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.