A great deal of business was transacted in this short period. Among
other items, Messrs Peddle and Pool, solicitors, of Monument Yard, were
instructed by their client Edward Dorrit, Esquire, to address a letter
to Mr Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of twenty-four pounds nine
shillings and eightpence, being the amount of principal and interest
computed at the rate of five per cent. per annum, in which their
client believed himself to be indebted to Mr Clennam. In making this
communication and remittance, Messrs Peddle and Pool were further
instructed by their client to remind Mr Clennam that the favour of the
advance now repaid (including gate-fees) had not been asked of him, and
to inform him that it would not have been accepted if it had been openly
proffered in his name.
With which they requested a stamped receipt, and
remained his obedient servants. A great deal of business had likewise to
be done, within the so-soon-to-be-orphaned Marshalsea, by Mr Dorrit
so long its Father, chiefly arising out of applications made to him
by Collegians for small sums of money. To these he responded with the
greatest liberality, and with no lack of formality; always first writing
to appoint a time at which the applicant might wait upon him in his
room, and then receiving him in the midst of a vast accumulation of
documents, and accompanying his donation (for he said in every such
case, 'it is a donation, not a loan') with a great deal of good counsel:
to the effect that he, the expiring Father of the Marshalsea, hoped to
be long remembered, as an example that a man might preserve his own and
the general respect even there.
The Collegians were not envious. Besides that they had a personal and
traditional regard for a Collegian of so many years' standing, the event
was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the newspapers.
Perhaps more of them thought, too, than were quite aware of it, that the
thing might in the lottery of chances have happened to themselves, or
that something of the sort might yet happen to themselves some day or
other. They took it very well. A few were low at the thought of being
left behind, and being left poor; but even these did not grudge the
family their brilliant reverse. There might have been much more envy in
politer places. It seems probable that mediocrity of fortune would have
been disposed to be less magnanimous than the Collegians, who lived from
hand to mouth--from the pawnbroker's hand to the day's dinner.
They got up an address to him, which they presented in a neat frame and
glass (though it was not afterwards displayed in the family mansion or
preserved among the family papers); and to which he returned a gracious
answer. In that document he assured them, in a Royal manner, that he
received the profession of their attachment with a full conviction
of its sincerity; and again generally exhorted them to follow his
example--which, at least in so far as coming into a great property was
concerned, there is no doubt they would have gladly imitated. He took
the same occasion of inviting them to a comprehensive entertainment, to
be given to the whole College in the yard, and at which he signified
he would have the honour of taking a parting glass to the health and
happiness of all those whom he was about to leave behind.