Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

  him by the hand; tumbling into a heap of mud by the way, and still

  pressing her attentions when her very form has ceased to be

  distinguishable through it. Before the power of the law, the power

  of superior sense - for common thieves are fools beside these men -

  and the power of a perfect mastery of their character, the garrison

  of Rats' Castle and the adjacent Fortresses make but a skulking

  show indeed when reviewed by Inspector Field.

  Saint Giles's clock says it will be midnight in half-an-hour, and

  Inspector Field says we must hurry to the Old Mint in the Borough.

  The cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn sense of his

  responsibility. Now, what's your fare, my lad? - O YOU know,

  Inspector Field, what's the good of asking ME!

  Say, Parker, strapped and great-coated, and waiting in dim Borough

  doorway by appointment, to replace the trusty Rogers whom we left

  deep in Saint Giles's, are you ready? Ready, Inspector Field, and

  at a motion of my wrist behold my flaming eye.

  This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the Old Mint, full of

  low lodging-houses, as you see by the transparent canvas-lamps and

  blinds, announcing beds for travellers! But it is greatly changed,

  friend Field, from my former knowledge of it; it is infinitely

  quieter and more subdued than when I was here last, some seven

  years ago? O yes! Inspector Haynes, a first-rate man, is on this

  station now and plays the Devil with them!

  Well, my lads! How are you to-night, my lads? Playing cards here,

  eh? Who wins? - Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky gentleman with the

  damp flat side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye with the end of my

  neckerchief which is like a dirty eel-skin, am losing just at

  present, but I suppose I must take my pipe out of my mouth, and be

  submissive to YOU - I hope I see you well, Mr. Field? - Aye, all

  right, my lad. Deputy, who have you got up-stairs? Be pleased to

  show the rooms!

  Why Deputy, Inspector Field can't say. He only knows that the man

  who takes care of the beds and lodgers is always called so.

  Steady, O Deputy, with the flaring candle in the blacking-bottle,

  for this is a slushy back-yard, and the wooden staircase outside

  the house creaks and has holes in it.

  Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, burrowed out like the

  holes of rats or the nests of insect-vermin, but fuller of

  intolerable smells, are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul

  truckle-bed coiled up beneath a rug. Holloa here! Come! Let us

  see you! Show your face! Pilot Parker goes from bed to bed and

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  turns their slumbering heads towards us, as a salesman might turn

  sheep. Some wake up with an execration and a threat. - What! who

  spoke? O! If it's the accursed glaring eye that fixes me, go

  where I will, I am helpless. Here! I sit up to be looked at. Is

  it me you want? Not you, lie down again! and I lie down, with a

  woful growl.

  Whenever the turning lane of light becomes stationary for a moment,

  some sleeper appears at the end of it, submits himself to be

  scrutinised, and fades away into the darkness.

  There should be strange dreams here, Deputy. They sleep sound

  enough, says Deputy, taking the candle out of the blacking-bottle,

  snuffing it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the bottle,

  and corking it up with the candle; that's all I know. What is the

  inscription, Deputy, on all the discoloured sheets? A precaution

  against loss of linen. Deputy turns down the rug of an unoccupied

  bed and discloses it. STOP THIEF!

  To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my slinking life; to take

  the cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it

  staring at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as consciousness

  returns; to have it for my first-foot on New-Year's day, my

  Valentine, my Birthday salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting

  with the old year. STOP THIEF!

  And to know that I MUST be stopped, come what will. To know that I

  am no match for this individual energy and keenness, or this

  organised and steady system! Come across the street, here, and,

  entering by a little shop and yard, examine these intricate

  passages and doors, contrived for escape, flapping and counterflapping,

  like the lids of the conjurer's boxes. But what avail

  they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows their secret working to us?

  Inspector Field.

  Don't forget the old Farm House, Parker! Parker is not the man to

  forget it. We are going there, now. It is the old Manor-House of

  these parts, and stood in the country once. Then, perhaps, there

  was something, which was not the beastly street, to see from the

  shattered low fronts of the overhanging wooden houses we are

  passing under - shut up now, pasted over with bills about the

  literature and drama of the Mint, and mouldering away. This long

  paved yard was a paddock or a garden once, or a court in front of

  the Farm House. Perchance, with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls

  peeking about - with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured

  chimney-stacks and gables are now - noisy, then, with rooks which

  have yielded to a different sort of rookery. It's likelier than

  not, Inspector Field thinks, as we turn into the common kitchen,

  which is in the yard, and many paces from the house.

  Well, my lads and lasses, how are you all? Where's Blackey, who

  has stood near London Bridge these five-and-twenty years, with a

  painted skin to represent disease? - Here he is, Mr. Field! - How

  are you, Blackey? - Jolly, sa! Not playing the fiddle to-night,

  Blackey? - Not a night, sa! A sharp, smiling youth, the wit of the

  kitchen, interposes. He an't musical to-night, sir. I've been

  giving him a moral lecture; I've been a talking to him about his

  latter end, you see. A good many of these are my pupils, sir.

  This here young man (smoothing down the hair of one near him,

  reading a Sunday paper) is a pupil of mine. I'm a teaching of him

  to read, sir. He's a promising cove, sir. He's a smith, he is,

  and gets his living by the sweat of the brow, sir. So do I,

  myself, sir. This young woman is my sister, Mr. Field. SHE'S

  getting on very well too. I've a deal of trouble with 'em, sir,

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  but I'm richly rewarded, now I see 'em all a doing so well, and

  growing up so creditable. That's a great comfort, that is, an't

  it, sir? - In the midst of the kitchen (the whole kitchen is in

  ecstasies with this impromptu 'chaff') sits a young, modest,

  gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful child in her lap. She

  seems to belong to the company, but is so strangely unlike it. She

  has such a pretty, quiet face and voice, and is so proud to hear

  the child admired - thinks you would hardly believe that he is only

  nine months old! Is she as bad as the rest, I wonder?

  Inspectorial experience does not engender a belief contrariwise,

  but prompts the answer, Not a ha'porth of difference!

  The
re is a piano going in the old Farm House as we approach. It

  stops. Landlady appears. Has no objections, Mr. Field, to

  gentlemen being brought, but wishes it were at earlier hours, the

  lodgers complaining of ill-conwenience. Inspector Field is polite

  and soothing - knows his woman and the sex. Deputy (a girl in this

  case) shows the way up a heavy, broad old staircase, kept very

  clean, into clean rooms where many sleepers are, and where painted

  panels of an older time look strangely on the truckle beds. The

  sight of whitewash and the smell of soap - two things we seem by

  this time to have parted from in infancy - make the old Farm House

  a phenomenon, and connect themselves with the so curiously

  misplaced picture of the pretty mother and child long after we have

  left it, - long after we have left, besides, the neighbouring nook

  with something of a rustic flavour in it yet, where once, beneath a

  low wooden colonnade still standing as of yore, the eminent Jack

  Sheppard condescended to regale himself, and where, now, two old

  bachelor brothers in broad hats (who are whispered in the Mint to

  have made a compact long ago that if either should ever marry, he

  must forfeit his share of the joint property) still keep a

  sequestered tavern, and sit o' nights smoking pipes in the bar,

  among ancient bottles and glasses, as our eyes behold them.

  How goes the night now? Saint George of Southwark answers with

  twelve blows upon his bell. Parker, good night, for Williams is

  already waiting over in the region of Ratcliffe Highway, to show

  the houses where the sailors dance.

  I should like to know where Inspector Field was born. In Ratcliffe

  Highway, I would have answered with confidence, but for his being

  equally at home wherever we go. HE does not trouble his head as I

  do, about the river at night. HE does not care for its creeping,

  black and silent, on our right there, rushing through sluice-gates,

  lapping at piles and posts and iron rings, hiding strange things in

  its mud, running away with suicides and accidentally drowned bodies

  faster than midnight funeral should, and acquiring such various

  experience between its cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for

  HIM. Is there not the Thames Police!

  Accordingly, Williams leads the way. We are a little late, for

  some of the houses are already closing. No matter. You show us

  plenty. All the landlords know Inspector Field. All pass him,

  freely and good-humouredly, wheresoever he wants to go. So

  thoroughly are all these houses open to him and our local guide,

  that, granting that sailors must be entertained in their own way -

  as I suppose they must, and have a right to be - I hardly know how

  such places could be better regulated. Not that I call the company

  very select, or the dancing very graceful - even so graceful as

  that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose assembly, by the Minories,

  we stopped to visit - but there is watchful maintenance of order in

  every house, and swift expulsion where need is. Even in the midst

  of drunkenness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is

  sharp landlord supervision, and pockets are in less peril than out

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  of doors. These houses show, singularly, how much of the

  picturesque and romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring to

  be especially addressed. All the songs (sung in a hailstorm of

  halfpence, which are pitched at the singer without the least

  tenderness for the time or tune - mostly from great rolls of copper

  carried for the purpose - and which he occasionally dodges like

  shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea sort.

  All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. Wrecks,

  engagements, ships on fire, ships passing lighthouses on iron-bound

  coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships running ashore,

  men lying out upon the main-yard in a gale of wind, sailors and

  ships in every variety of peril, constitute the illustrations of

  fact. Nothing can be done in the fanciful way, without a thumping

  boy upon a scaly dolphin.

  How goes the night now? Past one. Black and Green are waiting in

  Whitechapel to unveil the mysteries of Wentworth Street. Williams,

  the best of friends must part. Adieu!

  Are not Black and Green ready at the appointed place? O yes! They

  glide out of shadow as we stop. Imperturbable Black opens the cabdoor;

  Imperturbable Green takes a mental note of the driver. Both

  Green and Black then open each his flaming eye, and marshal us the

  way that we are going.

  The lodging-house we want is hidden in a maze of streets and

  courts. It is fast shut. We knock at the door, and stand hushed

  looking up for a light at one or other of the begrimed old lattice

  windows in its ugly front, when another constable comes up -

  supposes that we want 'to see the school.' Detective Sergeant

  meanwhile has got over a rail, opened a gate, dropped down an area,

  overcome some other little obstacles, and tapped at a window. Now

  returns. The landlord will send a deputy immediately.

  Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle,

  draws back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a

  shivering shirt and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a

  shock head much confused externally and internally. We want to

  look for some one. You may go up with the light, and take 'em all,

  if you like, says Deputy, resigning it, and sitting down upon a

  bench in the kitchen with his ten fingers sleepily twisting in his

  hair.

  Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That'll do. It's not

  you. Don't disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth

  of airless rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the

  keeper who has tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you

  haven't found him, then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman

  mysteriously sitting up all night in the dark by the smouldering

  ashes of the kitchen fire, says it's only tramps and cadgers here;

  it's gonophs over the way. A man mysteriously walking about the

  kitchen all night in the dark, bids her hold her tongue. We come

  out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed again.

  Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver

  of stolen goods? - O yes, Inspector Field. - Go to Bark's next.

  Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we

  parley on the step with Bark's Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We

  enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a

  wrathful, with a sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were

  expressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale

  defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark's parts of speech

  are of an awful sort - principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark,

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  have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective

  premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive! Give me my

  trousers, and I'll send the whole
adjective police to adjective and

  substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I'll put

  an adjective knife in the whole bileing of 'em. I'll punch their

  adjective heads. I'll rip up their adjective substantives. Give

  me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I'll spile the bileing of

  'em!

  Now, Bark, what's the use of this? Here's Black and Green,

  Detective Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.

  - I know you won't! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective

  trousers! Bark's trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for

  them as Hercules might for his club. Give me my adjective

  trousers! says Bark, and I'll spile the bileing of 'em!

  Inspector Field holds that it's all one whether Bark likes the

  visit or don't like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of

  the Detective Police, Detective Sergeant IS Detective Sergeant,

  Black and Green are constables in uniform. Don't you be a fool,

  Bark, or you know it will be the worse for you. - I don't care,

  says Bark. Give me my adjective trousers!

  At two o'clock in the morning, we descend into Bark's low kitchen,

  leaving Bark to foam at the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black

  and Green to look at him. Bark's kitchen is crammed full of

  thieves, holding a CONVERSAZIONE there by lamp-light. It is by far

  the most dangerous assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the

  ravings of Bark, above, their looks are sullen, but not a man

  speaks. We ascend again. Bark has got his trousers, and is in a

  state of madness in the passage with his back against a door that

  shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in other respects, a

  ferocious individuality in Bark. Instead of 'STOP THIEF!' on his

  linen, he prints 'STOLEN FROM Bark's!'

  Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs! - No, you ain't! - YOU refuse

  admission to the Police, do you, Bark? - Yes, I do! I refuse it to

  all the adjective police, and to all the adjective substantives.

  If the adjective coves in the kitchen was men, they'd come up now,

  and do for you! Shut me that there door! says Bark, and suddenly

  we are enclosed in the passage. They'd come up and do for you!

  cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound in the kitchen! They'd come up

  and do for you! cries Bark again, and waits. Not a sound in the

  kitchen! We are shut up, half-a-dozen of us, in Bark's house in