CHAPTER XIV.

IMPRISONMENT.

Author's imprisonment.-Curious specimen of a jailer, an underjailer, and an under-jailer's wife.-Mr. Holme Sumner.-Conversion of a room in a prison into a fairy bower.—Author's visitors. A heart-rending spectacle.- Felons and debtors.Restoration to Freedom.

WE parted in hackney-coaches to our respective abodes, accompanied by two tipstaves apiece.

They prepared me for a singular character in my jailer. His name was Ives. I was told he was a very self-willed personage, not the more accommodating for being in a bad state of health; and that he called everybody Mister. "In short," said one of the tipstaves, "he is one as may be led, but he'll never be druv.”

The sight of the prison-gate and the high wall was a dreary business. I thought of my horseback and the downs of Brighton; but congratulated myself, at all events, that I had come thither with a good conscience. After waiting in the prison-yard as long as

if it had been the anteroom of a minister, I was ushered into the presence of the great man. He was in his parlour, which was decently furnished, and had a basin of broth before him, which he quitted on my appearance, and rose with much solemnity to meet me. He seemed about fifty years of age. He had a white night-cap on, as if he was going to be hung, and a great red face, which looked ready to burst with blood. Indeed, he was not allowed by his physician to speak in a tone above a whisper.

The first thing which this dignified person said was, "Mister, I'd ha' given a matter of a hundred pounds, that you had not come to this place-a hundred pounds!" The emphasis which he had laid on the word "hundred" was ominous.

I forgot what I answered.

I endeavoured, to

make the best of the matter; but he recurred over and over again to the hundred pounds; and said he wondered, for his part, what the Government meant by sending me there, for the prison was not a prison fit for a gentleman. He often repeated this opinion afterwards, adding, with a peculiar nod of his head, and "Mister, they knows it."

I said, that if a gentleman deserved to be sent to prison, he ought not to be treated with a greater nicety than any one else: upon which he corrected me, observing very properly (though, as the phrase

is, it was one word for the gentleman and two for the letter of prison-lodgings), that a person who had been used to a better mode of living than "low people," was not treated with the same justice, if forced to lodge exactly as they did.

I told him his observation was very true; which gave him a favourable opinion of my understanding: for I had many occasions of remarking, that he looked upon nobody as his superior, speaking even of the members of the royal family as persons whom he knew very well, and whom he estimated no more than became him. One royal duke had lunched in his parlour, and another he had laid under some polite obligation. They knows me," said he, "very well, Mister; and, Mister, I knows them." This concluding sentence he uttered with great particularity and precision.

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He was not proof, however, against a Greek Pindar, which he happened to light upon one day among my books. Its unintelligible character gave him a notion that he had got somebody to deal with who might really know something which he did not. Perhaps the gilt leaves and red morocco binding had their share in the magic. The upshot was, that he always showed himself anxious to appear well with me, as a clever fellow, treating me with great civility on all occasions but one, when I made him very angry by disappointing him in a money amount.

The Pindar was a mystery that staggered him. I remember very well, that giving me a long account one day of something connected with his business, he happened to catch with his eye the shelf that contained it, and whether he saw it or not, abruptly finished by observing, "But, Mister, you knows all these things as well as I do."

Upon the whole, my new acquaintance was as strange a person as I ever met with. A total want of education, together with a certain vulgar acuteness, conspired to render him insolent and pedantic. Disease sharpened his tendency to fits of passion, which threatened to suffocate him; and then in his intervals of better health he would issue forth, with his cock-up-nose and his hat on one side, as great a fop as a jockey. I remember his coming to my rooms, about the middle of my imprisonment, as if on purpose to insult over my ill health with the contrast of his convalescence, putting his arms in a gay manner a-kimbo, and telling me I should never live to go out, whereas he was riding about as stout as ever, and had just been in the country. He died before I left prison.

The word jail, in deference to the way in which it is sometimes spelt, this accomplished individual pronounced gole; and Mr. Brougham he always spoke of as Mr. Bruffam. He one day apologized for this mode of pronunciation, or rather gave a specimen of

vanity and self-will, which will show the reader the high notions a jailer may entertain of himself. "I find,” said he, "that they calls him Broom; but, Mister" (assuming a look from which there was to be no appeal), "I calls him Bruffam!"

Finding that my host did not think the prison fit for me, I asked if he could let me have an apartment in his house. He pronounced it impossible; which was a trick to enhance the price. I could not make an offer to please him; and he stood out so long, and, as he thought, so cunningly, that he subsequently overreached himself by his trickery; as the reader will see. His object was to keep me among the prisoners, till he could at once sicken me of the place, and get the permission of the magistrates to receive me into his house; which was a thing he reckoned upon as a certainty. He thus hoped to secure himself in all quarters; for his vanity was almost as strong as his avarice. He was equally fond of getting money in private, and of the approbation of the great men whom he had to deal with in public; and it so happened, that there had been no prisoner, above the poorest condition, before my arrival, with the exception of Colonel Despard. From abusing the prison, he then suddenly fell to speaking well of it, or rather of the room occupied by the colonel; and said, that another corresponding with it would make me a capital apartment. "To