It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his
door at night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at
long intervals even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea.
'With the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the
gifts as tributes, from admirers, to a public character. Sometimes
these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old
Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he
considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.
In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing
out, and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents
to which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might
not be equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of
a certain standing, to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The
collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally
stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper, and would come back again
calling 'Hi!' He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile. By
this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally
add,'What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?'
'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for the
Father of the Marshalsea.'
'My good sir,' he would rejoin, 'he is infinitely obliged to you.' But,
to the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into
which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard,
lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of
collegians. One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather
large party of collegians, who happened to be going out, when, as he was
coming back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in
execution for a small sum a week before, had 'settled' in the course of
that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in
his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high
spirits.
God bless you, sir,' he said in passing. 'And you,' benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea. They were pretty far divided, going their several ways,
'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence
in his hand, 'but it's well meant.'
The Father of the Marshalsea had never been offered tribute in copper
yet. His children often had, and with his perfect acquiescence it had
gone into the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten, and drink that
he had drunk; but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence
on him, front to front, was new.