Chapter 43

CHAPTER XLIII
SHOWING HOW Mr. SAMUEL WELLER GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES

In a lofty room, ill-lighted and worse ventilated, situated in
Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, there sit nearly the
whole year round, one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs,
as the case may be, with little writing-desks before them,
constructed after the fashion of those used by the judges of the land,
barring the French polish. There is a box of barristers on their
right hand; there is an enclosure of insolvent debtors on their left;
and there is an inclined plane of most especially dirty faces in
their front. These gentlemen are the Commissioners of the
Insolvent Court, and the place in which they sit, is the Insolvent
Court itself.

It is, and has been, time out of mind, the remarkable fate of
this court to be, somehow or other, held and understood, by the
general consent of all the destitute shabby-genteel people in
London, as their common resort, and place of daily refuge. It is
always full. The steams of beer and spirits perpetually ascend to
the ceiling, and, being condensed by the heat, roll down the walls
like rain; there are more old suits of clothes in it at one time,
than will be offered for sale in all Houndsditch in a twelvemonth;
more unwashed skins and grizzly beards than all the pumps and
shaving-shops between Tyburn and Whitechapel could render
decent, between sunrise and sunset.

It must not be supposed that any of these people have the least
shadow of business in, or the remotest connection with, the place
they so indefatigably attend. If they had, it would be no matter of
surprise, and the singularity of the thing would cease. Some of
them sleep during the greater part of the sitting; others carry
small portable dinners wrapped in pocket-handkerchiefs or
sticking out of their worn-out pockets, and munch and listen
with equal relish; but no one among them was ever known to have
the slightest personal interest in any case that was ever brought
forward. Whatever they do, there they sit from the first moment
to the last. When it is heavy, rainy weather, they all come in, wet
through; and at such times the vapours of the court are like those
of a fungus-pit.

A casual visitor might suppose this place to be a temple
dedicated to the Genius of Seediness. There is not a messenger or
process-server attached to it, who wears a coat that was made for
him; not a tolerably fresh, or wholesome-looking man in the
whole establishment, except a little white-headed apple-faced
tipstaff, and even he, like an ill-conditioned cherry preserved in
brandy, seems to have artificially dried and withered up into a
state of preservation to which he can lay no natural claim. The
very barristers'