Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2201 page)

While I was in this happy frame of mind, I happened to meet with the history of the famous Ranc
h
, founder, or rather reformer, of the Order of La Trappe. I found a strange similarity between my own worldly errors and those of this illustrious penitent. The discovery had such an effect on me, that I spurned all idea of entering a convent where the rules were comparatively easy, as was the case at Anticaille, and determined, when I did take the veil, to enter an Order whose discipline was as severe as the discipline of La Trappe itself. Father Deveaux informed me that I should find exactly what I wanted among the Carmelite nuns; and, by his advice, I immediately put myself in communication with the Archbishop of Villeroi. I opened my heart to this worthy prelate, convinced him of my sincerity, and gained from him a promise that he would get me admitted among the Carmelite nuns of Lyons. One thing I begged of him at parting, which was, that he would tell the whole truth about my former life and about the profession that I had exercised in the world. I was resolved to deceive nobody, and to enter no convent under false pretences of any sort.

My wishes were scrupulously fulfilled; and the nuns were dreadfully frightened when they heard that I had been an actress at Paris. But the Archbishop promising to answer for me, and to take all their scruples on his own conscience, they consented to receive me. I could not trust myself to take formal leave of the nuns of Anticaille, who had been so kind to me, and towards whom I felt so gratefully. So I wrote my farewell to them after privately leaving their house, telling them frankly the motives which animated me, and asking their pardon for separating myself from them in secret.

On the fourteenth of October, seventeen hundred and twenty-four, I entered the Carmelite convent at Lyons, eighteen months after my flight from the world, and my abandonment of my profession
,
to adopt which, I may say, in my own defence, that I was first led through sheer poverty. At the age of seventeen years, and possessing (if I may credit report) remarkable personal charms, I was left perfectly destitute through the spendthrift habits of my father. I was easily persuaded to go on the stage, and soon tempted, with my youth and inexperience, to lead an irregular life. I do not wish to assert that dissipation necessarily follows the choice of the actress
’
s profession, for I have known many estimable women on the stage. I, unhappily, was not one of the number. I confess it to my shame, and, as the chief of sinners, I am only the more grateful to the mercy of Heaven which accomplished my conversion.

When I entered the convent, I entreated the prioress to let me live in perfect obscurity, without corresponding with my friends, or even with my relations. She declined to grant this last request, thinking that my zeal was leading me too far. On the other hand, she complied with my wish to be employed at once, without the slightest preparatory indulgence or consideration, on any menial labour which the discipline of the convent might require from me. On the first day of my admission a broom was put into my hands. I was appointed also to wash up the dishes, to scour the saucepans, to draw water from a deep well, to carry each sister
’
s pitcher to its proper place, and to scrub the tables in the refectory. From these occupations I got on in time to making rope shoes for the sisterhood, and to taking care of the great clock of the convent; this last employment requiring me to pull up three immensely heavy weights regularly every day, Seven years of my life passed in this hard work, and I can honestly say that I never murmured over it.

To return, however, to the period of my admission into the convent.

After three months of probation, I took the veil on the twentieth of January, seventeen hundred and twenty-five. The Archbishop did me the honour to preside at the ceremony; and, in spite of the rigour of the season, all Lyons poured into the church to see me take the vows. I was deeply affected; but I never faltered in my resolution. I pronounced the oaths with a firm voice, and with a tranquillity which astonished all the spectators, a tranquillity which has never once failed me since that time.

Such is the story of my conversion. Providence sent me into the world with an excellent nature, with a true heart, with a remarkable susceptibility to the influence of estimable sentiments. My parents neglected my education, and left me in the world, destitute of everything but youth, beauty, and a lively temperament. I tried hard to be virtuous
ý
; I vowed, before I was out of my teens, and when I happened to be struck down by a serious illness, to leave the stage, and to keep my reputation unblemished, if anybody would only give me two hundred livres a year to live upon. Nobody came forward to help me, and I fell. Heaven pardon the rich people of Paris who might have preserved my virtue at so small a cost! Heaven grant me courage to follow the better path into which its mercy has led me, and to persevere in a life of penitence and devotion to the end of my days!

So this singular confession ends. Besides the little vanities and levities which appear here and there on its surface, there is surely a strong under-current of sincerity and frankness which fit it to appeal in some degree to the sympathy as well as the curiosity of the reader. It is impossible to read the narrative without feeling, that there must have been something really genuine and hearty in
Mademoiselle Gautier
ý
s nature; and it is a gratifying proof of the honest integrity of her purpose to know that she persevered to the last in the life of humility and seclusion which her conscience had convinced her was the best life that she could lead. Persons who knew her in the Carmelite convent, report that she lived and died in it, preserving to the last, all the better part of the youthful liveliness of her character. She always received visitors with pleasure, always talked to them with surprising cheerfulness, always assisted the poor, and always willingly wrote letters to her former patrons in Paris to help the interests of her needy friends. Towards the end of her life, she was afflicted with blindness; but she was a trouble to no one in consequence of this affliction, for she continued, in spite of it, to clean her own cell, to make her own bed, and to cook her own food just as usual. One little characteristic vanity
ý
harmless enough, surely?
ý
remained with her to the last. She never forgot her own
handsome face, which all Paris had admired in the by-gone time; and she contrived to get a dispensation from the Pope which allowed her to receive visitors in the convent parlour without a veil.

First published
Household Words
18 July 1857

THE philanthropist whom I have ventured to distinguish by this title, flourished at the beginning of the last century, and enrolled himself among the ranks of English authors by writing a book, which I purpose to examine briefly, with a view to the reader
’
s edification on the subject of imprisonment for debt, as it was practised more than a century ago. The work is called “An Accurate Description of Newgate, with the rights, privileges, allowances, fees, dues, and customs thereof; together with a parallel between the Master Debtors
’
side of the said prison, and the several Sponging-houses in the County of Middlesex. Wherein are set forth the cheapness of living, civility, sobriety, tranquillity, liberty of conversation, and diversions of the former, and the expensive living, incivility, extortions, close confinement, and abuses of the latter. Together with a faithful account of the impositions of Bailiffs and their vile usage of all such unfortunate persons as fall into their hands. Written for the public good, by B. L., of Twickenham.”

Under these mysterious initials does the Debtor
’
s Best Friend, with the modesty of true merit, bide himself from discovery by a grateful public. In the first pages of his work he apologises for the lively sympathy with insolvent humanity which induced him to turn author, in these terms:” I am not insensible that many persons who perfectly know me will be not a little surprised to see my first public appearance in a treatise of this kind, which is so infinitely foreign from those eminent parts of Mathematics and Philosophy in which, for many years past., I have been familiarly conversant.” Here, then, is a profound mathematician and philosopher, perfectly acquainted (as we shall soon see) with the insides of sponging-houses and the habits of bailiffs; resident (when at large) in the delightful seclusion of Twickenham, at the commencement of the last century; and publicly willing to acknowledge that his initials are B. L. A more interesting subject of literary investigation than an inquiry after the name of this illustrious and anonymous man, it is hardly possible to conceive. When learned and eminent antiquarians have settled the question whether Shakspeare
’
s Plays were written by Shakspeare, and when they have also found out, for positively the last time, who Junius actually was, will they be so obliging as to grapple with the mystery of B. L.? The writer of these lines abandons the new voyage of literary discovery to their superior spirit of enterprise; and, abstaining from any further digression about the anonymous author of Twickenham, returns to the work which B. L. has left behind him, and to that special part of it which is devoted to the parallel between the Sponging-houses of Middlesex, and the Debtors
’
side of Newgate Prison, in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four.

Will the reader
,
the gentle and solvent reader
,
be so good as to imagine that he was alive a century and a quarter ago, and that he was arrested for debt? Perhaps the favour is too great to ask; perhaps the suggestion may give offence. It will be fitter and better if the writer places himself, purely for the sake of illustrating the parallel of B. L., in a position of supposititious insolvency, and breaks down under pressure of his tradesman
’
s bills, in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four. Very good. I wear, let us say, a long wig and a short sword; broad coat-skirts spread out with buckram; little breeches, hidden at the top by the ends of my waistcoat, and at the bottom by my long stockings, pulled up over my knees. I have had, fore Gad, sir! a wild night of it,
have got drunk, bullied citizens, frightened their wives, beaten the watch, and reeled home to bed with my sword broken and half my embroidery scratched off my coat-cuffs. After a heavy sleep, I am just cooling my fevered tongue with a morning draught of small beer, when, plague take it! who should come in on the heels of my little black page bearing my Indian dressing-gown, but the bailiff with my arrest-warrant. Resistance is hopeless. I use the necessary imprecations. The bailiff gives me the necessary tap on the shoulder, and asks where I will go
ý
to Newgate or to the sponging-house? The treatise of B. L. has unhappily not attracted my attention. I am unacquainted with the important truth, divulged for my benefit by the Debtor
ý
s Best Friend, that Newgate offers me, with the one trifling exception of liberty, all the charms of home on the most moderate terms. The very name of the famous prison terrifies me. I weakly imagine that the sponging-house is more genteel, more luxurious, more fit, in every way, for a man of my condition; and to the sponging-house I declare that I will go.

On the way to our destination, the bailiff (B. L. calls him a Crocodile, among other hard names) insists on stopping at a tavern, under pretence of waiting to see if I can procure bail. Here, the Crocodile and his followers (called Swine by B. L.) “plentifully swig and carouse” (vide Treatise) at my expense. When I have paid the whole reckoning, no matter whether I have taken any drink myself or not, I am politely carried on to the sponging-house, and am told, all the way, what a horrible place Newgate is, and how grateful I ought to be to my kind Crocodiles and Swine for saving me from incarceration in the county gaol. Arrived at the sponging-house, I am received with the greatest civility; and my dear friend, the bailiff (without troubling me with any previous consultation on the subject) orders, at my expense, a bottle of wine and half-a-dozen roast fowls. This banquet prepared, he and all his crocodile family, together with the whole herd of unconscionable swine in attendance on them, sit down to table, leaving me the lowest and worst place, cutting, carving, raking, tearing the fowls in the most unmannerly way, helping everybody before me, absorbing wings, breasts, merrythoughts and thighs, and leaving nothing to my share but the drumsticks and the bones. When the wine is all drunk, and the fowls are all eaten, the head of the crocodiles winks at the head of the swine, and each declares that he has got the colic. The families on either side catch the infection of that distressing malady immediately, and brandy is called for (medicinally), and again at my expense. After the sharp pangs of colic have been sufficiently assuaged, the table is cleared. Pipes, tobacco, and a bowl of punch (price half-a-guinea in the sponging-house; price three and sixpence out of doors) are ordered by the company for themselves, in my name. While my free guests are drinking, I, their prisoner-host, am called on to amuse them by telling the story of my misfortunes. When the bowl is empty, I am carried off to my own room, and am visited there, shortly after, on private business, by the head crocodile, with his pipe in his mouth. His present object is to inform me that my paying the bill for the wine, fowls, brandy, pipes, tobacco, and punch, has not by any means freed me from my obligations to his kindness, and that I must positively go to Newgate at once, unless I settle forthwith what I am going to pay him in the way of Civility-money. My doctor has a fee for giving me physic; why should my bailiff not have a fee for treating me kindly? He declines to mention any precise amount, but he laughs in my face if I offer less than a guinea, and I may consider myself very lucky if he does not take from me three times that sum. If I submit to this extortion, and if I am sufficiently liberal afterwards in the matter of brandy, I am treated with a certain consideration. If I object to be swindled, I am locked up in one small filthy room; am left without attendance, whenever I happen to knock or call, by the hour together; am denied every necessary of life; am “scoffed and snapped at, and used, in short, with a great deal of ill manners.”