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Charles Dickens 15 page

‘What relation is she to Miss Havisham?’

‘None,’ said he. ‘Only adopted.’

‘Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What

revenge?’

‘Lord, Mr. Pip!’ said he. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘No,’ said I.

‘Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till din-

ner-time. And now let me take the liberty of asking you a

question. How did you come there, that day?’

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and

then burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore

afterwards? I didn’t ask him if he was, for my conviction on

that point was perfectly established.

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‘Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?’ he went on.

‘Yes.’

‘You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and

solicitor, and has her confidence when nobody else has?’

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground.

I answered with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise,

that I had seen Mr. Jaggers in Miss Havisham’s house on

the very day of our combat, but never at any other time, and

that I believed he had no recollection of having ever seen

me there.

‘He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor,

and he called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew

about my father from his connexion with Miss Havisham.

My father is Miss Havisham’s cousin; not that that implies

familiar intercourse between them, for he is a bad courtier

and will not propitiate her.’

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that

was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have

never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to

me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do any-

thing secret and mean. There was something wonderfully

hopeful about his general air, and something that at the

same time whispered to me he would never be very suc-

cessful or rich. I don’t know how this was. I became imbued

with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to

dinner, but I cannot define by what means.

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain

conquered languor about him in the midst of his spirits and

briskness, that did not seem indicative of natural strength.

 

Great Expectations

He had not a handsome face, but it was better than hand-

some: being extremely amiable and cheerful. His figure was

a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had tak-

en such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always

be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s local work would

have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a ques-

tion; but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old

clothes, much better than I carried off my new suit.

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my

part would be a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore

told him my small story, and laid stress on my being forbid-

den to inquire who my benefactor was. I further mentioned

that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a country

place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would



take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint

whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong.

‘With pleasure,’ said he, ‘though I venture to prophesy

that you’ll want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often

together, and I should like to banish any needless restraint

between us. Will you do me the favour to begin at once to

call me by my Christian name, Herbert?’

I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in ex-

change that my Christian name was Philip.

‘I don’t take to Philip,’ said he, smiling, ‘for it sounds like

a moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that

he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his

eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice

ate it, or so determined to go a bird’s-nesting that he got

himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighbour-

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hood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious,

and you have been a blacksmith - would you mind it?’

‘I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,’ I answered,

‘but I don’t understand you.’

‘Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a

charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious

Blacksmith.’

‘I should like it very much.’

‘Then, my dear Handel,’ said he, turning round as the

door opened, ‘here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to

take the top of the table, because the dinner is of your pro-

viding.’

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced

him. It was a nice little dinner - seemed to me then, a very

Lord Mayor’s Feast - and it acquired additional relish from

being eaten under those independent circumstances, with

no old people by, and with London all around us. This again

was heightened by a certain gipsy character that set the

banquet off; for, while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook

might have said, the lap of luxury - being entirely furnished

forth from the coffee-house - the circumjacent region of

sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty

character: imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of

putting the covers on the floor (where he fell over them),

the melted butter in the armchair, the bread on the book-

shelves, the cheese in the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl

into my bed in the next room - where I found much of its

parsley and butter in a state of congelation when I retired

for the night. All this made the feast delightful, and when

Great Expectations

the waiter was not there to watch me, my pleasure was with-

out alloy.

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I re-

minded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss

Havisham.

‘True,’ he replied. ‘I’ll redeem it at once. Let me introduce

the topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not

the custom to put the knife in the mouth - for fear of acci-

dents - and that while the fork is reserved for that use, it is

not put further in than necessary. It is scarcely worth men-

tioning, only it’s as well to do as other people do. Also, the

spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under. This has

two advantages. You get at your mouth better (which after

all is the object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of

opening oysters, on the part of the right elbow.’

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way,

that we both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

‘Now,’ he pursued, ‘concerning Miss Havisham. Miss

Havisham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother

died when she was a baby, and her father denied her noth-

ing. Her father was a country gentleman down in your part

of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should

be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that

while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be

as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day.’

‘Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?’

said I.

‘Not on any account,’ returned Herbert; ‘but a public-

house may keep a gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very

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rich and very proud. So was his daughter.’

‘Miss Havisham was an only child?’ I hazarded.

‘Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an

only child; she had a half-brother. Her father privately mar-

ried again - his cook, I rather think.’

‘I thought he was proud,’ said I.

‘My good Handel, so he was. He married his second

wife privately, because he was proud, and in course of time

she died. When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his

daughter what he had done, and then the son became a

part of the family, residing in the house you are acquainted

with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riot-

ous, extravagant, undutiful - altogether bad. At last his

father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dy-

ing, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as

Miss Havisham. - Take another glass of wine, and excuse

my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one

to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to

turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.’

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his re-

cital. I thanked him, and apologized. He said, ‘Not at all,’

and resumed.

‘Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may sup-

pose was looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had

now ample means again, but what with debts and what with

new madness wasted them most fearfully again. There were

stronger differences between him and her, than there had

been between him and his father, and it is suspected that he

cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her, as having

 

Great Expectations

influenced the father’s anger. Now, I come to the cruel part

of the story - merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to re-

mark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler.’

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am

wholly unable to say. I only know that I found myself, with

a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, making the

most strenuous exertions to compress it within those lim-

its. Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he said

in the cheerfullest manner, ‘Not at all, I am sure!’ and re-

sumed.

‘There appeared upon the scene - say at the races, or the

public balls, or anywhere else you like - a certain man, who

made love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him, for this hap-

pened five-and-twenty years ago (before you and I were,

Handel), but I have heard my father mention that he was

a showy-man, and the kind of man for the purpose. But

that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mis-

taken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates;

because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a

true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a

true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the

grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on,

the more the grain will express itself. Well! This man pur-

sued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to

her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to

that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed, certainly

came out then, and she passionately loved him. There is no

doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on her

affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of

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money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out

of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him

by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when

he was her husband he must hold and manage it all. Your

guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham’s councils,

and she was too haughty and too much in love, to be advised

by any one. Her relations were poor and scheming, with the

exception of my father; he was poor enough, but not time-

serving or jealous. The only independent one among them,

he warned her that she was doing too much for this man,

and was placing herself too unreservedly in his power. She

took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my father out

of the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen

her since.’

I thought of her having said, ‘Matthew will come and see

me at last when I am laid dead upon that table;’ and I asked

Herbert whether his father was so inveterate against her?

‘It’s not that,’ said he, ‘but she charged him, in the pres-

ence of her intended husband, with being disappointed in

the hope of fawning upon her for his own advancement,

and, if he were to go to her now, it would look true - even

to him - and even to her. To return to the man and make

an end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding

dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out,

the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the

bridegroom. He wrote her a letter—‘

‘Which she received,’ I struck in, ‘when she was dressing

for her marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?’

‘At the hour and minute,’ said Herbert, nodding, ‘at

 

Great Expectations

which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in

it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage

off, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. When she recov-

ered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place

waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked

upon the light of day.’

‘Is that all the story?’ I asked, after considering it.

‘All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through

piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and,

even when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me

no more of it than it was absolutely requisite I should under-

stand. But I have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed

that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence,

acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it

was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the

profits.’

‘I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,’

said I.

‘He may have been married already, and her cruel morti-

fication may have been a part of her half-brother’s scheme,’

said Herbert.

‘Mind! I don’t know that.’

‘What became of the two men?’ I asked, after again con-

sidering the subject.

‘They fell into deeper shame and degradation - if there

can be deeper - and ruin.’

‘Are they alive now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You said just now, that Estella was not related to Miss

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Havisham, but adopted. When adopted?’

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. ‘There has always been

an Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know

no more. And now, Handel,’ said he, finally throwing off

the story as it were, ‘there is a perfectly open understand-

ing between us. All that I know about Miss Havisham, you

know.’

‘And all that I know,’ I retorted, ‘you know.’

‘I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or per-

plexity between you and me. And as to the condition on

which you hold your advancement in life - namely, that you

are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it - you may

be very sure that it will never be encroached upon, or even

approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me.’

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt

the subject done with, even though I should be under his

father’s roof for years and years to come. Yet he said it with

so much meaning, too, that I felt he as perfectly understood

Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as I understood the

fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to

the theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but

we were so much the lighter and easier for having broached

it, that I now perceived this to be the case. We were very gay

and sociable, and I asked him, in the course of conversation,

what he was? He replied, ‘A capitalist - an Insurer of Ships.’

I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in search of

some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, ‘In the

City.’

 

Great Expectations

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insur-

ers of Ships in the City, and I began to think with awe, of

having laid a young Insurer on his back, blackened his en-

terprising eye, and cut his responsible head open. But, again,

there came upon me, for my relief, that odd impression that

Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich.

‘I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital

in insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance

shares, and cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in

the mining way. None of these things will interfere with my

chartering a few thousand tons on my own account. I think

I shall trade,’ said he, leaning back in his chair, ‘to the East

Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious

woods. It’s an interesting trade.’

‘And the profits are large?’ said I.

‘Tremendous!’ said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater

expectations than my own.

‘I think I shall trade, also,’ said he, putting his thumbs in

his waistcoat pockets, ‘to the West Indies, for sugar, tobac-

co, and rum. Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants’ tusks.’

‘You will want a good many ships,’ said I.

‘A perfect fleet,’ said he.

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transac-

tions, I asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded

to at present?

‘I haven’t begun insuring yet,’ he replied. ‘I am looking

about me.’

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with

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Barnard’s Inn. I said (in a tone of conviction), ‘Ah-h!’

‘Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.’

‘Is a counting-house profitable?’ I asked.

‘To - do you mean to the young fellow who’s in it?’ he

asked, in reply.

‘Yes; to you.’

‘Why, n-no: not to me.’ He said this with the air of one

carefully reckoning up and striking a balance. ‘Not directly

profitable. That is, it doesn’t pay me anything, and I have to

- keep myself.’

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I

shook my head as if I would imply that it would be difficult

to lay by much accumulative capital from such a source of

income.

‘But the thing is,’ said Herbert Pocket, ‘that you look

about you. That’s the grand thing. You are in a counting-

house, you know, and you look about you.’

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn’t

be out of a counting-house, you know, and look about you;

but I silently deferred to his experience.

‘Then the time comes,’ said Herbert, ‘when you see your

opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you

make your capital, and then there you are! When you have

once made your capital, you have nothing to do but employ

it.’This was very like his way of conducting that encounter

in the garden; very like. His manner of bearing his poverty,

too, exactly corresponded to his manner of bearing that de-

feat. It seemed to me that he took all blows and buffets now,

 

Great Expectations

with just the same air as he had taken mine then. It was

evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest

necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out

to have been sent in on my account from the coffee-house or

somewhere else.

Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind,

he was so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to

him for not being puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to

his naturally pleasant ways, and we got on famously. In

the evening we went out for a walk in the streets, and went

half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went to church at

Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in the

Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and

wished Joe did.

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that

Sunday, since I had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed

between myself and them, partook of that expansion, and

our marshes were any distance off. That I could have been

at our old church in my old church-going clothes, on the

very last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of im-

possibilities, geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet

in the London streets, so crowded with people and so bril-

liantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing

hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen

at home so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps

of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Bar-

nard’s Inn, under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my

heart.

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Her-

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bert went to the counting-house to report himself - to look

about him, too, I suppose - and I bore him company. He

was to come away in an hour or two to attend me to Ham-

mersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It appeared to

me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched,

were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches,

judging from the places to which those incipient giants re-

paired on a Monday morning. Nor did the counting-house

where Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all a good Ob-

servatory; being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy

presence in all particulars, and with a look into another

back second floor, rather than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon ‘Change,

and I saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about ship-

ping, whom I took to be great merchants, though I couldn’t

understand why they should all be out of spirits. When

Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a celebrated house

which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have been

the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could

not help noticing, even then, that there was much more gra-

vy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters’ clothes, than

in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moderate price

(considering the grease: which was not charged for), we

went back to Barnard’s Inn and got my little portmanteau,

and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there

at two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and had very little

way to walk to Mr. Pocket’s house. Lifting the latch of a gate,

we passed direct into a little garden overlooking the river,

where Mr. Pocket’s children were playing about. And unless

Great Expectations

I deceive myself on a point where my interests or preposses-

sions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.

Pocket’s children were not growing up or being brought up,

but were tumbling up.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree,

reading, with her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs.

Pocket’s two nursemaids were looking about them while

the children played. ‘Mamma,’ said Herbert, ‘this is young

Mr. Pip.’ Upon which Mrs. Pocket received me with an ap-

pearance of amiable dignity.

‘Master Alick and Miss Jane,’ cried one of the nurses to

two of the children, ‘if you go a-bouncing up against them

bushes you’ll fall over into the river and be drownded, and

what’ll your pa say then?’

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket’s

handkerchief, and said, ‘If that don’t make six times you’ve

dropped it, Mum!’ Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and

said, ‘Thank you, Flopson,’ and settling herself in one chair

only, resumed her book. Her countenance immediately as-

sumed a knitted and intent expression as if she had been

reading for a week, but before she could have read half a

dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, ‘I hope

your mamma is quite well?’ This unexpected inquiry put

me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest

way that if there had been any such person I had no doubt

she would have been quite well and would have been very

much obliged and would have sent her compliments, when

the nurse came to my rescue.

‘Well!’ she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief, ‘if

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that don’t make seven times! What ARE you a-doing of this

afternoon, Mum!’ Mrs. Pocket received her property, at first

with a look of unutterable surprise as if she had never seen

it before, and then with a laugh of recognition, and said,

‘Thank you, Flopson,’ and forgot me, and went on reading.

I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were

no fewer than six little Pockets present, in various stages of

tumbling up. I had scarcely arrived at the total when a sev-

enth was heard, as in the region of air, wailing dolefully.

‘If there ain’t Baby!’ said Flopson, appearing to think it

most surprising. ‘Make haste up, Millers.’

Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house,

and by degrees the child’s wailing was hushed and stopped,

as if it were a young ventriloquist with something in its

mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all the time, and I was curious to

know what the book could be.

We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out

to us; at any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportu-

nity of observing the remarkable family phenomenon that

whenever any of the children strayed near Mrs. Pocket in

their play, they always tripped themselves up and tumbled

over her - always very much to her momentary astonish-

ment, and their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a

loss to account for this surprising circumstance, and could

not help giving my mind to speculations about it, until by-

and-by Millers came down with the baby, which baby was

handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.

Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs.

Pocket, baby and all, and was caught by Herbert and my-

 

Great Expectations

self.‘Gracious me, Flopson!’ said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her

book for a moment, ‘everybody’s tumbling!’

‘Gracious you, indeed, Mum!’ returned Flopson, very red

in the face; ‘what have you got there?’

‘I got here, Flopson?’ asked Mrs. Pocket.

‘Why, if it ain’t your footstool!’ cried Flopson. ‘And if you

keep it under your skirts like that, who’s to help tumbling?

Here! Take the baby, Mum, and give me your book.’

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced

the infant a little in her lap, while the other children played

about it. This had lasted but a very short time, when Mrs.

Pocket issued summary orders that they were all to be taken

into the house for a nap. Thus I made the second discovery

on that first occasion, that the nurture of the little Pockets

consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down.

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Mill-

ers had got the children into the house, like a little flock of

sheep, and Mr. Pocket came out of it to make my acquain-

tance, I was not much surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was

a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and

with his very grey hair disordered on his head, as if he didn’t

quite see his way to putting anything straight.

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Chapter 23

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped

I was not sorry to see him. ‘For, I really am not,’ he

added, with his son’s smile, ‘an alarming personage.’ He

was a young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and

his very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite natural.

I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffect-

ed; there was something comic in his distraught way, as


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