I thought of my mother’s refusal to board me at the Miss Mores’ and how it affected her marriage, as she was unwilling to either uproot us from a proper Bristol education or accompany my father to the Americas without us. Yet I was certain that I might have it both ways: my life was bound up in my husband’s, my fate and future his—but I would sacrifice neither maternal affection nor my child’s schooling to follow his drummer.
So when Mr. Robinson was arrested for debts amounting to twelve hundred pounds—chiefly the arrears of annuities and other demands from his Hebrew creditors—and spent three weeks in the custody of a sheriff’s officer, I refused to separate our little family for a single hour.
And on the third of May in 1775, when Mr. Robinson was remanded to the Fleet, thrust into the confines of a debtors’ prison, for the love I bore my daughter and the duty I had to my husband, I gave myself no choice: I, too, was obliged to submit to the perils and the privations of an extended captivity.
Thirteen
The Fleet!
1775…age seventeen
I had now been married just upwards of two years; and though love was not the basis of my fidelity, honor and a refined sense of rectitude attached me to the interest as well as to the person of my husband. For the astronomical sum of one shilling threepence a week, we obtained a gloomy two-room apartment on the building’s third floor, with the rare perquisite of a fireplace, and an even rarer window. Removed by the altitude of thirty feet from the fetid stench of the moated area surrounding the jail, our quarters overlooked a racquet ground, the courtyard being a popular venue for the inmates’ physical exercise. Whilst Mr. Robinson partook of such athletic amusements I consoled myself in our dreary habitation—where the walls bled with a rusty ooze every time it rained—in the company of my beloved daughter and in readying a collection of my poems in the hopes of finding a publisher who might print and distribute them.
For a change of scene, I would pick my way down the dark and narrow stairways, holding my skirts that they might not touch the treads or the dirt-encrusted walls. Belowstairs were the prisoners’ amenities, such as they were. I once visited the taproom, but alcoholism was so rampant in the Fleet that I could not bear to be amid such a vulgar, leering, often violent, lot. I endeavored to keep the Sabbath on Sundays in the tiny chapel, and on occasion would enjoy a pot of cocoa and the morning newspapers in the prison’s coffeehouse, where I listened to the local gossip. Still, in the main, I seldom quitted the apartment, and never till the evening, when I walked on the racquet ground with Mr. Robinson and envied the freedom of the stars.
After a period of several days had elapsed, having gleaned some intelligence from the warden, who would dispense with his knowledge for coin, I told my husband: “I understand that the inmates are permitted to obtain some form of employment during their incarceration.”
“Why should I?” he inquired lazily, puffing upon a clay pipe, a newly acquired habit of his.
“The sooner to discharge your debts,” I replied, endeavoring not to sound as exasperated as I felt. How could he be content with his lot, lolling about in a squalid, nearly airless room, with no liberty in sight unless he obtained the means to be released from his obligations? An incarcerated debtor was like a dog chasing his own tail, an endeavor that would always prove fruitless. By the very dint of imprisonment he had no means, yet was compelled to find a way to afford his food and lodging, plus a garnish, or remuneration for his jailer. While imprisoned, he was expected to earn enough in addition to settle the debts that led him there, and thus obtain his freedom.
Still weak from the exigencies of childbirth, I had willingly agreed to accompany Tom to prison, to cast my lot in with his, but it had never been my intention to languish there. So I took the reins in hand and procured for Mr. Robinson a copyist’s employment. And then I feared turning shrew as he refused to lift a quill, jeopardizing the deadlines for which the work was due, and for giving so little care to the welfare of his family.
“Right, then, I’ll do it!” I declared, and volunteered to undertake the copying work myself. “We need the money, Tom.” My eyes welled with tears. “We’ll never have enough to pay off our creditors otherwise.” He hadn’t even had the money for the doorkeeper’s garnish; he’d had to provide his overcoat as surety instead. “And we have to keep up the payments for our food and lodging in here as well.” As it was, my back was near to breaking from the other employment I had taken on—that of a charwoman at the prison, scrubbing and mopping for hours on end—and still I could not rid the walls, floors, and staircases of years of stench and filth.
Had I not undertaken this drudgery, we could not have afforded to lay our fire that winter, and we all might have frozen to death. The months of January and February, 1776, were fierce, and unusually inclement. Howling winds whipped across the racquet court, blowing the unceasing snowfalls into prodigious drifts. It was far too dangerous to venture out of doors. The streets grew strangely quiet, for the carriages that were able to
