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
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