The Chaplain of the Fleet Page 8

  CHAPTER VII.

  HOW KITTY LEARNED TO KNOW THE DOCTOR.

  Those evenings of riot from which Sir Miles was so often carried homespeechless, were spent in no other place than that very room where Ihad seen the marriage of the sailors; and the president of the rabblerout was no other than the Doctor himself.

  I learned this of Sir Miles. If my ladies knew it, of which I am notcertain, they were content to shut their eyes to it, and to think ofthe thing as one of the faults which women, in contempt and pity,ascribe to the strange nature of man. I cannot, being now of ripeyears, believe that Heaven hath created in man a special aptitude fordebauchery, sin, and profligacy, while women have been designed for theillustration of virtues which are the opposite to them. So that, whenI hear it said that it is the way of men, I am apt to think that waysinful.

  It was Sir Miles himself who told me of it one morning. I found himleaning against the doorpost with a tankard of ale in his hand.

  "Fie, Sir Miles!" I said. "Is it not shameful for a gentleman to becarried home at night, like a pig?"

  "It is," he replied. "Kitty, the morning is the time for repentance. Irepent until I have cleared my brain with this draught of cool October."

  "It is as if a man should drag a napkin in the mud of the Fleet Ditchto clean it," I said.

  He drank off his tankard, and said he felt better.

  "Pretty Miss Kitty," he said, "it is a fine morning; shall we abroad?Will you trust yourself with me to view the shops in Cheapside or thebeaux in the Mall? I am at thy service, though, for a Norfolk baronet,my ruffles are of the shabbiest."

  I told him that I would ask Mrs. Esther for permission. He said hewanted first a second pint, as the evening had been long and the drinkabundant, after which his brain would be perfectly clear and his handsteady.

  I told him it was a shame that a gentleman of his rank should mate withmen whose proper place was among the thieves of Turnmill Street, or theporters of Chick Lane, and that I would not walk with a man whose brainrequired a quart of strong ale in the morning to clear it.

  "As for my companions," he said, taking the second pint which the boybrought him and turning it about in his hands, "we have very goodcompany in the Liberties--quite as good as your friend Christian, inthat story you love so much, might have had in Vanity Fair, had he beena lad of mettle and a toper. There are gentlemen of good family, likemyself; poets like Solomon Stallabras; merchants, half-pay captainsand broke lieutenants; clerks, tradesmen, lawyers, parsons, farmers,men of all degrees. It is like the outside world, except that here allare equal who can pay their shot. Why, with the Doctor at the head ofthe table, and a bowl of punch just begun, hang me if I know any placewhere a man may feel more comfortable or drink more at his ease."

  "The Doctor," I asked. Now I had seen so little of my uncle that I hadalmost forgotten the marriage of the sailors, and was beginning againto think of him as the pious and serious minister who spoke of sacredthings to my guardians. "The Doctor?"

  "Ay;" Sir Miles drank off the whole of his second pint. "Who else?"His voice became suddenly thick, and his eyes fixed, with a strangelight in them. "Who else but the Doctor? Why, what would the Rules bewithout the Doctor? He is our prince, our bishop, our chaplain--whatyou will--the right reverend his most gracious majesty the King of theRules." Sir Miles waved his hand dramatically. "He keeps us sweet; hepolishes our wits; but for him we should be wallowing swine: he bringsstrangers and visitors to enliven us; drinks with us, sings with us,makes wit for us from the treasures of his learning; condescends tocall us his friends; pays our shot for us; lends us money; gives foodto the starving, and drink--yes, drink, by gad! to the thirsty, andclothes to the naked. Ah, poor girl! you can never see the Doctor inhis glory, with all his admirers round him, and every man a glass ofpunch in his hand and a clean tobacco-pipe in his mouth. The Doctor?he is our boast; a most complete and perfect doctor; the pride ofCambridge; the crown and sum of all doctors in divinity!"

  He had forgotten, I suppose, his invitation to take me for a walk, forhe left me here, staggering off in the direction of the Hand and Pen,where, I doubt not, he spent the rest of his idle and wasted day.

  It would have been useless and cruel to talk to my guardian about thisdiscovery. It was another thing to be ashamed of. Sir Miles told meless than the truth. In fact the Doctor's house was the nightly resortof all those residents in the Rules whom he would admit to his society.Hither, too, came, attracted by his reputation for eloquence, wit, andcurious knowledge, gentlemen from the Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and otherplaces, who were expected, as a contribution to the evening, to sendfor bowls of punch. But of this presently.

  I saw my uncle seldom. He visited the sisters from time to time, andnever failed to ask particularly after my progress in knowledge,and especially in the doctrines of the Church of England. On theseoccasions he generally left behind him, as a present, some maxim orprecept tending to virtue, which we could repeat after his departureand turn over in our minds at leisure. Once he found me alone, Mrs.Deborah being indisposed and confined to her room, where her sister wasnursing her. He took advantage of their absence to impress upon me thenecessity of circumspection in my manner of life.

  "Heaven knows, child," he said, "what thy future will be. Hither comenone but profligates and spendthrifts. Yet what else can I do withthee? Where bestow thee?"

  "Oh, sir!" I said, "let me not be taken from my dear ladies."

  "Thou shalt not, child; at least for the present. But it is bad forthee to live here; it is bad for thee to have as an uncle one whoselife is sadly inconsistent with his Christian profession, and who mightdespair, were it not for the example of Solomon (methinks from hishistory may be sucked consolation by all elderly and reverend sinners).Like him, what I lack in practice I partly make up with precept. Hewho, like me, is a Fleet parson, should be judged differently fromhis fellows: he is without the license, and therefore hath forfeitedpaternal affection of his bishop; he is exposed to temptations whichbeset not other folk; among those who flock to him for marriage aresome who would fain commute their fees for brandy and strong drinks,or even bilk the clergyman altogether--a sin which it is difficult tobelieve can be forgiven. Hence arise strifes and wraths, unseemly forone who wears a cassock. Hither come those who seek good fellowshipand think to find it in the Rules; Templars, young bloods, and wits.Hence arise drinking and brawling; and as one is outside the law,so to speak, so one is tempted to neglect the law. I say nothing ofthe temptations of an empty purse. These I felt, with many prickingsand instigations of the Evil One, while I was yet curate of St.Martin's-in-the-Fields, before I escaped my creditors by coming here.Then I was poor, and found, as the Wise Man says, that 'The poor ishated even of his own neighbour.'"

  He went on, half preaching, half talking.

  A man who sinned greatly, yet preached much; who daily fell, yet dailyexhorted his neighbour to stand upright; who knew and loved, as oneloves a thing impossible to attain, the life of virtue; who drank,laughed, and bawled songs of an evening with his boon companions; whomarried all comers, no questions asked, without scruple and withoutremorse; a priest whose life was a disgrace to his profession; who didkind and generous things, and paid that homage to Virtue which becomesone who knows her loveliness.

  It pleased him to talk, but only with me, about himself. He was alwaysexcusing himself to me, ashamed of his life, yet boasting of it andglorying in it; conscious of his infamy, and yet proud of his success;always thinking by what plea he could justify himself, and maintain hisself-respect.

  "I am a man," he said, "who is the best of a bad profession. My work isinglorious, but I am glorious; my rivals, who would rob me of my verypractice, do not hate me, but esteem and envy me. I have, yea, outsidethese Rules, friends who love me still; some of them pity me, and somewould see me (which is impossible) restored to the fold and bosom ofthe Church; some who drink with me, talk with me, borrow of me, walkwith me, smoke with me, and are honoured by my friendship. There is noman living who would
wish me harm. Surely, I am one of those who dogood to themselves, whom, therefore, their fellow-men respect."

  I have said that he was generous. Sir Miles spoke the truth when hedeclared that the Doctor fed the starving and clothed the naked. Trulyit seems to me natural to believe that these good deeds of his must bea set-off to the great wickedness of his life. There were no occupantsof the prison and its Liberties who were rich. Some there were whowould have starved but for the charity of their friends. The poorprisoners were allowed to beg, but how could poor gentlewomen like myguardians bear to beg for daily bread? Rather would they starve. Asfor the prison, I know nothing of it; I never saw the inside; it wasenough for me to see its long and dreary wall. I used to think at nightof the poor creatures shut up there in hopeless misery, as I thought,though Sir Miles declared that most of them were happier in the prisonthan out; and beside the latticed gate there stood every day a manbehind bars begging with a plate and crying: "Pity the poor prisoners."

  Is it not sad that the same punishment of imprisonment must be metedout to the rogue and the debtor, save that we let the rogue go freewhile we keep the debtor locked up? Truly, the Vicar of St Bride's oreven the Dean of St. Paul's himself could preach no better sermon,could use no words more fitted to arrest the profligate and bring thethoughtless to reason, than that doleful cry behind the bars. Nor couldany more salutary lesson be impressed upon young spendthrifts than totake them from house to house in the Rules and show them the end ofgraceless ways.