‘What a bankrupt he’d make, Sir,’ observed Mr. Lowten, who was standing near. ‘How he would bother the commissioners! He’d set ‘em at defiance if they talked of committing him, Sir.’
The attorney did not appear very much delighted with his clerk’s professional estimate of Mr. Pickwick’s character, for he walked away without deigning any reply.
The hackney-coach jolted along Fleet Street, as hackney-coaches usually do. The horses ‘went better’, the driver said, when they had anything before them (they must have gone at a most extraordinary pace when there was nothing), and so the vehicle kept behind a cart; when the cart stopped, it stopped; and when the cart went on again, it did the same. Mr. Pickwick sat opposite the tipstaff; and the tipstaff sat with his hat between his knees, whistling a tune, and looking out of the coach window.
Time performs wonders. By the powerful old gentleman’s aid, even a hackney-coach gets over half a mile of ground. They stopped at length, and Mr. Pickwick alighted at the gate of the Fleet.
The tipstaff, just looking over his shoulder to see that his charge was following close at his heels, preceded Mr. Pickwick into the prison; turning to the left, after they had entered, they passed through an open door into a lobby, from which a heavy gate, opposite to that by which they had entered, and which was guarded by a stout turnkey with the key in his hand, led at once into the interior of the prison.
Here they stopped, while the tipstaff delivered his papers; and here Mr. Pickwick was apprised that he would remain, until he had undergone the ceremony, known to the initiated as ‘sitting for your portrait.’
‘Sitting for my portrait?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Having your likeness taken, sir,’ replied the stout turnkey.
‘We’re capital hands at likenesses here. Take ‘em in no time, and always exact. Walk in, sir, and make yourself at home.’
