to hear my descriptions of
Millbank, and of the prisoners in it. What they have asked for, however, are
dreadful details to make them shudder; and though my memories of the gaol have
stayed very crisp, those are not at all the kind of points that I recall. I have been
haunted, rather, by the ordinariness of it; by the fact that it lies there at all, two
miles away, a straight cab''s ride from Chelsea—that great, grim, shadowy place,
with its fifteen hundred men and women, all shut up and obliged to be silent and
meek. I have found myself remembering them, in the midst of some plain act—
taking tea, because I am thirsty; taking up a book or a shawl, because I am idle or
cold; saying, aloud, some line of verse, merely for the pleasure of hearing the fine
words spoken. I have done these things, that I have done a thousand times; and I
have remembered the prisoners, who may do none of them.
I wonder how many of them lie in their cold cells, dreaming of china cups, and
books, and verses? I have dreamt of Millbank this week, more than once. I dreamt
I was among the prisoners there, straightening the lines of my knife and fork and
Bible, in a cell of my own.
But these are not the details people ask me for; and though they understand
my going there once, as a kind of entertainment, the thought of my returning