watch-chains in the meanwhile.
I wrote to Jones, Brown, and Robinson—to Thompson, and to Jackson likewise. I wrote to my surly uncle in Pudding-lane. Now was the time to put the disinterested friendship of Brown to the test; to avail myself of the repeated offers of service from Jones; to ask for the loan of that sixpence which Robinson had repeatedly declared was at my command as long as he had a shilling. I sealed the letters with an unsteady hand, and consulted Mr. Aminadab as to their dispatch. That gentleman, by some feat of legerdemain, called up from the bowels of the earth, or from one of those mysterious localities known as “round the corner,” two sprites: one, his immediate assistant; seedier, however, and not jeweled, who carried a nobby stick which he continually gnawed. The other, a horrible little man with a white head and a white neckcloth, twisted round his neck like a halter. His eye was red, and his teeth were gone, and the odor of rum compassed him about, like a cloak. To these two acolytes my notes were confided, and they were directed to bring the answers like lightning to Blowman's. To Blowman's, in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane, I was bound, and a cab was straightway called for my conveyance there-to. For the matter of that, the distance was so short, I might easily have walked, but I could not divest myself of the idea that every body in the street knew I was a prisoner.
I was soon within the hospitable doors of Mr. Blowman, officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex. His hospitable doors were double, and, for more hospitality, heavily barred, locked, and chained. These, with the exceptions of barred windows, and a species of grating-roofed yard outside, like a monster bird-cage, were the only visible signs of captivity. Yet there was enough stone in the hearts, and iron in the souls, of Mr. Blowman's inmates, to build a score of lock-up houses. For that you may take my word.
I refused the offer of a private room, and was conducted to the coffee-room, where Mr. Aminadab left me, for a while, to my own reflections; and to wait for the answers to my letters.
They came—and one friend into the bargain. Jones had gone to Hammersmith, and wouldn't be back till next July. Brown had been disappointed in the city. Robinson's money was all locked up. Thompson expected to be locked up himself. Jackson was brief, but explicit: he said he “would rather not.”
My friend brought me a carpet-bag, with what clothes I wanted in it. He advised me, more over, to go to Whitecross-street at once, for a sojourn at Mr. Blowman's domicile would cost me something like a guinea per diem. So, summoning Mr. Aminadab, who had obligingly waited to see if I could raise the money or not, I announced my intention of being conveyed to jail at once. I paid half-a-guinea for the accommodation I had had at Mr. Blowman's; I made a pecuniary acknowledgment of Mr. Aminadab's politeness; and I did not fail to remember the old man in the white halter and the spirituous mantle. Then, when I had also remembered a red-headed little Jew boy, who acted as Cerberus to this Hades, and appeared to be continually washing his hands (though they never seemed one whit the cleaner for the operation), another cab was called, and off I went to Whitecross-street, with a heart considerably heavier than a paving stone.
I had already been three hours in captivity, and it was getting on for eight o'clock. The cab was proceeding along Holborn, and I thought, involuntarily, of Mr. Samuel Hall, black and grimy, making his progress through the same thoroughfares, by the Oxford Road, and so on to Tyburn, bowing to the crowd, and cursing the Ordinary. The foot-pavement on either side was thronged with people at their Christmas marketing, [pg 388] or, at least, on some Christmas business—so it seemed to me. Goose Clubs were being held at the public houses—sweeps for sucking-pigs, plum-puddings, and bottles of gin. Some ladies and gentlemen had begun their Christmas rather too early, and were meandering unsteadily over the flag-stones. Fiddlers were in great request, being sought for in small beershops, and borne off bodily from bars, to assist at Christmas Eve merry-makings. An immense deal of hand-shaking was going on, and I was very much afraid, a good deal more “standing” than was consistent with the strict rules of temperance. Every body kept saying that it was “only once a year,” and made that an apology (so prone are mankind to the use of trivial excuses!) for their sins against Father Mathew. Loud laughter rang through the frosty air. Pleasant jokes, innocent “chaff,” passed; grocers' young men toiled lustily, wiping their hot faces ever and anon; butchers took no rest; prize beef melted away from very richness before my eyes; and in the midst of all the bustle and jollity, the crowding, laughing, drinking, and shouting, I was still on my unvarying way to Whitecross-street.
There was a man resting a child's coffin on a railing, and chattering with a pot-boy, with whom he shared a pot of porter “with the sharp edge taken off.” There are heavy hearts—heavier perchance than yours, in London, this Christmas Eve, my friend Prupper, thought I. To-morrow's dawn will bring sorrow and faint-heartedness to many thousands—to oceans of humanity, of which you are but a single drop.
The cab had conveyed me through Smithfield Market, and now rumbled up Barbican. My companion, the gentleman with the crab-stick (to whose care Mr. Aminadab had consigned me), beguiled the time with pleasant and instructive conversation. He told me that he had “nabbed a many parties.” That he had captured a Doctor of Divinity going to a Christmas, a bridegroom starting for the honeymoon, a colonel of hussars in full fig for her Majesty's drawing-room. That he had the honor once of “nabbing” the eldest son of a peer of the realm, who, however, escaped from him through a second-floor window, and over the tiles. That he was once commissioned to “nab” the celebrated Mr. Wix, of the Theatres Royal. That Mr. Wix, being in the act of playing the Baron Spolaccio, in the famous tragedy of “Love, Ruin, and Revenge,” he, Crabstick, permitted him, in deference to the interests of the drama, to play the part out, stationing an assistant at each wing to prevent escape. That the delusive Wix “bilked” him, by going down a trap. That he, Crabstick, captured him, notwithstanding under the stage, though opposed by the gigantic Wix himself, two stage carpenters, a demon, and the Third Citizen. That Wix rushed on the stage, and explained his position to the audience, whereupon the gallery (Wix being an especial favorite of theirs) expressed a strong desire to have his (Crabstick's) blood; and, failing to obtain that, tore up the benches; in the midst of which operation the recalcitrant Wix was removed. With these and similar anecdotes of the nobility, gentry, and the public in general, he was kind enough to regale me, until the cab stopped. I alighted in a narrow, dirty street; was hurried up a steep flight of steps; a heavy door clanged behind me; and Crabstick, pocketing his small gratuity, wished me a good-night and a merry Christmas. A merry Christmas: ugh!
That night I slept in a dreadful place, called the Reception ward, on an iron bedstead, in a room with a stone floor. I was alone, and horribly miserable. I heard the Waits playing in the distance, and dreamed I was at a Christmas party.
Christmas morning in Whitecross-street Prison! A turnkey conducted me to the “Middlesex side”—a long dreary yard—on either side of which were doors leading into wards, or coffee-rooms, on the ground floor, and by stone-staircases, to sleeping-apartments above. It was all very cold, very dismal, very gloomy. I entered the ward allotted to me, Number Seven, left. It was a long room, with barred windows, cross tables and benches, with an aisle between; a large fire at the further end; “Dum spiro, spero,” painted above the mantle-piece. Twenty or thirty prisoners and their friends were sitting at the tables, smoking pipes, drinking beer, or reading newspapers. But for the unmistakable jail-bird look about the majority of the guests, the unshorn faces, the slipshod feet, the barred windows, and the stone floor, I might have fancied myself in a large tap-room.
There was holly and mistletoe round the gas-pipes; but how woeful and forlorn they looked! There was roast-beef and plum-pudding preparing at the fire-place; but they had neither the odor nor the appearance of free beef and pudding. I was thinking of the cosy room, the snug fire, the well-drawn curtains, the glittering table, the happy faces, when the turnkey introduced me to the steward of the ward (an officer appointed by the prisoners, and a prisoner himself) who “tables you off,” i.e., who allotted me a seat at one of the cross-tables, which was henceforward mine for all purposes of eating, drinking, writing, or smoking; in consideration of a payment on my part of one guinea sterling. This sum made me also free of the ward, and entitled to have my boots cleaned, my bed made, and my meals cooked. Supposing that I had not possessed a guinea (which was likely enough), I should have asked for time, which would have been granted me; but, at the expiration of three days, omission of payment would have constituted me a defaulter; in which case, the best thing I could have done would have been to declare pauperism, and remove to the poor side of the prison. Here, I should have been entitled to my “sixpences,” amounting in the aggregate to the sum of three shillings and sixpence a week toward my maintenance.
The steward, a fat man in a green “wide-awake” hat, who was incarcerated on remand for the damages in an action for breach of promise [pg 389] of marriage, introduced me to the cook (who was going up next week to the Insolvent Court, having filed his schedule as a beer-shop keeper). He told me, that if I chose to purchase any thing at a species of every-thing-shop in the yard, the cook would dress it; or, if I did not choose to be at the trouble of providing myself, I might breakfast, dine, and sup at his, the steward's, table, “for a consideration,” as Mr. Trapbois has it. I acceded to the latter proposition, receiving the intelligence that turkey and oyster-sauce were to be ready at two precisely, with melancholy indifference. Turkey had no charms for me now.
I sauntered forth into the yard, and passed fifty or sixty fellow-unfortunates, sauntering as listlessly as myself. Strolling about, I came to a large grating, somewhat similar to Mr. Blowman's bird-cage, in which was a heavy gate called the “lock,” and which communicated with the corridors leading to the exterior of the prison. Here sat, calmly surveying his caged birds within, a turnkey—not a repulsive, gruff-voiced monster, with a red neckerchief and top boots, and a bunch of keys, as turnkeys are popularly supposed to be—but a pleasant, jovial man enough, in sleek black. He had a little lodge behind, where a bright fire burned, and where Mrs. Turnkey, and the little Turnkeys lived. (I found a direful resemblance between the name of his office, and that of the Christmas bird.) His Christmas dinner hung to the iron bars above him, in the shape of a magnificent piece of beef. Happy turnkey, to be able to eat it on the outer side of that dreadful grating! In another part of the yard hung a large black board, inscribed in half-effaced characters, with the enumerations of divers donations, made in former times by charitable persons, for the benefit in perpetuity of poor prisoners. To-day, so much beef and so much strong beer was allotted to each prisoner.
But what were beef and beer, what was unlimited tobacco, or even the plum-pudding, when made from prison plums, boiled in a prison copper, and eaten in a prison dining-room? What though surreptitious gin were carried in, in bladders, beneath the under garments of the fairer portion of creation; what though brandy were smuggled into the wards, disguised as black draughts, or extract of sarsaparilla? A pretty Christmas market I had brought my pigs to!
Chapel was over (I had come down too late from the “Reception” to attend it); and the congregation (a lamentably small one) dispersed in the yard and wards. I entered my own ward, to change (if any thing could change) the dreary scene.
Smoking and cooking appeared to be the chief employments and recreations of the prisoners. An insolvent clergyman in rusty black, was gravely rolling out puff-paste on a pie-board; and a man in his shirt-sleeves, covering a veal cutlet with egg and bread-crum, was an officer of dragoons!
I found no lack of persons willing to enter into conversation with me. I talked, full twenty minutes, with a seedy captive, with a white head, and a coat buttoned and pinned up to the chin.
Whitecross-street, he told me (or Burdon's Hotel, as in the prison slang he called it), was the only place where any “life” was to be seen. The Fleet was pulled down; the Marshalsea had gone the way of all brick-and-mortar; the Queen's Prison, the old “Bench,” was managed on a strict system of classification and general discipline; and Horsemonger-lane was but rarely tenanted by debtors; but in favored Whitecross-street, the good old features of imprisonment for debt yet flourished. Good dinners were still occasionally given; “fives” and football were yet played; and, from time to time, obnoxious attorneys, or importunate process-servers—“rats” as they were called—were pumped upon, floured, and bonneted. Yet, even Whitecross-street, he said with a sigh, was falling off. The Small Debts Act and those revolutionary County Courts would be too many for it soon.
That tall, robust, bushy-whiskered man, (he said) in the magnificently flowered dressing-gown, the crimson Turkish smoking cap, the velvet slippers, and the ostentatiously displayed gold guard-chain, was a “mace-man:” an individual who lived on his wits, and on the want of wit in others. He had had many names, varying from Plantagenet and De Courcy, to “Edmonston and Co.,” or plain Smith or Johnson. He was a real gentleman once upon a time—a very long time ago. Since then, he had done a little on the turf, and a great deal in French hazard, roulette, and rouge et noir. He had cheated bill-discounters, and discounted bills himself. He had been a picture-dealer, and a wine-merchant, and one of those mysterious individuals called a “commission agent.” He had done a little on the Stock Exchange, and a little billiard-marking, and a little skittle-sharping, and a little thimble-rigging. He was not particular. Bills, however, were his passion. He was under a cloud just now, in consequence of some bill-dealing transaction, which the Commissioner of Insolvency had broadly hinted to be like a bill-stealing one. However, he had wonderful elasticity, and it was to be hoped would soon get over his little difficulties. Meanwhile, he dined sumptuously, and smoked cigars of price; occasionally condescending to toss half-crowns in a hat with any of the other “nobs” incarcerated.
That cap, and the battered worn-out sickly frame beneath (if I would have the goodness to notice them) were all that were left of a spruce, rosy-cheeked, glittering young ensign of infantry. He was brought up by an old maiden aunt, who spent her savings to buy him a commission in the army. He went from Slowchester Grammar School, to Fastchester Barracks. He was to live on his pay. He gambled a year's pay away in an evening. He made thousand guinea bets, and lost them. So the old denouement of the old story came round as usual. The silver dressing-case, got on credit—pawned for ready money; the credit-horses sold; more credit-horses bought; importunate creditors in the barrack-yard; a [pg 390] letter from the colonel; sale of his commission; himself sold up; then Mr. Aminadab, Mr. Blowman, Burdon's Hotel, Insolvent Court, a year's remand; and, an after life embittered by the consciousness of wasted time and talents, and wantonly-neglected opportunities.
My informant pointed out many duplicates of the gentleman in the dressing-gown. Also, divers Government clerks, who had attempted to imitate the nobs in a small way, and had only succeeded to the extent of sharing the same prison; a mild gray-headed old gentleman who always managed to get committed for contempt of court; and the one inevitable baronet of a debtor's prison, who is traditionally supposed to have eight thousand a year, and to stop in prison because he likes it—though, to say the truth, this baronet looked, to me, as if he didn't like it at all.
I was sick of all these, and of every thing else in Whitecross-street, before nine o'clock, when I was at liberty to retire to my cold ward. So ended my Christmas-day—my first, and, I hope and believe, my last Christmas-day in prison.
Next morning my welcome friend arrived and set me free. I paid the gate-fees, and I gave the turnkeys a crown, and I gave the prisoners unbounded beer. I kept New Year's day in company with a pretty cousin with glossy black hair, who was to have dined with me on Christmas-day, and who took such pity on me that she shortly became Mrs. Prupper. Our eldest boy was born, by a curious coincidence, next Christmas-day—which I kept very jovially, with the doctor, after it was all over, and we didn't christen him Whitecross.