How goes
the night? Saint Giles's clock
is striking nine. The weather is dull and
wet,
and the long lines of street-lamps are
blurred, as if we saw them through
tears.
A damp wind blows, and rakes the pieman's
fire out, when he opens the
door of his little
furnace, carrying away an eddy of sparks.
Saint
Giles's clock strikes nine. We are
punctual. Where is Inspector Field?
Assistant
Commissioner of Police is already here,
enwrapped in oil-skin
cloak, and standing in
the shadow of Saint Giles's steeple. Detective
Serjeant, weary of speaking French
all day to foreigners unpacking at the
Great
Exhibition, is already here. Where is Inspector
Field?
Inspector
Field is, to-night, the guardian
genius of the British Museum. He is bringing
his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of
its solitary galleries, before he
reports " all
right." Suspicious of the Elgin marbles, and
not to
be done by cat-faced Egyptian giants,
with their hands upon their knees,
Inspector
Field, sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand,
throwing monstrous
shadows on the walls and
ceilings, passes through the spacious rooms.
If a
mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty
covering, Inspector Field would say,
" Come
out of that, Tom Green. I know you! " If
the
smallest "Gonoph" about town were
crouching at the bottom of a
classic bath,
Inspector Field would nose him with a finer
scent than the
ogre's, when adventurous Jack
lay trembling in his kitchen copper. But all
is
quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on,
making little outward show of
attending to
anything in particular, just recognising the
Ichthyosaurus as a
familiar acquaintance, and
wondering, perhaps, how the detectives did it
in
the days before the Flood.
Will
Inspector Field be long about this
work? He may be half-an-hour longer. He
sends his compliments by Police Constable,
and proposes that we meet at Saint
Giles's
Station House, across the road. Good. It
were as well to stand by the
fire, there, as in
the shadow of Saint Giles's steeple.
Anything
doing here to-night? Not much.
We are very quiet. A lost boy, extremely
calm
and small, sitting by the fire, whom we
now confide to a constable to take home,
fo r
the child says that if you show him Newgate
Street, he can show you where
he lives—a
raving drunken woman in the cells, who has
screeched her voice
away, and has hardly
power enough left to declare, even with the
passionate
help of her feet and arms, that
she is the daughter of a British officer, and,
strike her blind and dead, but she'll write a
letter to the Queen! but who is
soothed with a
drink of water—in another cell, a quiet woman
with a child at
her breast, for begging—in
another, her husband in a smock-frock, with
a basket
of watercresses—in another, a
pick-pocket—in another, a meek tremulous old
pauper man who has been out for a holiday
"and has took but a little
drop, but it has
overcome him arter so many months in the
house"—and
that's all, as yet. Presently,
a sensation at the Station House door.
Mr.
Field, gentlemen!
Inspector
Field comes in, wiping his forehead,
for he is of a burly figure, and has
come fast from the ores and metals of the
deep mines of the earth, and from
the Parrot
Gods of the South Sea Islands, and from the
birds and beetles of
the tropics, and from the
Arts of Greece and Rome, and from the Sculptures
of
Nineveh, and from the traces of an
elder world, when these were not. Is Rogers
ready? Rogers is ready, strapped and
great-coated, with a flaming eye in the
middle of
his waist, like a deformed Cyclops. Lead on,
Rogers, to Rats' Castle!
How many
people may there be in London,
who, if we had brought them deviously
and
blindfold, to this street, fifty paces from
the Station House, and within call
of Saint
Giles's church, would know it for a not
remote part of the city in
which their lives
are passed? How many, who amidst this
compound of sickening
smells, these heaps
of filth, these tumbling houses, with all
their vile
contents, animate and inanimate,
slimily overflowing into the black road,
would
believe that they breathe this air? How
much Red Tape may there
be, that could look
round on the faces which now hem us in—for
our appearance
here has caused a rush from
all points to a common centre—the lowering
foreheads, the sallow cheeks, the brutal eyes,
the matted hair, the infected,
vermin-haunted
heaps of rags—and say " I have thought of
this. I have
not dismissed the thing. I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away,
nor
tied it up and put it away, nor smoothly
said pooh, pooh! to it, when it has
been
shown to me "?
This is
not what Rogers wants to know,
however. What Rogers wants to know, is,
whether
you will clear the way here, some of
you, or whether you won't; because
if you
don't do it right on end, he'll lock you up!
What! You are
there, are you, Bob Miles?
You haven't had enough of it yet, haven't
you? You
want three months more, do you?
Come away from that gentleman! What are
you
creeping round there for?
"What
am I a doing, Mr. Rogers ? "
says Bob Miles, appearing, villanous, at the
end of a lane of light, made by the lantern.
''I'll
let you know pretty quick, if you
don't hook it. WILL you hook it?"
A
sycophantic murmur rises from the
crowd. "Hook it, Bob, when Mr. Rogers
and
Mr. Field tells you! Why don't you hook
it, when you are told to?"
The most
importunate of the voices strikes
familiarly on Mr. Rogers's ear. He suddenly
turns his lantern on the owner.
"What!
You are there, are you, Mister
Click? You hook it too—come?"
"What
for?" says Mr. Click, discomfited,
"You
hook it, will you!" says Mr. Rogers
with stern emphasis.
Both
Click and Miles do "hook it," without
another word, or, in
plainer English,
sneak away.
"Close
up there, my men!" says Inspector
Field to two constables on duty who
have
followed. " Keep together gentlemen; we
are going down here.
Heads!"
Saint
Giles's church strikes half-past ten.
We stoop low, and creep down a
precipitous
flight of steps into a dark close cellar. There
is a fire. There
is a long deal table. There
are benches. The cellar is full of company,
chiefly
very young men in various conditions
of dirt and raggedness. Some are eating
supper.
There are no girls or women present.
Welcome to Rats' Castle, gentlemen, and
to
this company of noted thieves!
"Well,
my lads! How are you, my lads?
What have you been doing to-day? Here's
some
company come to see you, my lads!
There's a plate of beefsteak, Sir,
for the
supper of a fine young man! And there's a
mouth for a steak, Sir! Why,
I should be
too proud of such a mouth as that, if I had it
myself! Stand up
and show it, Sir! Take
off your cap. There's a fine young man for a
nice
little party, Sir! An't he?"
Inspector
Field is the bustling speaker.
Inspector Field's eye is the roving eye that
searches
every corner of the cellar as he talks.
Inspector Field's hand is the
well-known
hand that has collared half the people here,
and motioned their
brothers, sisters, fathers,
mothers, male and female friends, inexorably,
to
New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field
stands in this den, the Sultan of the place.
Every thief here, cowers before him, like a
schoolboy before his
schoolmaster. All watch
him, all answer when addressed, all laugh at
his
jokes, all seek to propitiate him. This
cellar-company alone—to say nothing of
the
crowd surrounding the entrance from the
street above, and making the
steps shine with
eyes—is strong enough to murder us all, and
willing enough to
do it; but, let Inspector
Field have a mind to pick out one thief here,
and
take him; let him produce that ghostly
truncheon from his pocket, and say,
with his
business-air, "My lad, I want you!" and all
Rats' Castle
shall be stricken with paralysis,
and not a finger move against him, as he
fits
the handcuffs on!
Where's
the Earl of Warwick?—Here
he is, Mr. Field! Here's the Earl of Warwick,
Mr.
Field!—O there you are, my Lord.
Come for'ard. There's a chest, Sir, not to
have
a clean shirt on. An't it ? Take your hat
off, my Lord. Why, I should be ashamed
if
I was you—and an Earl, too—to show myself
to a gentleman with my hat on!—The
Earl
of Warwick laughs, and uncovers. All the
company laugh. One pickpocket, especially,
laughs with great enthusiasm. O what a
jolly game it is, when Mr. Field comes
down—
and don't want nobody!
So, you
are here, too, are you, you tall, grey,
soldierly-looking, grave man, standing
by the
fire?—Yes, Sir. Good evening, Mr. Field!—
Let us see. You lived servant
to a nobleman
once?—Yes, Mr. Field.—And what is it you
do now; I forget?—Well,
Mr. Field, I job
about as well as I can. I left my employment
on account of
delicate health. The family is
still kind to me. Mr. Wix of Piccadilly is
also
very kind to me when I am hard up.
Likewise Mr. Nix of Oxford Street. I get a
trifle from them occasionally, and rub on as
well as I can, Mr. Field. Mr.
Field's eye
rolls enjoyingly, for this man is a notorious
begging-letter writer.—Good
night, my lads!
—Good night, Mr. Field, and thank'ee, Sir!
Clear the
street here, half a thousand of
you! Cut it, Mrs. Stalker—none of that—
we
don't want you! Rogers of the flaming
eye, lead on to the tramps'
lodging-house!
A dream
of baleful faces attends to the
door. Now, stand back all of you! In the
rear,
Detective Serjeant plants himself, composedly
whistling, with his strong right
arm
across the narrow passage. Mrs. Stalker, I
am something'd that need not
be written
here, if you won't get yourself into trouble,
in about half a
minute, if I see that face of
yours again!
Saint
Giles's church clock, striking eleven,
hums through our hand from the
dilapidated
door of a dark outhouse as we open it, and are
stricken back by
the pestilent breath that
issues from within. Rogers, to the front with
the
light, and let us look!
Ten,
twenty, thirty—who can count them!
Men, women, children, for the most part
naked,
heaped upon the floor like maggots in a cheese! Ho! In that dark corner
yonder!
Does any body lie there? Me Sir, Irish me,
a widder, with six
children. And yonder?
Me Sir, Irish me, with me wife and eight poor
babes.
And to the left there? Me Sir, Irish
me, along with two more Irish boys as is
me
friends. And to the right there? Me Sir
and the Murphy fam'ly, numbering
five
blessed souls. And what's this, coiling, now,
about my foot? Another
Irish me, pitifully
in want of shaving, whom I have awakened
from sleep—and
across my other foot lies
his wife—and by the shoes of Inspector Field
l ie
their three eldest—and their three youngest
are at present squeezed between
the open
door and the wall. And why is there no
one on that little mat before
the sullen fire?
Because O'Donovan, with wife and daughter,
is not come in
yet from selling Lucifers!
Nor on the bit of sacking in the nearest
corner?
Bad luck! Because that Irish
family is late to night, a-cadging in the
streets!
They are
all awake now, the children excepted,
and most of them sit up, to stare.
Wheresoever
Mr. Rogers turns the flaming
eye, there is a spectral figure rising, unshrouded,
from a grave of rags. Who is the
landlord here? — I am, Mr. Field! says a
bundle
of ribs and parchment against the
wall, scratching itself.—Will you spend
this
money fairly, in the morning, to buy coffee
for 'em all?—Yes Sir, I
will! O he'll do it
Sir, he'll do it fair. He's honest! cry the
spectres. And
with thanks and Good Night
sink into their graves again.
Thus, we
make our New Oxford Streets,
and our other new streets, never heeding,
never
asking, where the wretches whom we
clear out, crowd. With such scenes at our
doors,
with all the plagues of Egypt tied up
with bits of cobweb in kennels so near
our
homes, we timorously make our Nuisance Bills
and Boards of Health,
nonentities, and think
to keep away the Wolves of Crime and Filth,
by our
electioneering ducking to little vestrymen,
and our gentlemanly handling of
Red
Tape!
Intelligence
of the coffee money has got
abroad. The yard is full, and Rogers of the
flaming
eye is beleaguered with entreaties
to show other Lodging Houses. Mine next!
Mine!
Mine! Rogers, military, obdurate,
stiff-necked, immovable, replies not, but
leads
away; all falling back before him. Inspector
Field follows. Detective Serjeant,
with his
barrier of arm across the little passage,
deliberately waits to
close the procession. He
sees behind him, without any effort, and
exceedingly
disturbs one individual far in the
rear by coolly calling out, " It won't
do Mr.
Michael! Don't try it!"
After council
holden in the street, we enter
other lodging houses, public-houses, many
lairs
and holes; all noisome and offensive;
none so filthy and so crowded as where
Irish
are. In one, The Ethiopian party are
expected home presently—were in Oxford
Street
when last heard of—shall be fetched,
for our delight, within ten minutes. In
another,
one of the two or three Professors
who draw Napoleon Buonaparte and a couple
of
mackarel, on the pavement, and then let
the work of art out to a speculator,
is refreshing
after his labors. In another, the vested
interest of the
profitable nuisance has been in
one family for a hundred years, and the
landlord
drives in comfortably from the country to
his snug little stew in
town. In all, Inspector
Field is received with warmth. Coiners and
smashers
droop before him; pickpockets
defer to him; the gentle sex (not very gentle
here)
smile upon him. Half-drunken hags
check themselves in the midst of pots of beer,
or pints of gin, to drink to Mr. Field, and
pressingly to ask the honor of
his finishing
the draught. One beldame in rusty black
has such admiration for
him, that she run s
a whole street's length to shake 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 neck-kerchief 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. Halloa
here! Come! Let
us see you! Shew your face!
Pilot Parker goes from bed to bed and 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
woeful growl.
Wherever
the turning lane of light becomes
stationary for a moment, some sleeper
appears
at the end of it, submits himself to be scrutinized,
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
in to the bottle, and corking it up with the
candle; that's all
I know. What is the inscription,
Deputy, on all the discolored 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 pursue s
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
counter-flapping, like the lids of
the conjuror's boxes. But what avail they?
Who gets in by a nod, and shews 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 pecking about—with fair
elm trees, then,
where discolored 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 a getting on very well too.
I've a deal
of trouble with 'em, sir, 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
ecstacies
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!
There 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-convenience. 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 white-wash 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
flavor 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 lead 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
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 cab-door; 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
Serjeant
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, 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 Serjeant, 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 Serjeant is
Detective
Serjeant, 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 an'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 the innermost
recesses of the worst
part of London, in the
dead of the night—the house is crammed with
notorious
robbers and ruffians—and not a
man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight
of
the law, and they know Inspector Field
and Co. too well.
We leave
Bully Bark to subside at leisure
out of his passion and his trousers, and, I dare
say,
to be inconveniently reminded of this little
brush before long. Black and
Green do ordinary
duty here, and look serious.
As to
White, who waits on Holborn Hill
to show the courts that are eaten out of
Rotten
Gray's Inn Lane, where other lodging-
houses are, and where (in one blind
alley)
the Thieves' Kitchen and Seminary for the
teaching of the art to
children, is, the night
has so worn away, being now almost at odds with
morning, which is which, that they are quiet, and no light shines
through the
chinks in the shutters. As
un-distinctive Death will come here, one day,
sleep
comes now. The wicked cease from
troubling sometimes, even in this life.
Household
Words Vol III
Saturday June 14th
1851
