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Charles Dickens 1 page

Great Expectations

By Charles Dickens

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Chapter 1

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian

name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both

names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called

myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the author-

ity of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who

married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my

mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for

their days were long before the days of photographs), my

first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreason-

ably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters

on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square,

stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the charac-

ter and turn of the inscription, ‘Also Georgiana Wife of the

Above,’ I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was

freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about

a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row

beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five

little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living,

exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted

for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been

born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pock-

ets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within,

 

Great Expectations

as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most

vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems

to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon

towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that

this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard;

and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Geor-

giana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that

Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, in-

fant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried;

and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard,

intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scat-

tered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low

leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant sav-

age lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and

that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and

beginning to cry, was Pip.

‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started

up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.

‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his

leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an

old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked

in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and

cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who



limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose

teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray

don’t do it, sir.’

‘Tell us your name!’ said the man. ‘Quick!’

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‘Pip, sir.’

‘Once more,’ said the man, staring at me. ‘Give it

mouth!’

‘Pip. Pip, sir.’

‘Show us where you live,’ said the man. ‘Pint out the

place!’

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore

among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from

the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me

upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing

in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself

- for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head

over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet -

when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high

tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.

‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what fat

cheeks you ha’ got.’

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time under-

sized for my years, and not strong.

‘Darn me if I couldn’t eat em,’ said the man, with a threat-

ening shake of his head, ‘and if I han’t half a mind to’t!’

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held

tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to

keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

‘Now lookee here!’ said the man. ‘Where’s your mother?’

‘There, sir!’ said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked

over his shoulder.

 

Great Expectations

‘There, sir!’ I timidly explained. ‘Also Georgiana. That’s

my mother.’

‘Oh!’ said he, coming back. ‘And is that your father

alonger your mother?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said I; ‘him too; late of this parish.’

‘Ha!’ he muttered then, considering. ‘Who d’ye live with

- supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up

my mind about?’

‘My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery,

the blacksmith, sir.’

‘Blacksmith, eh?’ said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he

came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and

tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes

looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked

most helplessly up into his.

‘Now lookee here,’ he said, ‘the question being whether

you’re to be let to live. You know what a file is?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you know what wittles is?’

‘Yes, sir.’

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as

to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

‘You get me a file.’ He tilted me again. ‘And you get me

wittles.’ He tilted me again. ‘You bring ‘em both to me.’ He

tilted me again. ‘Or I’ll have your heart and liver out.’ He

tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to

him with both hands, and said, ‘If you would kindly please

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to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and

perhaps I could attend more.’

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the

church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held

me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the

stone, and went on in these fearful terms:

‘You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and

them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery

over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word

or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a

person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to

live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no

matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall

be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain’t alone, as you may

think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in compari-

son with which young man I am a Angel. That young man

hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way

pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart,

and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide

himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may

be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes

over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but

that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him

and tear him open. I am a-keeping that young man from

harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty.

I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside.

Now, what do you say?’

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him

what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him

 

Great Expectations

at the Battery, early in the morning.

‘Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!’ said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

‘Now,’ he pursued, ‘you remember what you’ve undertook,

and you remember that young man, and you get home!’

‘Goo-good night, sir,’ I faltered.

‘Much of that!’ said he, glancing about him over the cold

wet flat. ‘I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!’

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both

his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself together -

and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go,

picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles

that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes

as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretch-

ing up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his

ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like

a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned

round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my

face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But

presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on

again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms,

and picking his way with his sore feet among the great

stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for step-

ping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then,

as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another

horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the

sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black

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lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly

make out the only two black things in all the prospect that

seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon

by which the sailors steered - like an unhooped cask upon a

pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gib-

bet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held

a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if

he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going

back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn

when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads

to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I

looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see

no signs of him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran

home without stopping.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 2

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years

older than I, and had established a great reputation

with herself and the neighbours because she had brought

me up ‘by hand.’ Having at that time to find out for myself

what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard

and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it

upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe

Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had

a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery

marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen

hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a

very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got

mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured,

sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow - a sort of

Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a

prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder

whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-

grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost

always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure be-

hind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib

in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made

it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against

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Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see

no reason why she should have worn it at all: or why, if she

did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day

of her life.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden

house, as many of the dwellings in our country were - most

of them, at that time. When I ran home from the church-

yard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in

the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having

confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the

moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him

opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

‘Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip.

And she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler

with her.’

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on

my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depres-

sion at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn

smooth by collision with my tickled frame.

‘She sot down,’ said Joe, ‘and she got up, and she made a

grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she did,’

said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with

the poker, and looking at it: ‘she Ram-paged out, Pip.’

‘Has she been gone long, Joe?’ I always treated him as a

larger species of child, and as no more than my equal.

‘Well,’ said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, ‘she’s

been on the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes,

Great Expectations

Pip. She’s a- coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and

have the jack-towel betwixt you.’

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door

wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immedi-

ately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its further

investigation. She concluded by throwing me - I often

served as a connubial missile - at Joe, who, glad to get hold

of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and

quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

‘Where have you been, you young monkey?’ said Mrs.

Joe, stamping her foot. ‘Tell me directly what you’ve been

doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or

I’d have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he

was five hundred Gargerys.’

‘I have only been to the churchyard,’ said I, from my stool,

crying and rubbing myself.

‘Churchyard!’ repeated my sister. ‘If it warn’t for me

you’d have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed

there. Who brought you up by hand?’

‘You did,’ said I.

‘And why did I do it, I should like to know?’ exclaimed

my sister.

I whimpered, ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t!’ said my sister. ‘I’d never do it again! I know that.

I may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off, since

born you were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife

(and him a Gargery) without being your mother.’

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked dis-

consolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes

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with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the

food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a lar-

ceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me in the

avenging coals.

‘Hah!’ said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station.

‘Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you

two.’ One of us, by-the-bye, had not said it at all. ‘You’ll

drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days,

and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without me!’

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped

down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me

and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we prac-

tically should make, under the grievous circumstances

foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen

curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his

blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-

butter for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she

jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib - where it

sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which

we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she took some

butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in

an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaist-

er - using both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity,

and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust.

Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of

the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf:

which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed

into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

Great Expectations

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared

not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in re-

serve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still

more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe’s housekeeping

to be of the strictest kind, and that my larcenous researches

might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I re-

solved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg of

my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of

this purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to

make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or

plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more

difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned

freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured

companionship with me, it was our evening habit to com-

pare the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding

them up to each other’s admiration now and then - which

stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times

invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to

enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me,

each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my

untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desper-

ately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done,

and that it had best be done in the least improbable man-

ner consistent with the circumstances. I took advantage of a

moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my bread-

and-butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he sup-

posed to be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite

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out of his slice, which he didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it

about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over

it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was

about to take another bite, and had just got his head on one

side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and

he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped

on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evi-

dent to escape my sister’s observation.

‘What’s the matter now?’ said she, smartly, as she put

down her cup.

‘I say, you know!’ muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in

very serious remonstrance. ‘Pip, old chap! You’ll do your-

self a mischief. It’ll stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed

it, Pip.’

‘What’s the matter now?’ repeated my sister, more sharp-

ly than before.

‘If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend

you to do it,’ said Joe, all aghast. ‘Manners is manners, but

still your elth’s your elth.’

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced

on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his

head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I

sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.

‘Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,’ said my

sister, out of breath, ‘you staring great stuck pig.’

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless

bite, and looked at me again.

‘You know, Pip,’ said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in

Great Expectations

his cheek and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two

were quite alone, ‘you and me is always friends, and I’d be

the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a—’ he moved

his chair and looked about the floor between us, and then

again at me - ‘such a most oncommon Bolt as that!’

‘Been bolting his food, has he?’ cried my sister.

‘You know, old chap,’ said Joe, looking at me, and not

at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, ‘I Bolted, my-

self, when I was your age - frequent - and as a boy I’ve been

among a many Bolters; but I never see your Bolting equal

yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you ain’t Bolted dead.’

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the

hair: saying nothing more than the awful words, ‘You come

along and be dosed.’

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days

as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it

in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspon-

dent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this

elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I

was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. On

this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded a

pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for

my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her

arm, as a boot would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with

half a pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his dis-

turbance, as he sat slowly munching and meditating before

the fire), ‘because he had had a turn.’ Judging from myself, I

should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had

none before.

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Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or

boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-

operates with another secret burden down the leg of his

trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment. The

guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe - I never

thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of

the housekeeping property as his - united to the necessity of

always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat, or

when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand,

almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds

made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice out-

side, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me

to secrecy, declaring that he couldn’t and wouldn’t starve

until to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I

thought, What if the young man who was with so much dif-

ficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should

yield to a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the

time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and

liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody’s hair

stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But,

perhaps, nobody’s ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for

next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the

Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that

made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg),

and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-

butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily, I

slipped away, and deposited that part of my conscience in

my garret bedroom.

Great Expectations

‘Hark!’ said I, when I had done my stirring, and was tak-

ing a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up

to bed; ‘was that great guns, Joe?’

‘Ah!’ said Joe. ‘There’s another conwict off.’

‘What does that mean, Joe?’ said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself,

said, snappishly, ‘Escaped. Escaped.’ Administering the

definition like Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her nee-

dlework, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe,

‘What’s a convict?’ Joe put his mouth into the forms of re-

turning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could make

out nothing of it but the single word ‘Pip.’

‘There was a conwict off last night,’ said Joe, aloud, ‘after

sun-set-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now, it

appears they’re firing warning of another.’

‘Who’s firing?’ said I.

‘Drat that boy,’ interposed my sister, frowning at me over

her work, ‘what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and

you’ll be told no lies.’

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I

should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she

never was polite, unless there was company.

At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by tak-

ing the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to

put it into the form of a word that looked to me like ‘sulks.’

Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth

into the form of saying ‘her?’ But Joe wouldn’t hear of that,

at all, and again opened his mouth very wide, and shook the

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form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make

nothing of the word.

‘Mrs. Joe,’ said I, as a last resort, ‘I should like to know - if

you wouldn’t much mind - where the firing comes from?’

‘Lord bless the boy!’ exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t

quite mean that, but rather the contrary. ‘From the Hulks!’

‘Oh-h!’ said I, looking at Joe. ‘Hulks!’

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, ‘Well, I

told you so.’

‘And please what’s Hulks?’ said I.

‘That’s the way with this boy!’ exclaimed my sister, point-

ing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head

at me. ‘Answer him one question, and he’ll ask you a doz-

en directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right ‘cross th’ meshes.’

We always used that name for marshes, in our country.

‘I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re

put there?’ said I, in a general way, and with quiet despera-

tion.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. ‘I

tell you what, young fellow,’ said she, ‘I didn’t bring you up

by hand to badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to

me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks be-

cause they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do

all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions.

Now, you get along to bed!’

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as

I went upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling - from

Mrs. Joe’s thimble having played the tambourine upon it,

to accompany her last words - I felt fearfully sensible of the

Great Expectations

great convenience that the Hulks were handy for me. I was

clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions,

and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have

often thought that few people know what secrecy there is

in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable


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