Charles Dickens 6 page to walk on them. I saw her walking on them at the end of
the yard of casks. She had her back towards me, and held
her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and nev-
er looked round, and passed out of my view directly. So, in
the brewery itself - by which I mean the large paved lofty
place in which they used to make the beer, and where the
Great Expectations
brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it, and,
rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking
about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and
ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high
overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.
It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange
thing happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing
then, and I thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. I
turned my eyes - a little dimmed by looking up at the frosty
light - towards a great wooden beam in a low nook of the
building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure hang-
ing there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but
one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the
faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and
that the face was Miss Havisham’s, with a movement going
over the whole countenance as if she were trying to call to
me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of be-
ing certain that it had not been there a moment before, I at
first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror was
greatest of all, when I found no figure there.
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the
sight of people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard
gate, and the reviving influence of the rest of the bread and
meat and beer, would have brought me round. Even with
those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon as I
did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to let
me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down
upon me, I thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would
have no fair reason.
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She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she
rejoiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots were so
thick, and she opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was
passing out without looking at her, when she touched me
with a taunting hand.
‘Why don’t you cry?’
‘Because I don’t want to.’
‘You do,’ said she. ‘You have been crying till you are half
blind, and you are near crying again now.’
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked
the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s,
and was immensely relieved to find him not at home. So,
leaving word with the shopman on what day I was wanted
at Miss Havisham’s again, I set off on the four-mile walk to
our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and
deeply revolving that I was a common labouring-boy; that
my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had
fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I
was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last
night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.
Great Expectations
Chapter 9
When I reached home, my sister was very curious to
know all about Miss Havisham’s, and asked a num-
ber of questions. And I soon found myself getting heavily
bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the small
of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved
against the kitchen wall, because I did not answer those
questions at sufficient length.
If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the
breasts of other young people to anything like the extent
to which it used to be hidden in mine - which I consider
probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of
having been a monstrosity - it is the key to many reserva-
tions. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s
as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only
that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not
be understood; and although she was perfectly incompre-
hensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would
be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as
she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the
contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I
could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.
The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook,
preyed upon by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all
I had seen and heard, came gaping over in his chaise-cart
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at tea-time, to have the details divulged to him. And the
mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes and mouth
open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat
heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my ret-
icence.
‘Well, boy,’ Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was
seated in the chair of honour by the fire. ‘How did you get
on up town?’
I answered, ‘Pretty well, sir,’ and my sister shook her fist
at me.
‘Pretty well?’ Mr. Pumblechook repeated. ‘Pretty well is
no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?’
Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a
state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from
the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I
reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had dis-
covered a new idea, ‘I mean pretty well.’
My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going
to fly at me - I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy
in the forge when Mr. Pumblechook interposed with ‘No!
Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma’am; leave
this lad to me.’ Mr. Pumblechook then turned me towards
him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said:
‘First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?’
I calculated the consequences of replying ‘Four Hundred
Pound,’ and finding them against me, went as near the an-
swer as I could - which was somewhere about eightpence
off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my pence-ta-
ble from ‘twelve pence make one shilling,’ up to ‘forty
Great Expectations
pence make three and fourpence,’ and then triumphantly
demanded, as if he had done for me, ‘Now! How much is
forty-three pence?’ To which I replied, after a long interval
of reflection, ‘I don’t know.’ And I was so aggravated that I
almost doubt if I did know.
Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw
it out of me, and said, ‘Is forty-three pence seven and six-
pence three fardens, for instance?’
‘Yes!’ said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my
ears, it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer
spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead stop.
‘Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?’ Mr. Pumblechook
began again when he had recovered; folding his arms tight
on his chest and applying the screw.
‘Very tall and dark,’ I told him.
‘Is she, uncle?’ asked my sister.
Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once
inferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was
nothing of the kind.
‘Good!’ said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. (“This is the
way to have him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think,
Mum?’)
‘I am sure, uncle,’ returned Mrs. Joe, ‘I wish you had him
always: you know so well how to deal with him.’
‘Now, boy! What was she a-doing of, when you went in
today?’ asked Mr. Pumblechook.
‘She was sitting,’ I answered, ‘in a black velvet coach.’
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another -
as they well might - and both repeated, ‘In a black velvet
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coach?’
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘And Miss Estella - that’s her niece, I think
- handed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a
gold plate. And we all had cake and wine on gold plates.
And I got up behind the coach to eat mine, because she told
me to.’
‘Was anybody else there?’ asked Mr. Pumblechook.
‘Four dogs,’ said I.
‘Large or small?’
‘Immense,’ said I. ‘And they fought for veal cutlets out of
a silver basket.’
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another
again, in utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic - a reck-
less witness under the torture - and would have told them
anything.
‘Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?’ asked
my sister.
‘In Miss Havisham’s room.’ They stared again. ‘But there
weren’t any horses to it.’ I added this saving clause, in the
moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers which
I had had wild thoughts of harnessing.
‘Can this be possible, uncle?’ asked Mrs. Joe. ‘What can
the boy mean?’
‘I’ll tell you, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook. ‘My opinion
is, it’s a sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know - very flighty -
quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.’
‘Did you ever see her in it, uncle?’ asked Mrs. Joe.
‘How could I,’ he returned, forced to the admission, ‘when
I never see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!’
Great Expectations
‘Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?’
‘Why, don’t you know,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, testily,
‘that when I have been there, I have been took up to the out-
side of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has
spoke to me that way. Don’t say you don’t know that, Mum.
Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did you play at,
boy?’
‘We played with flags,’ I said. (I beg to observe that I think
of myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on
this occasion.)
‘Flags!’ echoed my sister.
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red
one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with
little gold stars, out at the coach-window. And then we all
waved our swords and hurrahed.’
‘Swords!’ repeated my sister. ‘Where did you get swords
from?’
‘Out of a cupboard,’ said I. ‘And I saw pistols in it - and
jam - and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but
it was all lighted up with candles.’
‘That’s true, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave
nod. ‘That’s the state of the case, for that much I’ve seen
myself.’ And then they both stared at me, and I, with an
obtrusive show of artlessness on my countenance, stared at
them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers with my right
hand.
If they had asked me any more questions I should un-
doubtedly have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the
point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the yard,
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and should have hazarded the statement but for my inven-
tion being divided between that phenomenon and a bear
in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in
discussing the marvels I had already presented for their con-
sideration, that I escaped. The subject still held them when
Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. To whom my
sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the grati-
fication of his, related my pretended experiences.
Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all
round the kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken
by penitence; but only as regarded him - not in the least as
regarded the other two. Towards Joe, and Joe only, I consid-
ered myself a young monster, while they sat debating what
results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s acquain-
tance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham
would ‘do something’ for me; their doubts related to the
form that something would take. My sister stood out for
‘property.’ Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome
premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade
- say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the
deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright sugges-
tion that I might only be presented with one of the dogs who
had fought for the veal-cutlets. ‘If a fool’s head can’t express
better opinions than that,’ said my sister, ‘and you have got
any work to do, you had better go and do it.’ So he went.
After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my
sister was washing up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and re-
mained by him until he had done for the night. Then I said,
‘Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like to tell you some-
Great Expectations
thing.’
‘Should you, Pip?’ said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool
near the forge. ‘Then tell us. What is it, Pip?’
‘Joe,’ said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and
twisting it between my finger and thumb, ‘you remember
all that about Miss Havisham’s?’
‘Remember?’ said Joe. ‘I believe you! Wonderful!’
‘It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true.’
‘What are you telling of, Pip?’ cried Joe, falling back in
the greatest amazement. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s—‘
‘Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.’
‘But not all of it? Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip,
that there was no black welwet coach?’ For, I stood shaking
my head. ‘But at least there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,’ said
Joe, persuasively, ‘if there warn’t no weal-cutlets, at least
there was dogs?’
‘No, Joe.’
‘A dog?’ said Joe. ‘A puppy? Come?’
‘No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.’
As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated
me in dismay. ‘Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow! I say!
Where do you expect to go to?’
‘It’s terrible, Joe; an’t it?’
‘Terrible?’ cried Joe. ‘Awful! What possessed you?’
‘I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,’ I replied, letting
his shirt sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet,
hanging my head; ‘but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call
Knaves at cards, Jacks; and I wish my boots weren’t so thick
nor my hands so coarse.’
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And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that
I hadn’t been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pum-
blechook who were so rude to me, and that there had been
a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was dread-
fully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I
knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common,
and that the lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t
know how.
This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe
to deal with, as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out
of the region of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished
it. ‘There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,’ said Joe, after
some rumination, ‘namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they
come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the
father of lies, and work round to the same. Don’t you tell no
more of ‘em, Pip. That ain’t the way to get out of being com-
mon, old chap. And as to being common, I don’t make it out
at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You’re on-
common small. Likewise you’re a oncommon scholar.’
‘No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.’
‘Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in
print even! I’ve seen letters - Ah! and from gentlefolks! -
that I’ll swear weren’t wrote in print,’ said Joe.
‘I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me.
It’s only that.’
‘Well, Pip,’ said Joe, ‘be it so or be it son’t, you must be
a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I
should hope! The king upon his throne, with his crown
Great Expectations
upon his ‘ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament in
print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted
Prince, with the alphabet - Ah!’ added Joe, with a shake of
the head that was full of meaning, ‘and begun at A too, and
worked his way to Z. And I know what that is to do, though
I can’t say I’ve exactly done it.’
There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rath-
er encouraged me.
‘Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,’ pur-
sued Joe, reflectively, ‘mightn’t be the better of continuing
for a keep company with common ones, instead of going
out to play with oncommon ones - which reminds me to
hope that there were a flag, perhaps?’
‘No, Joe.’
‘(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip). Whether that might
be, or mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into now,
without putting your sister on the Rampage; and that’s a
thing not to be thought of, as being done intentional. Loo-
kee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Which
this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to be on-
common through going straight, you’ll never get to do it
through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ‘em, Pip,
and live well and die happy.’
‘You are not angry with me, Joe?’
‘No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which
I meantersay of a stunning and outdacious sort - alluding to
them which bordered on weal-cutlets and dog-fighting - a
sincere wellwisher would adwise, Pip, their being dropped
into your meditations, when you go up-stairs to bed. That’s
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all, old chap, and don’t never do it no more.’
When I got up to my little room and said my prayers,
I did not forget Joe’s recommendation, and yet my young
mind was in that disturbed and unthankful state, that I
thought long after I laid me down, how common Estella
would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith: how thick his boots,
and how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister
were then sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come up to
bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella
never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such
common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I ‘used to do’
when I was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been there
weeks or months, instead of hours; and as though it were
quite an old subject of remembrance, instead of one that
had arisen only that day.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great
changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine
one selected day struck out of it, and think how different
its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and
think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of
thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for
the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Great Expectations
Chapter 10
The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two lat-
er when I woke, that the best step I could take towards
making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy every-
thing she knew. In pursuance of this luminous conception
I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s great-
aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to
get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her
if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was
the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and
indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.
The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr.
Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into the following
synopsis. The pupils ate apples and put straws down one
another’s backs, until Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her
energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with
a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of
derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a
ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alpha-
bet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling - that
is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to
circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of coma;
arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pu-
pils then entered among themselves upon a competitive
examination on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascer-
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taining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This
mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and
distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been
unskilfully cut off the chump-end of something), more il-
legibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature
I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould,
and having various specimens of the insect world smashed
between their leaves. This part of the Course was usually
lightened by several single combats between Biddy and re-
fractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out
the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we
could - or what we couldn’t - in a frightful chorus; Biddy
leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of
us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were
reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain
time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, who
staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was
understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we
emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It
is fair to remark that there was no prohibition against any
pupil’s entertaining himself with a slate or even with the
ink (when there was any), but that it was not easy to pursue
that branch of study in the winter season, on account of the
little general shop in which the classes were holden - and
which was also Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s sitting-room and
bed-chamber - being but faintly illuminated through the
agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.
It appeared to me that it would take time, to become
uncommon under these circumstances: nevertheless, I re-
Great Expectations
solved to try it, and that very evening Biddy entered on our
special agreement, by imparting some information from
her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sug-
ar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D
which she had imitated from the heading of some newspa-
per, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to
be a design for a buckle.
Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of
course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had
received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the
Three Jolly Bargemen, that evening, on my way from school,
and bring him home at my peril. To the Three Jolly Barge-
men, therefore, I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarm-
ingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the
door, which seemed to me to be never paid off. They had
been there ever since I could remember, and had grown
more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about
our country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportu-
nity of turning it to account.
It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking
rather grimly at these records, but as my business was with
Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening,
and passed into the common room at the end of the pas-
sage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and where
Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and
a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with ‘Halloa, Pip, old
chap!’ and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his
head and looked at me.
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He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen be-
fore. His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was
half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an
invisible gun. He had a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out,
and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away and looking
hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he
nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that
I might sit down there.
But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that
place of resort, I said ‘No, thank you, sir,’ and fell into the
space Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The strange
man, after glancing at Joe, and seeing that his attention was
otherwise engaged, nodded to me again when I had taken
my seat, and then rubbed his leg - in a very odd way, as it
struck me.
‘You was saying,’ said the strange man, turning to Joe,
‘that you was a blacksmith.’
‘Yes. I said it, you know,’ said Joe.
‘What’ll you drink, Mr. - ? You didn’t mention your
name, by-the-bye.’
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him
by it. ‘What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To
top up with?’
‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘to tell you the truth, I ain’t much in the
habit of drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.’
‘Habit? No,’ returned the stranger, ‘but once and away,
and on a Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr.
Gargery.’
‘I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,’ said Joe. ‘Rum.’
Great Expectations
‘Rum,’ repeated the stranger. ‘And will the other gentle-
man originate a sentiment.’
‘Rum,’ said Mr. Wopsle.
‘Three Rums!’ cried the stranger, calling to the landlord.
‘Glasses round!’
‘This other gentleman,’ observed Joe, by way of introduc-
ing Mr. Wopsle, ‘is a gentleman that you would like to hear
give it out. Our clerk at church.’
‘Aha!’ said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye
at me. ‘The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with
graves round it!’
‘That’s it,’ said Joe.
The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his
pipe, put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He
wore a flapping broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and under it
a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner of a cap: so
that he showed no hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought
I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come
into his face.
‘I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it
seems a solitary country towards the river.’
‘Most marshes is solitary,’ said Joe.
‘No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies, now, or
tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?’
‘No,’ said Joe; ‘none but a runaway convict now and then.
And we don’t find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?’
Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old dis-
comfiture, assented; but not warmly.
‘Seems you have been out after such?’ asked the stranger.
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‘Once,’ returned Joe. ‘Not that we wanted to take them,
you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr.
Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us, Pip?’
‘Yes, Joe.’
The stranger looked at me again - still cocking his eye, as
if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun
- and said, ‘He’s a likely young parcel of bones that. What is
it you call him?’
‘Pip,’ said Joe.
‘Christened Pip?’
‘No, not christened Pip.’
‘Surname Pip?’
‘No,’ said Joe, ‘it’s a kind of family name what he gave
himself when a infant, and is called by.’
‘Son of yours?’
‘Well,’ said Joe, meditatively - not, of course, that it could
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