第 13 页

The first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished,

when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that

time the protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him,

became embodied in action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon

herself a new relation towards the Father.

At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting

her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But

this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her,

and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through

this little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her

sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the

wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with

many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which

was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and

laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of

the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by

love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!

With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the

one so strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily

tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not

shut up in prisons; born and bred in a social condition, false even with

a reference to the falsest condition outside the walls; drinking from

infancy of a well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their own

unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child of the Marshalsea began her

womanly life.

No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not

unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what

humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even

in the matter of lifting and carrying; through how much weariness

and hopelessness, and how many secret tears; she drudged on, until

recognised as useful, even indispensable. That time came. She took the

place of eldest of the three, in all things but precedence; was the

head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and

shames.

At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down

in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted

would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been,

by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside,

and got her sister and brother sent to day-schools by desultory starts,

during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at

home; but she knew well--no one better--that a man so broken as to be

the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.

To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own

contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there

appeared a dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the

dancing-master's art, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen

years old, the Child of the Marshalsea presented herself to the

dancing-master, with a little bag in her hand, and preferred her humble

petition.

'If you please, I was born here, sir.'

'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancing-master,

surveying the small figure and uplifted face.

'Yes, sir.'

'And what can I do for you?' said the dancing-master.

'Nothing for me, sir, thank you,' anxiously undrawing the strings of

the little bag; 'but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to

teach my sister cheap--'

'My child, I'll teach her for nothing,' said the dancing-master,

shutting up the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever

danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so

apt a pupil, and the dancing-master had such abundant leisure to bestow

upon her (for it took him a matter of ten weeks to set to his creditors,

lead off, turn the Commissioners, and right and left back to his

professional pursuits), that wonderful progress was made. Indeed the

dancing-master was so proud of it, and so wishful to display it before

he left to a few select friends among the collegians, that at six

o'clock on a certain fine morning, a minuet de la cour came off in

the yard--the college-rooms being of too confined proportions for the

purpose--in which so much ground was covered, and the steps were so

conscientiously executed, that the dancing-master, having to play the

kit besides, was thoroughly blown.

The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's

continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child

to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the

fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her she repaired on her own

behalf.

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the door of

the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: 'but I was born here.'

Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the

milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the

dancing-master had said:

'Oh! You are the child, are you?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner, shaking

her head.

'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'

'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before you? It

has not done me much good.'

'Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who comes

here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn just the

same.'

'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.

'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'

'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.

'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of the

Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers,

which came so often in her way. The milliner--who was not morose or

hard-hearted, only newly insolvent--was touched, took her in hand with

goodwill, found her the most patient and earnest of pupils, and made her

a cunning work-woman in course of time.

In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the Father

of the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of character. The

more Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he

became on the contributions of his changing family, the greater stand

he made by his forlorn gentility. With the same hand that he pocketed

a collegian's half-crown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the

tears that streamed over his cheeks if any reference were made to his

daughters' earning their bread. So, over and above other daily cares,

the Child of the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving

the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together.

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family

group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing

no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable

certainty--on whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and

simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined at the time

when that calamity fell upon him, further than that he left off washing

himself when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any

more. He had been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days;

and when he fell with his brother, resorted for support to playing a

clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the

theatre in which his niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture there

a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted

the task of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have

accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast, starvation--anything but soap.

To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary

for the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the

Father.

'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a

good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.'

'You surprise me. Why?'

'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and

looked after.'

'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and

look after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You

all go out so much; you all go out so much.'

This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that

Amy herself went out by the day to work.

'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to

Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it

may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born

here as I was, you know, father.'

'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose

that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should,

too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.

Good, good. I'll not meddle; don't mind me.'

To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs

Bangham in executing commissions, and out of the slang interchange with

very doubtful companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task. At

eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour,

from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom

he derived anything useful or good, and she could find no patron for him

but her old friend and godfather.

'Dear Bob,' said she, 'what is to become of poor Tip?' His name was

Edward, and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls.

The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of

poor Tip, and had even gone so far with the view of averting their

fulfilment, as to sound Tip in reference to the expediency of running

away and going to serve his country. But Tip had thanked him, and said

he didn't seem to care for his country.

'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with him.

Suppose I try and get him into the law?'

'That would be so good of you, Bob!'

The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as

they passed in and out. He put this second one so perseveringly that

a stool and twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the

office of an attorney in a great National Palladium called the Palace

Court; at that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks

to the dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more.

Tip languished in Clifford's Inns for six months, and at the expiration

of that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets,

and incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back

again.

'Not going back again?' said the poor little anxious Child of the

Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank

of her charges.

'I am so tired of it,' said Tip, 'that I have cut it.'

Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs

Bangham succession, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend,

got him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade,

into the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a

stockbroker's, into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon

office, into the law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery,

into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the

Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks.

But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he

had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the

prison walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling;

and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod,

purposeless, down-at-heel way; until the real immovable Marshalsea walls

asserted their fascination over him, and brought him back.

Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her

brother's rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes,

she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he

was tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that,

he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her

bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a

straight course at last.

'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when

you have made your fortune.'

'All right!' said Tip, and went.

But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool.

After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself

so strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back

again. Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at

the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired

than ever. At length, after another interval of successorship to Mrs

Bangham, he found a pursuit for himself, and announced it.

'Amy, I have got a situation.'

'Have you really and truly, Tip?'

'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more,

old girl.'

'What is it, Tip?'

'Why, you know Slingo by sight?'

'Not the man they call the dealer?'

'That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give me a

berth.'

'What is he a dealer in, Tip?'

'Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.'

She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him