a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as about three months—that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
He sat in an arm-chair with a cushion, and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, that he couldn’t turn the key. When he was overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
His son began to supersede Mrs Bangham, and to execute commissions in a knowing manner, and to be of the prison prisonous, of the streets streety.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
But he got pretty well over it in a month or two; and in the meantime the children played about the yard as regularly as ever, but in black.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
He remained shut up in his room for a fortnight afterwards; and an attorney’s clerk, who was going through the Insolvent Court, engrossed an address of condolence to him, which looked like a Lease, and which all the prisoners signed.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
You’ll find some characters behind other locks, I don’t say you won’t; but if you want the top sawyer in such respects as I’ve mentioned, you must come to the Marshalsea.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory terms to new-comers, when his back was turned. ‘You took notice of him,’ he would say, ‘that went out of the lodge just now?’
New-comer would probably answer Yes.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
and his elder children now played regularly about the yard, and everybody knew the baby, and claimed a kind of proprietorship in her.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
but being what he was, he languidly slipped into this smooth descent, and never more took one step upward.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#MrsBangham
#FatherOfTheMarshalsea
and had the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket, returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
I don’t know that I have ever pursued it under such quiet circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere, people are restless, worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one thing, anxious respecting another.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
We are quiet here; we don’t get badgered here; there’s no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man’s heart into his mouth.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
In the meantime Mrs Bangham had been out on an errand to a neighbouring establishment decorated with three golden balls, where she was very well known.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
‘A very nice little girl indeed,’ said the doctor; ‘little, but well-formed. Halloa, Mrs Bangham! You’re looking queer! You be off, ma’am, this minute, and fetch a little more brandy, or we shall have you in hysterics.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
Three or four hours passed; the flies fell into the traps by hundreds; and at length one little life, hardly stronger than theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
‘You’re to be obeyed, sir,’ said Mrs Bangham, rising. ‘If you was to put your own lips to it, I think you wouldn’t be the worse, for you look but poorly, sir.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
‘Thank you, sir. But none on my accounts,’ said Mrs Bangham.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
and as he and Mrs Bangham took possession of the poor helpless pair, as everybody else and anybody else had always done, the means at hand were as good on the whole as better would have been.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
And here if there ain’t,’ said Mrs Bangham as the door opened, ‘if there ain’t your dear gentleman along with Dr Haggage! And now indeed we are complete, I think!’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
P’raps they’re sent as a consolation, if we only know’d it. How are you now, my dear? No better? No, my dear, it ain’t to be expected; you’ll be worse before you’re better, and you know it, don’t you? Yes. That’s right!
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
at the same time enunciating sentiments of an encouraging and congratulatory nature, adapted to the occasion.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
but was the popular medium of communication with the outer world, had volunteered her services as fly-catcher and general attendant.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit
#DrHaggage
#MrsBangham
