Paul Clifford Read online

  ‘Bid Bill Troutling appear!’ was the laconic order.

  At that name a certain modest confusion might have been visible in the faces of Mr Eustace Fitzherbert and Mr William Howard Russell, had not the attention of the court been immediately directed to another case. A poor woman had been committed for seven days to the House of Correction on a charge of disrespectability. Her husband, the person most interested in the matter, now came forward to disprove the charge; and by help of his neighbours he succeeded.

  ‘It is all very true,’ said Justice Burnflat; ‘but as your wife, my good fellow, will be out in five days, it will be scarcely worth while to release her now.’*

  So judicious a decision could not fail of satisfying the husband; and the audience became from that moment enlightened as to a very remarkable truth, viz., that five days out of seven bear a peculiarly small proportion to the remaining two; and that people in England have so prodigious a love for punishment, that though it is not worth while to release an innocent woman from prison five days sooner than one would otherwise have done, it is exceedingly well worth while to commit her to prison for seven!

  When the husband, passing his rough hand across his eyes, and muttering some vulgar impertinence or another, had withdrawn, Mr Saunders said, –

  ‘Here be Bill Troutling, your worship!’

  ‘Oh, well,’ quoth the justice, – ‘and now Mr Eustace Fitz — Hallo, how’s this! Where are Mr William Howard Russell and his friend Mr Eustace Fitzherbert?’

  ‘Echo answered, – Where?’

  Those noble gentlemen, having a natural dislike to be confronted with so low a person as Mr Bill Troutling, had, the instant public interest was directed from them, silently disappeared from a scene where their rank in life seemed so little regarded. If, reader, you should be anxious to learn from what part of the world the transitory visitants appeared, know that they were spirits sent by that inimitable magician, Long Ned, partly to report how matters fared in the court; for Mr Pepper, in pursuance of that old policy which teaches that the nearer the fox is to the hunters the more chance he has of being overlooked, had, immediately on his abrupt departure from Paul, dived into a house in the very street where his ingenuity had displayed itself, and in which oysters and ale nightly allured and regaled an assembly that, to speak impartially, was more numerous than select: there had he learned how a pickpocket had been seized for unlawful affection to another man’s watch; and there, while he quietly seasoned his oysters, had he, with his characteristic acuteness, satisfied his mind, by the conviction that that arrested unfortunate was no other than Paul. Partly, therefore, as a precaution for his own safety, that he might receive early intelligence should Paul’s defence make a change of residence expedient, and partly (out of the friendliness of fellowship) to back his companion with such aid as the favourable testimony of two well-dressed persons, little known ‘about town,’ might confer, he had despatched those celestial beings who had appeared under the mortal names of Eustace Fitzherbert and William Howard Russell, to the imperial court of Justice Burnflat. Having thus accounted for the apparition (the disapparition requires no commentary) of Paul’s ‘friends,’ we return to Paul himself.

  Despite the perils with which he was girt, our young hero fought out to the last, but the justice was not by any means willing to displease Mr Brandon; and observing that an incredulous and biting sneer remained stationary on that gentleman’s lip during the whole of Paul’s defence, he could not but shape his decision according to the well-known acuteness of the celebrated lawyer. Paul was accordingly sentenced to retire for three months to that country-house situated at Bridewell, to which the ungrateful functionaries of justice often banish their most active citizens.

  As soon as the sentence was passed, Brandon, whose keen eyes saw no hope of recovering his lost treasure, declared that the rascal had perfectly the Old Bailey cut of countenance; and that he did not doubt but, if ever he lived to be a judge, he should also live to pass a very different description of sentence on the offender.

  So saying, he resolved to lose no more time, but very abruptly left the office, without any other comfort than the remembrance that, at all events, he had sent the boy to a place where, let him be ever so innocent at present, he was certain to come out as much inclined to be guilty as his friends could desire; joined to such moral reflection as the tragedy of Bombastes Furioso might have afforded to himself in that sententious and terse line: – ‘Thy watch is gone, – watches are made to go!’

  Meanwhile, Paul was conducted in state to his retreat, in company with two other offenders, one a middle-aged man, though a very old ‘file’ who was sentenced for getting money under false pretences, and the other a little boy, who had been found guilty of sleeping under a colonnade; it being the especial beauty of the English law to make no fine-drawn and nonsensical shades of difference between vice and misfortune, and its peculiar method of protecting the honest being to make as many rogues as possible in as short a space of time.

  Chapter VIII

  Common Sense: – What is the end of punishment as regards the individual punished?

  Custom: – To make him better!

  Common Sense: – How do you punish young offenders who are (from their youth) peculiarly alive to example, and whom it is therefore more easy either to ruin or reform than the matured?

  Custom: – We send them to the House of Correction, to associate with the d—dest rascals in the country!

  Dialogue between Common Sense and Custom – Very scarce

  As it was rather late in the day when Paul made his first entrée at Bridewell, he passed that night in the ‘receiving-room.’ The next morning, as soon as he had been examined by the surgeon, and clothed in the customary uniform, he was ushered, according to his classification, among the good company who had been considered guilty of that compendious offence, ‘a misdemeanour.’ Here a tall gentleman marched up to him, and addressed him in a certain language, which might be called the freemasonry of flash; and which Paul, though he did not comprehend verbatim, rightly understood to be an inquiry whether he was a thorough rogue and an entire rascal. He answered half in confusion, half in anger; and his reply was so detrimental to any favourable influence he might otherwise have exercised over the interrogator, that the latter personage, giving him a pinch in the ear, shouted out ‘Ramp, ramp!’ and, at that significant and awful word, Paul found himself surrounded in a trice by a whole host of ingenious tormentors. One pulled this member, another pinched that; one cuffed him before, and another thrashed him behind. By way of interlude to this pleasing occupation, they stripped him of the very few things that in his change of dress he had retained. One carried off his handkerchief, a second his neckcloth, and a third, luckier than either, possessed himself of a pair of cornelian shirt-buttons, given to Paul as a gage d’amour by a young lady who sold oranges near the Tower. Happily, before this initiatory process, technically termed ‘ramping,’ and exercised upon all newcomers who seem to have a spark of decency in them, had reduced the bones of Paul, who fought tooth and nail in his defence, to the state of magnesia, a man of grave aspect, who had hitherto plucked his oakum in quiet, suddenly rose, thrust himself between the victim and the assailants, and desired the latter, like one having authority, to leave the lad alone, and go and be d—d.

  This proposal to resort to another place for amusement, though uttered in a very grave and tranquil manner, produced that instantaneous effect which admonitions from great rogues generally work upon little. Messieurs the ‘rampers’ ceased from their amusements, and the ringleader of the gang, thumping Paul heartily on the back, declared he was a capital fellow, and it was only a bit of a spree like, which he hoped had not given any offence.

  Paul, still clenching his fist, was about to answer in no pacific mood, when a turnkey, who did not care in the least how many men he locked up for an offence, but who did not at all like the trouble of looking after any one of his flock to see that the offence was not committed, now sud
denly appeared among the set; and, after scolding them for the excessive plague they were to him, carried off two of the poorest of the mob to solitary confinement. It happened, of course, that these two had not taken the smallest share in the disturbance. This scene over, the company returned to picking oakum, – the tread-mill, that admirably just invention, by which a strong man suffers no fatigue, and a weak one loses his health for life, not having been then introduced into our excellent establishments for correcting crime. Bitterly, and with many dark and wrathful feelings, in which the sense of injustice at punishment alone bore him up against the humiliations to which he was subjected – bitterly, and with a swelling heart, in which the thoughts that lead to crime were already forcing their way through a soil suddenly warmed for their growth, did Paul bend over his employment. He felt himself touched on the arm, he turned, and saw that the gentleman who had so kindly delivered him from his tormentors was now sitting next to him. Paul gazed long and earnestly upon his neighbour, struggling with the thought that he had beheld that sagacious countenance in happier times, although, now, alas, it was altered, not only by time and vicissitude, but by that air of gravity which the cares of manhood spread gradually over the face of the most thoughtless, – until all doubt melted away, and he exclaimed, –

  ‘Is that you, Mr Tomlinson? – How glad I am to see you here!’

  ‘And I,’ returned the quondam murderer for the newspapers, with a nasal twang, ‘should be very glad to see myself anywhere else!’

  Paul made no answer, and Augustus continued.

  ‘“To a wise man all places are the same,” – so it has been said. I don’t believe it, Paul, – I don’t believe it. But a truce to reflection. I remembered you the moment I saw you, though you are surprisingly grown. How is my friend Mac Grawler? – still hard at work for the Asinæum?’

  ‘I believe so,’ said Paul sullenly, and hastening to change the conversation; ‘but tell me, Mr Tomlinson, how came you hither? I heard you had gone down to the North of England, to fulfil a lucrative employment.’

  ‘Possibly! The world always misrepresents the actions of those who are constantly before it!’

  ‘It is very true,’ said Paul; ‘and I have said the same thing myself a hundred times in the Asinæum, for we were never too lavish of our truths in that magnificent journal. ’Tis astonishing what a way we made three ideas go.’

  ‘You remind me of myself and my newspaper labours,’ rejoined Augustus Tomlinson; ‘I am not quite sure that I had so many as three ideas to spare; for, as you say, it is astonishing how far that number may go, properly managed. It is with writers as with strolling players, – the same three ideas that did for Turks in one scene do for Highlanders in the next: but you must tell me your history one of these days, and you shall hear mine.’

  ‘I should be excessively obliged to you for your confidence,’ said Paul, ‘and I doubt not but your life must be excessively entertaining. Mine, as yet, has been but insipid. The lives of literary men are not fraught with adventure; and I question whether every writer in the Asinæum has not led pretty nearly the same existence as that which I have sustained myself.’

  In conversation of this sort our newly restored friends passed the remainder of the day, until the hour of half-past four, when the prisoners are to suppose night has begun, and be locked up in their bedrooms. Tomlinson then, who was glad to re-find a person who had known him in his beaux jours, spoke privately to the turnkey; and the result of the conversation was the coupling Paul and Augustus in the same chamber, which was a sort of stone box, that generally accommodated three, and was, – for we have measured it, as we would have measured the cell of the prisoner of Chillon, – just eight feet by six.

  We do not intend, reader, to indicate, by broad colours and in long detail, the moral deterioration of our hero; because we have found, by experience, that such pains on our part do little more than make thee blame our stupidity instead of lauding our intention. We shall therefore only work out our moral by subtle hints and brief comments; and we shall now content ourselves with reminding thee that hitherto thou hast seen Paul honest in the teeth of circumstances. Despite the contagion of the Mug, – despite his associates in Fish Lane, – despite his intimacy with Long Ned, thou hast seen him brave temptation, and look forward to some other career than that of robbery or fraud. Nay, even in his destitution, when driven from the abode of his childhood, thou hast observed how, instead of resorting to some more pleasurable or libertine road of life, he betook himself at once to the dull roof and insipid employments of Mac Grawler, and preferred honestly earning his subsistence by the sweat of his brain to recurring to any of the numerous ways of living on others with which his experience among the worst part of society must have teemed, and which, to say the least of them, are more alluring to the young and the adventurous than the barren paths of literary labour. Indeed, to let thee into a secret, it had been Paul’s daring ambition to raise himself into a worthy member of the community. His present circumstances, it may hereafter be seen, made the cause of a great change in his desires; and the conversation he held that night with the ingenious and skilful Augustus, went more towards fitting him for the hero of this work than all the habits of his childhood or the scenes of his earlier youth. Young people are apt, erroneously, to believe that it is a bad thing to be exceedingly wicked. The House of Correction is so called, because it is a place where so ridiculous a notion is invariably corrected.

  The next day Paul was surprised by a visit from Mrs Lobkins, who had heard of his situation and its causes from the friendly Dummie, and who had managed to obtain from Justice Burnflat an order of admission. They met, Pyramus and Thisbe like, with a wall, or rather an iron gate, between them: and Mrs Lobkins, after an ejaculation of despair at the obstacle, burst weepingly into the pathetic reproach, –

  ‘O Paul, thou hast brought thy pigs to a fine market!’

  ‘’Tis a market proper for pigs, dear dame,’ said Paul, who, though with a tear in his eye, did not refuse a joke as bitter as it was inelegant; ‘for, of all others, it is the spot where a man learns to take care of his bacon.’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ cried the dame, angrily. ‘What business has you to gabble on so while you are in limbo?’

  ‘Ah, dear dame,’ said Paul, ‘we can’t help these rubs and stumbles on our road to preferment!’

  ‘Road to the scragging post!’ cried the dame. ‘I tells you, child, you’ll live to be hanged in spite of all my care and ’tention to you, though I hedicated you as a scholard, and always hoped as how you would grow up to be an honour to your –’

  ‘King and country,’ interrupted Paul. ‘We always say honour to king and country, which means getting rich and paying taxes. “The more taxes a man pays, the greater honour he is to both,” as Augustus says. Well, dear dame, all in good time.’

  ‘What! You is merry, is you? Why does not you weep? Your heart is as hard as a brickbat. It looks quite unnatural and hyæna-like to be so devil-me-careish!’ So saying, the good dame’s tears gushed forth with the bitterness of a despairing Parisina.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ said Paul, who, though he suffered far more intensely, bore the suffering far more easily than his patroness, ‘we cannot mend the matter by crying. Suppose you see what can be done for me. I dare say you may manage to soften the justice’s sentence by a little “oil of palms;” and if you can get me out before I am quite corrupted, – a day or two longer in this infernal place will do the business, – I promise you that I will not only live honestly myself, but with people who live in the same manner.’

  ‘Buss me, Paul,’ said the tender Mrs Lobkins, ‘buss me, – oh! but I forgits the gate; I’ll see what can be done. And here, my lad, here’s summat for you in the meanwhile – a drop o’ the cretur, to preach comfort to your poor stomach. Hush! smuggle it through, or they’ll see you.’

  Here the dame endeavoured to push a stone bottle through the bars of the gate; but, alas, though the neck passed through, the body refused
, and the dame was forced to retract the ‘cretur.’ Upon this, the kind-hearted woman renewed her sobbings; and so absorbed was she in her grief, that, seemingly quite forgetting for what purpose she had brought the bottle, she applied it to her own mouth, and consoled herself with that elixir vitæ which she had originally designed for Paul.

  This somewhat restored her; and after a most affecting scene, the dame reeled off with the vacillating steps natural to woe, promising, as she went, that, if love or money could shorten Paul’s confinement, neither should be wanting. We are rather at a loss to conjecture the exact influence which the former of these arguments, urged by the lovely Margaret, might have had upon Justice Burnflat.

  When the good dame had departed, Paul hastened to repick his oakum and rejoin his friend. He found the worthy Augustus privately selling little elegant luxuries, such as tobacco, gin, and rations of daintier viands than the prison allowed; for Augustus, having more money than the rest of his companions, managed, through the friendship of the turnkey, to purchase secretly, and to resell at about four hundred per cent, such comforts as the prisoners especially coveted.*

  ‘A proof,’ said Augustus dryly to Paul, ‘that, by prudence and exertion, even in those places where a man cannot turn himself, he may manage to turn a penny.’

  Chapter IX

  ‘Relate at large, my godlike guest,’ she said,

  ‘The Grecian stratagems, – the town betrayed!’

  Descending thence, they ’scaped!

  Dryden’s Virgil

  A great improvement had taken place in the character of Augustus Tomlinson since Paul had last encountered that illustrious man. Then, Augustus had affected the man of pleasure, – the learned lounger about town, – the all-accomplished Pericles of the papers – gaily quoting Horace – gravely flanking a fly from the leader of Lord Dunshunner. Now, a more serious, yet not a less supercilious air had settled upon his features; the pretence of fashion had given way to the pretence of wisdom; and, from the man of pleasure, Augustus Tomlinson had grown to the philosopher. With this elevation alone, too, he was not content: he united the philosopher with the politician; and the ingenious rascal was pleased especially to pique himself upon being ‘a moderate Whig!’ ‘Paul,’ he was wont to observe, ‘believe me, moderate Whiggism is a most excellent creed. It adapts itself to every possible change, – to every conceivable variety of circumstance. It is the only politics for us who are the aristocrats of that free body who rebel against tyrannical laws! For, hang it, I am none of your democrats. Let there be dungeons and turnkeys for the low rascals who whip clothes from the hedge where they hang to dry, or steal down an area in quest of a silver spoon; but houses of correction are not made for men who have received an enlightened education – who abhor your petty thefts as much as a justice of peace can do, – who ought never to be termed dishonest in their dealings, but, if they are found out, “unlucky in their speculations!”* A pretty thing, indeed, that there should be distinctions of rank among other members of the community, and none among us! Where’s your boasted British constitution, I should like to know – where are your privileges of aristocracy, if I, who am a gentleman born, know Latin, and have lived in the best society, should be thrust into this abominable place with a dirty fellow, who was born in a cellar, and could never earn more at a time than would purchase a sausage? – No, no! None of your levelling principles for me! I am liberal, Paul, and love liberty; but, thank Heaven, I despise your democracies!’