The Story of Little Dorrit
I. THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA
Some years ago when the laws of England were harsher than they are now, there were debtors’ prisons, or big, gloomy jails into which men were put, if they couldn’t pay what they owed. This was cruel and unjust, for the prisoner was of course cut off from the chance to earn any more money; and so he might linger there for years or even his whole life long, if some friend did not come to his relief. But otherwise the prisoner was given many liberties not found in ordinary jails. His family might live with him, if they chose, and come and go as they pleased.
One of the largest of these debtors’ prisons was called the “Marshalsea.” One day a gentleman was brought there who had lost his money in business; but so confident was he of speedily regaining his liberty, that he would not unpack his valise, at first. His name was William Dorrit, an easy-going man who had spent his money freely and paid little attention to his tradesmen’s bills. Now that he had fallen upon evil days, he thought that his friends would be glad to help him. But as the days and weeks passed with no prospect of aid, he was persuaded not only to unpack his belongings but also to have his wife and two children brought to live with him.
The two children, Fanny and Edward—commonly called “Tip”—were so young when they were brought to the Marshalsea, that they soon forgot any earlier life, and played very happily with other children in the prison yard. Not long after, a little sister was added to their family. She was christened Amy, but was so tiny that everybody called her “Little Dorrit.”
Being born in the prison, Little Dorrit was petted and made much of. Every one there seemed to claim her, and visitors were proudly shown “the Child of the Marshalsea.”
The turnkey, who was a kind-hearted man, took an especial interest in her.
“By rights,” he remarked, when she was first shown to him, “I ought to be her godfather.”
Mr. Dorrit looked at the honest fellow for a moment, and thought that he would suit better than some of their false friends.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t object to really being her godfather?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t object, if you don’t,” replied the turnkey.
Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon, when the turnkey, being relieved, went up to the font of Saint George’s church, and promised and vowed on her behalf, as he himself related when he came back, “like a good ’un.”
This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the child, over and above his former official one. When she began to walk and talk, he became fond of her; bought a little arm-chair and stood it by the high fender of the lodge fireplace; liked to have her company when he was on the lock; and used to bribe her with cheap toys to come and talk to him. The child, for her part, soon grew so fond of the turnkey, that she would come climbing up the lodge steps of her own accord at all hours of the day. When she fell asleep in the little arm-chair by the high fender, the turnkey would cover her with his pocket handkerchief; and when she sat in it dressing and undressing a doll—which soon came to be unlike dolls on the other side of the lock—he would contemplate her from the top of his stool, with exceeding gentleness. Witnessing these things, the inmates would express an opinion that the turnkey, who was a bachelor, had been cut out by nature for a family man. But the turnkey thanked them, and said, “No, on the whole it was enough for him to see other people’s children there.”
At what period of her early life the little creature began to perceive that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow yards, surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top, would be a difficult question to settle. But she was a very, very little creature indeed, when she had somehow gained the knowledge, that her clasp of her father’s hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key opened; and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it, his feet must never cross that line. A pitiful and plaintive look, with which she had begun to regard him when she was still extremely young, was perhaps a part of this discovery.
Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high fender in the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window, until bars of light would arise, when she would turn her eyes away.
“Thinking of the fields,” the turnkey said once, after watching her, “ain’t you?”
“Where are they?” she inquired.
“Why, they’re—over there, my dear,” said the turnkey, with a vague flourish of his key. “Just about there.”
“Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?”
The turnkey was at a loss. “Well!” he said, “not in general.”
“Are they very pretty, Bob?” She called him Bob, by his own particular request and instruction.
“Lovely. Full of flowers. There’s buttercups, and there’s daisies, and there’s”—the turnkey hesitated, being short of names—“there’s dandelions, and all manner of games.”
“Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?”
“Prime,” said the turnkey.
“Was father ever there?”
“Hem!” coughed the turnkey. “Oh, yes, he was there, sometimes.”
“Is he sorry not to be there now?”
“N—not particular,” said the turnkey.
“Nor any of the people?” she asked, glancing at the listless crowd within. “Oh, are you quite sure and certain, Bob?”
At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the subject; always his last resource when he found his little friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner. But this was the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two curious companions made together. They used to issue from the lodge on alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows or green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in the course of the week; and there she picked grass and flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards they would come back hand in hand, unless she was more than usually tired, and had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
In those early days the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a question which cost him so much mental labor, that it remained undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath his little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could it be so “tied up” that she alone should benefit by it. He asked the knotty question of every lawyer who came through the lodge gate on business.
“Settle it strictly on herself,” the gentleman would answer.
“But look here,” quoth the turnkey. “Supposing she had, say a brother, say a father, say a husband, who would be likely to make a grab at that property when she came into it—how about that?”
“It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim on it than you,” would be the professional answer.
“Stop a bit,” said the turnkey. “Supposing she was tender-hearted, and they came over her. Where’s your law for tying it up then?”
The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded was unable to produce his law for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it all his life, and died without a will after all.
But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen. She was only eight when her mother died, and from that time the protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards her father became embodied in action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon herself a new relation.
At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through this little gate she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.
What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her, lies hidden with many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and for the sake of the rest.
And while the mark of the prison was seen only too clearly in her vain, selfish sister, and weak, wayward brother, Little Dorrit’s life was singularly free from taint; her heart was full of service and love.
And so, in spite of her small stature and want of strength, she toiled and planned, and soon became the real head of this poor, fallen house.
At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts—that is, could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day schools during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well—no one better—that her broken-spirited father could no longer help them.
To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own contriving. Once, among the curious crowd of inmates, there appeared a dancing-master. Her sister Fanny had a great desire to learn to dance, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen years old, the Child of the Marshalsea presented herself to the dancing-master, with a little bag in her hand, and said timidly, “If you please, I was born here, sir.”
“Oh! You are the young lady, are you?” said the man, surveying the small figure and uplifted face.
“Yes, sir.”
“And what can I do for you?”
“Nothing for me, sir, thank you,” anxiously undrawing the strings of the little bag; “but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to teach my sister cheap—”
“My child, I’ll teach her for nothing,” said the dancing-master, shutting up the bag.
He was as good-natured a master as ever danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. Fanny was so apt a pupil, and made such wonderful progress that he continued to teach her after he was released from prison. In time, he obtained a place for her at a small theatre. It was at the same theatre where her uncle—who was also now a poor man—played a clarinet for a living; and Fanny left the Marshalsea and went to live with him.
The success of this beginning gave Little Dorrit courage to try again, this time on her own behalf. She had long wanted to learn how to sew, and watched and waited for a seamstress to come to the prison. At last one came, and Little Dorrit went to call upon her.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she said, looking timidly round the door of the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed; “but I was born here.”
Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the dancing-master had said,
“Oh! You are the child, are you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I am sorry I haven’t got anything for you,” said the milliner, shaking her head.
“It’s not that, ma’am. If you please I want to learn needlework.”
“Why should you do that,” returned the milliner, “with me before you? It has not done me much good.”
“Nothing—whatever it is—seems to have done anybody much good who comes here,” she returned in all simplicity; “but I want to learn, just the same.”
“I am afraid you are so weak, you see,” the milliner objected.
“I don’t think I am weak, ma’am.”
“And you are so very, very little, you see,” continued the milliner.
“Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,” returned the Child of the Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers, which came so often in her way. The milliner—who was not morose or hard-hearted, only newly insolvent—was touched, took her in hand with good-will, found her the most patient and earnest of pupils, and made her a cunning workwoman in course of time.
And so, presently, Little Dorrit had the immense satisfaction of going out to work by the day, and of supplying her father with many little comforts which otherwise he would not have enjoyed.
But her hardest task was in getting her brother out of prison and into some useful employment. The life there had been anything but good for him; and at eighteen he was idle and shiftless, not caring to lift a finger for himself. In her dilemma, Little Dorrit went to her old friend, the turnkey.
“Dear Bob,” said she, “what is to become of poor Tip?”
The turnkey scratched his head. Privately he had a poor opinion of the young man.
“Well, my dear,” he answered, “something ought to be done with him. Suppose I try to get him into the law?”
“That would be so good of you, Bob!”
The turnkey was as good as his word, and by dint of buttonholing every lawyer who came through the gate on business, he found Tip a place as clerk, where the pay was not large, but the prospects good.
Tip idled away in the law office for six months, then came back to the prison one evening with his hands in his pockets and told his sister he was not going back again.
“Not going back!” she exclaimed.
“I am so tired of it,” said Tip, “that I have cut it.”
Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend, got him into a variety of situations. But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it.
Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her brother’s rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes, she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he was tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight course at last.
“God bless you, dear Tip. Don’t be too proud to come and see us, when you have made your fortune.”
“All right!” said Tip, and went.
But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not farther than Liverpool. After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back again. Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever.
At length he found a situation for himself, and disappeared for months. She never heard from him but once in that time, though it was as well for her peace of mind that she did not. He was making trades for a tricky horse dealer.
One evening she was alone at work—standing up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above the wall—when he opened the door and walked in.
She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any question. He saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry.
“I am afraid, Amy, you’ll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!”
“I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?”
“Why—yes. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“Not the worst of it?”
“Don’t look so startled, Amy. I’ve come back in a new way. I’m one of the prisoners now. I owe forty pounds.”
For the first time in all those years, she sank under her cares. She cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip’s graceless feet.
It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses, than for her to bring him to understand what a pitiable thing he had done. But he agreed to help keep it a secret from their father; and Little Dorrit toiled harder than ever, in the hope of one day getting him out again.
Thus passed the life of the Child of the Marshalsea until she became a young woman.