watercresses – in another, a pickpocket – 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 after 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, thinn, Mr. Rogers?’ says Bob Miles, appearing,
villainous, 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
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
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