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Charles Dickens 16 page

though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his

own perception that it was very near being so. When he had

talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather

anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and

handsome, ‘Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?’

And she looked up from her book, and said, ‘Yes.’ She then

smiled upon me in an absent state of mind, and asked me if

I liked the taste of orange-flower water? As the question had

no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or subsequent

transaction, I consider it to have been thrown out, like her

previous approaches, in general conversational condescen-

sion.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once,

that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite

accidental deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a

conviction that his deceased father would have been made

a Baronet but for somebody’s determined opposition aris-

 

Great Expectations

ing out of entirely personal motives - I forget whose, if I

ever knew - the Sovereign’s, the Prime Minister’s, the Lord

Chancellor’s, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, anybody’s

- and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in

right of this quite supposititious fact. I believe he had been

knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the

point of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vel-

lum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some

building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage

either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had

directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as

one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who

was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domes-

tic knowledge.

So successful a watch and ward had been established

over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had

grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and

useless. With her character thus happily formed, in the first

bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who

was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided

whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in

with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a mere

question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the

forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to

have wanted cutting), and had married without the knowl-

edge of the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having

nothing to bestow or withhold but his blessing, had hand-

somely settled that dower upon them after a short struggle,

and had informed Mr. Pocket that his wife was ‘a treasure

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for a Prince.’ Mr. Pocket had invested the Prince’s treasure

in the ways of the world ever since, and it was supposed

to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs.

Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful

pity, because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket



was the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because

he had never got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my

room: which was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I

could use it with comfort for my own private sitting-room.

He then knocked at the doors of two other similar rooms,

and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drum-

mle and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a

heavy order of architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger

in years and appearance, was reading and holding his head,

as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with too

strong a charge of knowledge.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of

being in somebody else’s hands, that I wondered who really

was in possession of the house and let them live there, un-

til I found this unknown power to be the servants. It was a

smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of saving trou-

ble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the

servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in

their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company

down stairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and

Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the

best part of the house to have boarded in, would have been

the kitchen - always supposing the boarder capable of self-

 

Great Expectations

defence, for, before I had been there a week, a neighbouring

lady with whom the family were personally unacquaint-

ed, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers slapping the

baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into

tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraor-

dinary thing that the neighbours couldn’t mind their own

business.

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr.

Pocket had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge,

where he had distinguished himself; but that when he had

had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in

life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the call-

ing of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades

- of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when influ-

ential, were always going to help him to preferment, but

always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grind-

stone - he had wearied of that poor work and had come to

London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he

had ‘read’ with divers who had lacked opportunities or ne-

glected them, and had refurbished divers others for special

occasions, and had turned his acquirements to the account

of literary compilation and correction, and on such means,

added to some very moderate private resources, still main-

tained the house I saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow

lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with

everybody, blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on

everybody, according to circumstances. This lady’s name

was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the honour of taking her down

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to dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me to un-

derstand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear Mrs. Pocket

that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of re-

ceiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not extend

to me, she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that

time, I had known her something less than five minutes); if

they were all like Me, it would be quite another thing.

‘But dear Mrs. Pocket,’ said Mrs. Coiler, ‘after her early

disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in

that), requires so much luxury and elegance—‘

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was

going to cry.

‘And she is of so aristocratic a disposition—‘

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said again, with the same object as before.

‘ - that it is hard,’ said Mrs. Coiler, ‘to have dear Mr. Pock-

et’s time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket.’

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the

butcher’s time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs.

Pocket; but I said nothing, and indeed had enough to do in

keeping a bashful watch upon my company-manners.

It came to my knowledge, through what passed be-

tween Mrs. Pocket and Drummle while I was attentive to

my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of

self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian name was

Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronetcy. It

further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket read-

ing in the garden, was all about titles, and that she knew the

exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into

the book, if he ever had come at all. Drummle didn’t say

 

Great Expectations

much, but in his limited way (he struck me as a sulky kind

of fellow) he spoke as one of the elect, and recognized Mrs.

Pocket as a woman and a sister. No one but themselves and

Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbour showed any interest in this

part of the conversation, and it appeared to me that it was

painful to Herbert; but it promised to last a long time, when

the page came in with the announcement of a domestic af-

fliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid the beef.

To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, saw

Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance

that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no

impression on anybody else, and with which I soon became

as familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving-knife and

fork - being engaged in carving, at the moment - put his two

hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an ex-

traordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done

this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on

with what he was about.

Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to flat-

ter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so

very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a ser-

pentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to

be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left,

which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when

she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said

very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather

envied them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs.

Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and

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legs - a sagacious way of improving their minds. There were

four little girls, and two little boys, besides the baby who

might have been either, and the baby’s next successor who

was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson and

Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned of-

ficers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had

enlisted these: while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young No-

bles that ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had

had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn’t quite

know what to make of them.

‘Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby,’ said

Flopson. ‘Don’t take it that way, or you’ll get its head under

the table.’

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got

its head upon the table; which was announced to all present

by a prodigious concussion.

‘Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum,’ said Flopson; ‘and

Miss Jane, come and dance to baby, do!’

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have

prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others,

stepped out of her place by me, and danced to and from the

baby until it left off crying, and laughed. Then, all the chil-

dren laughed, and Mr. Pocket (who in the meantime had

twice endeavoured to lift himself up by the hair) laughed,

and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like

a Dutch doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket’s lap, and

gave it the nutcrackers to play with: at the same time recom-

mending Mrs. Pocket to take notice that the handles of that

Great Expectations

instrument were not likely to agree with its eyes, and sharp-

ly charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then, the two

nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase

with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who

had clearly lost half his buttons at the gamingtable.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket’s

falling into a discussion with Drummle respecting two bar-

onetcies, while she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and

wine, and forgetting all about the baby on her lap: who did

most appalling things with the nutcrackers. At length, little

Jane perceiving its young brains to be imperilled, softly left

her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the danger-

ous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about

the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane:

‘You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this

instant!’

‘Mamma dear,’ lisped the little girl, ‘baby ood have put

hith eyeth out.’

‘How dare you tell me so?’ retorted Mrs. Pocket. ‘Go and

sit down in your chair this moment!’

Mrs. Pocket’s dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite

abashed: as if I myself had done something to rouse it.

‘Belinda,’ remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end

of the table, ‘how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only in-

terfered for the protection of baby.’

‘I will not allow anybody to interfere,’ said Mrs. Pocket.

‘I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the

affront of interference.’

‘Good God!’ cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of deso-

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late desperation. ‘Are infants to be nutcrackered into their

tombs, and is nobody to save them?’

‘I will not be interfered with by Jane,’ said Mrs. Pock-

et, with a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. ‘I

hope I know my poor grandpapa’s position. Jane, indeed!’

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time

really did lift himself some inches out of his chair. ‘Hear

this!’ he helplessly exclaimed to the elements. ‘Babies are to

be nutcrackered dead, for people’s poor grandpapa’s posi-

tions!’ Then he let himself down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this

was going on. A pause succeeded, during which the hon-

est and irrepressible baby made a series of leaps and crows

at little Jane, who appeared to me to be the only member of

the family (irrespective of servants) with whom it had any

decided acquaintance.

‘Mr. Drummle,’ said Mrs. Pocket, ‘will you ring for Flop-

son? Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now,

baby darling, come with ma!’

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its

might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket’s

arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles

to the company in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in

the highest state of mutiny. And it gained its point after all,

for I saw it through the window within a few minutes, being

nursed by little Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind

at the dinner-table, through Flopson’s having some private

engagement, and their not being anybody else’s business. I

 

Great Expectations

thus became aware of the mutual relations between them

and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in the following

manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face

heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some

minutes, as if he couldn’t make out how they came to be

boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they

hadn’t been billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then,

in a distant, Missionary way he asked them certain ques-

tions - as why little Joe had that hole in his frill: who said,

Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when she had time - and

how little Fanny came by that whitlow: who said, Pa, Mill-

ers was going to poultice it when she didn’t forget. Then, he

melted into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling

apiece and told them to go and play; and then as they went

out, with one very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair

he dismissed the hopeless subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drum-

mle and Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine,

and to cut them both out. I was pretty good at most exercis-

es in which countryboys are adepts, but, as I was conscious

of wanting elegance of style for the Thames - not to say for

other waters - I at once engaged to place myself under the

tuition of the winner of a prizewherry who plied at our

stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies. This

practical authority confused me very much, by saying I had

the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly

the compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would have

paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I

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think we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather

disagreeable domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good

spirits, when a housemaid came in, and said, ‘If you please,

sir, I should wish to speak to you.’

‘Speak to your master?’ said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity

was roused again. ‘How can you think of such a thing? Go

and speak to Flopson. Or speak to me - at some other time.’

‘Begging your pardon, ma’am,’ returned the housemaid,

‘I should wish to speak at once, and to speak to master.’

Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we

made the best of ourselves until he came back.

‘This is a pretty thing, Belinda!’ said Mr. Pocket, return-

ing with a countenance expressive of grief and despair.

‘Here’s the cook lying insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor,

with a large bundle of fresh butter made up in the cupboard

ready to sell for grease!’

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion,

and said, ‘This is that odious Sophia’s doing!’

‘What do you mean, Belinda?’ demanded Mr. Pocket.

‘Sophia has told you,’ said Mrs. Pocket. ‘Did I not see her

with my own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come

into the room just now and ask to speak to you?’

‘But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda,’ returned

Mr. Pocket, ‘and shown me the woman, and the bundle

too?’

‘And do you defend her, Matthew,’ said Mrs. Pocket, ‘for

making mischief?’

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

‘Am I, grandpapa’s granddaughter, to be nothing in the

 

Great Expectations

house?’ said Mrs. Pocket. ‘Besides, the cook has always been

a very nice respectful woman, and said in the most natural

manner when she came to look after the situation, that she

felt I was born to be a Duchess.’

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped

upon it in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that

attitude he said, with a hollow voice, ‘Good night, Mr. Pip,’

when I deemed it advisable to go to bed and leave him.

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Chapter 24

After two or three days, when I had established myself

in my room and had gone backwards and forwards to

London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my

tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together. He

knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for

he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I was

not designed for any profession, and that I should be well

enough educated for my destiny if I could ‘hold my own’

with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances.

I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary.

He advised my attending certain places in London, for

the acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my

investing him with the functions of explainer and director

of all my studies. He hoped that with intelligent assistance

I should meet with little to discourage me, and should soon

be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his way of

saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed

himself on confidential terms with me in an admirable

manner; and I may state at once that he was always so zeal-

ous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that

he made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with

him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no

doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil;

he gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other

 

Great Expectations

justice. Nor, did I ever regard him as having anything ludi-

crous about him - or anything but what was serious, honest,

and good - in his tutor communication with me.

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as

that I had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if

I could retain my bedroom in Barnard’s Inn, my life would

be agreeably varied, while my manners would be none the

worse for Herbert’s society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this

arrangement, but urged that before any step could possi-

bly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I

felt that this delicacy arose out of the consideration that the

plan would save Herbert some expense, so I went off to Lit-

tle Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

‘If I could buy the furniture now hired for me,’ said I,

‘and one or two other little things, I should be quite at home

there.’

‘Go it!’ said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. ‘I told you

you’d get on. Well! How much do you want?’

I said I didn’t know how much.

‘Come!’ retorted Mr. Jaggers. ‘How much? Fifty pounds?’

‘Oh, not nearly so much.’

‘Five pounds?’ said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, ‘Oh!

more than that.’

‘More than that, eh!’ retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait

for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side,

and his eyes on the wall behind me; ‘how much more?’

‘It is so difficult to fix a sum,’ said I, hesitating.

‘Come!’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Let’s get at it. Twice five; will

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that do? Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will

that do?’

I said I thought that would do handsomely.

‘Four times five will do handsomely, will it?’ said Mr. Jag-

gers, knitting his brows. ‘Now, what do you make of four

times five?’

‘What do I make of it?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Jaggers; ‘how much?’

‘I suppose you make it twenty pounds,’ said I, smiling.

‘Never mind what I make it, my friend,’ observed Mr.

Jaggers, with a knowing and contradictory toss of his head.

‘I want to know what you make it.’

‘Twenty pounds, of course.’

‘Wemmick!’ said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door.

‘Take Mr. Pip’s written order, and pay him twenty pounds.’

This strongly marked way of doing business made a

strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an

agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed; but he wore

great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on

these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows

joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused

the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious

way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was

brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew

what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner.

‘Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,’ an-

swered Wemmick; ‘he don’t mean that you should know

what to make of it. - Oh!’ for I looked surprised, ‘it’s not

personal; it’s professional: only professional.’

 

Great Expectations

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching - and crunching - on

a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to

time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

‘Always seems to me,’ said Wemmick, ‘as if he had set

a mantrap and was watching it. Suddenly - click - you’re

caught!’

Without remarking that mantraps were not among the

amenities of life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?

‘Deep,’ said Wemmick, ‘as Australia.’ Pointing with his

pen at the office floor, to express that Australia was under-

stood, for the purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on

the opposite spot of the globe. ‘If there was anything deeper,’

added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, ‘he’d be it.’

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wem-

mick said, ‘Ca-pi-tal!’ Then I asked if there were many

clerks? to which he replied:

‘We don’t run much into clerks, because there’s only one

Jaggers, and people won’t have him at second-hand. There

are only four of us. Would you like to see ‘em? You are one

of us, as I may say.’

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the

biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a

cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere

down his back and produced from his coat-collar like an

iron pigtail, we went up-stairs. The house was dark and

shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark

in Mr. Jaggers’s room, seemed to have been shuffling up

and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a

clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-

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catcher - a large pale puffed swollen man - was attentively

engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance,

whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed

to be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers’s coffers. ‘Get-

ting evidence together,’ said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out,

‘for the Bailey.’

In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with

dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten

when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man

with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick presented to me as

a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would

melt me anything I pleased - and who was in an exces-

sive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on

himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a face-

ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black

clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was

stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of

the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers’s own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down-

stairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian’s room,

and said, ‘This you’ve seen already.’

‘Pray,’ said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer

upon them caught my sight again, ‘whose likenesses are

those?’

‘These?’ said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blow-

ing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them

down. ‘These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of

ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must

have come down in the night and been peeping into the

Great Expectations

inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old ras-

cal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn’t

brought up to evidence, didn’t plan it badly.’

‘Is it like him?’ I asked, recoiling from the brute, as

Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his

sleeve.

‘Like him? It’s himself, you know. The cast was made

in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a

particular fancy for me, hadn’t you, Old Artful?’ said Wem-

mick. He then explained this affectionate apostrophe, by

touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping

willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, ‘Had it

made for me, express!’

‘Is the lady anybody?’ said I.

‘No,’ returned Wemmick. ‘Only his game. (You liked


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