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.