Charles Dickens 21 page guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you
were not endowed with expectations only? And even if he
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had not told you so - though that is a very large If, I grant
- could you believe that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is
the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he
were sure of his ground?’
I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said
it (people often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant
concession to truth and justice; - as if I wanted to deny it!
‘I should think it was a strong point,’ said Herbert, ‘and
I should think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger;
as to the rest, you must bide your guardian’s time, and he
must bide his client’s time. You’ll be one-and-twenty before
you know where you are, and then perhaps you’ll get some
further enlightenment. At all events, you’ll be nearer get-
ting it, for it must come at last.’
‘What a hopeful disposition you have!’ said I, gratefully
admiring his cheery ways.
‘I ought to have,’ said Herbert, ‘for I have not much else. I
must acknowledge, by-the-bye, that the good sense of what
I have just said is not my own, but my father’s. The only re-
mark I ever heard him make on your story, was the final
one: ‘The thing is settled and done, or Mr. Jaggers would
not be in it.’ And now before I say anything more about my
father, or my father’s son, and repay confidence with confi-
dence, I want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you
for a moment - positively repulsive.’
‘You won’t succeed,’ said I.
‘Oh yes I shall!’ said he. ‘One, two, three, and now I am in
for it. Handel, my good fellow;’ though he spoke in this light
tone, he was very much in earnest: ‘I have been thinking
Great Expectations
since we have been talking with our feet on this fender, that
Estella surely cannot be a condition of your inheritance, if
she was never referred to by your guardian. Am I right in so
understanding what you have told me, as that he never re-
ferred to her, directly or indirectly, in any way? Never even
hinted, for instance, that your patron might have views as
to your marriage ultimately?’
‘Never.’
‘Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour
grapes, upon my soul and honour! Not being bound to her,
can you not detach yourself from her? - I told you I should
be disagreeable.’
I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like
the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like
that which had subdued me on the morning when I left the
forge, when the mists were solemnly rising, and when I laid
my hand upon the village finger-post, smote upon my heart
again. There was silence between us for a little while.
‘Yes; but my dear Handel,’ Herbert went on, as if we had
been talking instead of silent, ‘its having been so strongly
rooted in the breast of a boy whom nature and circum-
stances made so romantic, renders it very serious. Think
of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. Think of
what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you abominate
me). This may lead to miserable things.’
‘I know it, Herbert,’ said I, with my head still turned away,
‘but I can’t help it.’
‘You can’t detach yourself?’
‘No. Impossible!’
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‘You can’t try, Handel?’
‘No. Impossible!’
‘Well!’ said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he
had been asleep, and stirring the fire; ‘now I’ll endeavour to
make myself agreeable again!’
So he went round the room and shook the curtains out,
put the chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth
that were lying about, looked into the hall, peeped into the
letter-box, shut the door, and came back to his chair by the
fire: where he sat down, nursing his left leg in both arms.
‘I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my
father and my father’s son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary
for my father’s son to remark that my father’s establishment
is not particularly brilliant in its housekeeping.’
‘There is always plenty, Herbert,’ said I: to say something
encouraging.
‘Oh yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the
strongest approval, and so does the marine-store shop in
the back street. Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave
enough, you know how it is, as well as I do. I suppose there
was a time once when my father had not given matters up;
but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I ask you if you
have ever had an opportunity of remarking, down in your
part of the country, that the children of not exactly suitable
marriages, are always most particularly anxious to be mar-
ried?’
This was such a singular question, that I asked him in
return, ‘Is it so?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Herbert, ‘that’s what I want to know.
Great Expectations
Because it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister
Charlotte who was next me and died before she was four-
teen, was a striking example. Little Jane is the same. In her
desire to be matrimonially established, you might suppose
her to have passed her short existence in the perpetual con-
templation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a frock has
already made arrangements for his union with a suitable
young person at Kew. And indeed, I think we are all en-
gaged, except the baby.’
‘Then you are?’ said I.
‘I am,’ said Herbert; ‘but it’s a secret.’
I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be
favoured with further particulars. He had spoken so sen-
sibly and feelingly of my weakness that I wanted to know
something about his strength.
‘May I ask the name?’ I said.
‘Name of Clara,’ said Herbert.
‘Live in London?’
‘Yes. perhaps I ought to mention,’ said Herbert, who had
become curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on
the interesting theme, ‘that she is rather below my mother’s
nonsensical family notions. Her father had to do with the
victualling of passenger-ships. I think he was a species of
purser.’
‘What is he now?’ said I.
‘He’s an invalid now,’ replied Herbert.
‘Living on - ?’
‘On the first floor,’ said Herbert. Which was not at all
what I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to
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his means. ‘I have never seen him, for he has always kept
his room overhead, since I have known Clara. But I have
heard him constantly. He makes tremendous rows - roars,
and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.’ In
looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert for the
time recovered his usual lively manner.
‘Don’t you expect to see him?’ said I.
‘Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him,’ returned Herbert,
‘because I never hear him, without expecting him to come
tumbling through the ceiling. But I don’t know how long
the rafters may hold.’
When he had once more laughed heartily, he became
meek again, and told me that the moment he began to real-
ize Capital, it was his intention to marry this young lady. He
added as a self-evident proposition, engendering low spir-
its, ‘But you can’t marry, you know, while you’re looking
about you.’
As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a dif-
ficult vision to realize this same Capital sometimes was, I
put my hands in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in one
of them attracting my attention, I opened it and found it to
be the playbill I had received from Joe, relative to the cel-
ebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown. ‘And bless
my heart,’ I involuntarily added aloud, ‘it’s to-night!’
This changed the subject in an instant, and made us
hurriedly resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged
myself to comfort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart
by all practicable and impracticable means, and when Her-
bert had told me that his affianced already knew me by
Great Expectations
reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when
we had warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence,
we blew out our candles, made up our fire, locked our door,
and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and Denmark.
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Chapter 31
On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and
queen of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on
a kitchen-table, holding a Court. The whole of the Danish
nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in the
wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer
with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people
late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair
and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the whole a
feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily
apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his
curls and forehead had been more probable.
Several curious little circumstances transpired as the
action proceeded. The late king of the country not only ap-
peared to have been troubled with a cough at the time of
his decease, but to have taken it with him to the tomb, and
to have brought it back. The royal phantom also carried a
ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had
the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, too, with
an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of refer-
ence which were suggestive of a state of mortality. It was
this, I conceive, which led to the Shade’s being advised by
the gallery to ‘turn over!’ - a recommendation which it took
extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic
spirit that whereas it always appeared with an air of having
Great Expectations
been out a long time and walked an immense distance, it
perceptibly came from a closely contiguous wall. This oc-
casioned its terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of
Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historical-
ly brazen, was considered by the public to have too much
brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem by
a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous tooth-
ache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her
arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as ‘the
kettledrum.’ The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was in-
consistent; representing himself, as it were in one breath,
as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a cler-
gyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a Court
fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and
nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This
gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and even - on
his being detected in holy orders, and declining to perform
the funeral service - to the general indignation taking the
form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musi-
cal madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off
her white muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky
man who had been long cooling his impatient nose against
an iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, ‘Now
the baby’s put to bed let’s have supper!’ Which, to say the
least of it, was out of keeping.
Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents ac-
cumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided
Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public
helped him out with it. As for example; on the question
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whether ‘twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared
yes, and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said
‘toss up for it;’ and quite a Debating Society arose. When
he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling be-
tween earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries
of ‘Hear, hear!’ When he appeared with his stocking dis-
ordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one
very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got
up with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery
respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occa-
sioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking
the recorders - very like a little black flute that had just been
played in the orchestra and handed out at the door - he was
called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When he rec-
ommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man
said, ‘And don’t you do it, neither; you’re a deal worse than
him!’ And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr.
Wopsle on every one of these occasions.
But his greatest trials were in the churchyard: which had
the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ec-
clesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on
the other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, be-
ing descried entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was
admonished in a friendly way, ‘Look out! Here’s the under-
taker a-coming, to see how you’re a-getting on with your
work!’ I believe it is well known in a constitutional coun-
try that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned the
skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his fingers
on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that in-
Great Expectations
nocent and indispensable action did not pass without the
comment ‘Wai-ter!’ The arrival of the body for interment
(in an empty black box with the lid tumbling open), was
the signal for a general joy which was much enhanced by
the discovery, among the bearers, of an individual obnox-
ious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle through
his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and
the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the
king off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the
ankles upward.
We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to ap-
plaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted
in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laugh-
ing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself
all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet I had a la-
tent impression that there was something decidedly fine in
Mr. Wopsle’s elocution - not for old associations’ sake, I am
afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-
hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any
man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever ex-
pressed himself about anything. When the tragedy was over,
and he had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert,
‘Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him.’
We made all the haste we could down-stairs, but we were
not quick enough either. Standing at the door was a Jew-
ish man with an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who
caught my eyes as we advanced, and said, when we came
up with him:
‘Mr. Pip and friend?’
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Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.
‘Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the man, ‘would be glad to have
the honour.’
‘Waldengarver?’ I repeated - when Herbert murmured in
my ear, ‘Probably Wopsle.’
‘Oh!’ said I. ‘Yes. Shall we follow you?’
‘A few steps, please.’ When we were in a side alley, he
turned and asked, ‘How did you think he looked? - I dressed
him.’
I don’t know what he had looked like, except a funer-
al; with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging
round his neck by a blue ribbon, that had given him the
appearance of being insured in some extraordinary Fire Of-
fice. But I said he had looked very nice.
‘When he come to the grave,’ said our conductor, ‘he
showed his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing,
it looked to me that when he see the ghost in the queen’s
apartment, he might have made more of his stockings.’
I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty
swing door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately
behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his
Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to
look at him over one another’s shoulders, by keeping the
packing-case door, or lid, wide open.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Wopsle, ‘I am proud to see you. I
hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the
happiness to know you in former times, and the Drama has
ever had a claim which has ever been acknowledged, on the
noble and the affluent.’
Great Expectations
Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspira-
tion, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables.
‘Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the own-
er of that property, ‘or you’ll bust ‘em. Bust ‘em, and you’ll
bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was com-
plimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now,
and leave ‘em to me.’
With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his
victim; who, on the first stocking coming off, would cer-
tainly have fallen over backward with his chair, but for
there being no room to fall anyhow.
I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play.
But then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently,
and said:
‘Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?’
Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me),
‘capitally.’ So I said ‘capitally.’
‘How did you like my reading of the character, gentle-
men?’ said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with
patronage.
Herbert said from behind (again poking me), ‘massive
and concrete.’ So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and
must beg to insist upon it, ‘massive and concrete.’
‘I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen,’ said Mr.
Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being
ground against the wall at the time, and holding on by the
seat of the chair.
‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the
man who was on his knees, ‘in which you’re out in your
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reading. Now mind! I don’t care who says contrairy; I tell
you so. You’re out in your reading of Hamlet when you get
your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed, made the
same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to
put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at that
rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the
back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought him into
profile, I called out ‘I don’t see no wafers!’ And at night his
reading was lovely.’
Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say ‘a
faithful dependent - I overlook his folly;’ and then said
aloud, ‘My view is a little classic and thoughtful for them
here; but they will improve, they will improve.’
Herbert and I said together, Oh, no doubt they would
improve.
‘Did you observe, gentlemen,’ said Mr. Waldengarver,
‘that there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured to cast
derision on the service - I mean, the representation?’
We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed
such a man. I added, ‘He was drunk, no doubt.’
‘Oh dear no, sir,’ said Mr. Wopsle, ‘not drunk. His em-
ployer would see to that, sir. His employer would not allow
him to be drunk.’
‘You know his employer?’ said I.
Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; per-
forming both ceremonies very slowly. ‘You must have
observed, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘an ignorant and a blatant
ass, with a rasping throat and a countenance expressive of
low malignity, who went through - I will not say sustained
Great Expectations
- the role (if I may use a French expression) of Claudius King
of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such is the
profession!’
Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been
more sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was
so sorry for him as it was, that I took the opportunity of his
turning round to have his braces put on - which jostled us
out at the doorway - to ask Herbert what he thought of hav-
ing him home to supper? Herbert said he thought it would
be kind to do so; therefore I invited him, and he went to
Barnard’s with us, wrapped up to the eyes, and we did our
best for him, and he sat until two o’clock in the morning,
reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in
detail what they were, but I have a general recollection that
he was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with
crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly
bereft and without a chance or hope.
Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought
of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations
were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in mar-
riage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s
Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing
twenty words of it.
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Chapter 32
One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket,
I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which
threw me into a great flutter; for, though I had never seen
the handwriting in which it was addressed, I divined whose
hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or
Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:
‘I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the
mid-day coach. I believe it was settled you should meet
me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I
write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.
Yours, ESTELLA.’
If there had been time, I should probably have ordered
several suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was
not, I was fain to be content with those I had. My appetite
vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the
day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me either; for, then
I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-of-
fice in wood-street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the
Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly
well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office
be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time; and
in this condition of unreason I had performed the first half-
hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran
against me.
Great Expectations
‘Halloa, Mr. Pip,’ said he; ‘how do you do? I should hardly
have thought this was your beat.’
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who
was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and
the Aged.
‘Both flourishing thankye,’ said Wemmick, ‘and particu-
larly the Aged. He’s in wonderful feather. He’ll be eighty-two
next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if
the neighbourhood shouldn’t complain, and that cannon of
mine should prove equal to the pressure. However, this is
not London talk. where do you think I am going to?’
‘To the office?’ said I, for he was tending in that direc-
tion.
‘Next thing to it,’ returned Wemmick, ‘I am going to
Newgate. We are in a banker’s-parcel case just at present,
and I have been down the road taking as squint at the scene
of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our
client.’
‘Did your client commit the robbery?’ I asked.
‘Bless your soul and body, no,’ answered Wemmick, very
drily. ‘But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of
us might be accused of it, you know.’
‘Only neither of us is,’ I remarked.
‘Yah!’ said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his
forefinger; ‘you’re a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to
have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?’
I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as
a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my la-
tent desire to keep my eye on the coach-office. Muttering
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that I would make the inquiry whether I had time to walk
with him, I went into the office, and ascertained from the
clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of
his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could
be expected - which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he.
I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my
watch and to be surprised by the information I had received,
accepted his offer.
We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed
through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on
the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of
the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the
period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public
wrong-doing - and which is always its heaviest and longest
punishment - was still far off. So, felons were not lodged
and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and
seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object
of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time
when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his
rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards,
were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frouzy, ugly,
disorderly, depressing scene it was.
It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners,
much as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was
first put into my head by his seeing a shoot that had come
up in the night, and saying, ‘What, Captain Tom? Are you
there? Ah, indeed!’ and also, ‘Is that Black Bill behind the
cistern? Why I didn’t look for you these two months; how
do you find yourself?’ Equally in his stopping at the bars
Great Expectations
and attending to anxious whisperers - always singly - Wem-
mick with his post-office in an immovable state, looked at
them while in conference, as if he were taking particular
notice of the advance they had made, since last observed,
towards coming out in full blow at their trial.
He was highly popular, and I found that he took the
familiar department of Mr. Jaggers’s business: though
something of the state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too,
forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His personal
recognition of each successive client was comprised in a
nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head
with both hands, and then tightening the postoffice, and
putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances,
there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then
Mr. Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insuffi-
cient money produced, said, ‘it’s no use, my boy. I’m only a
subordinate. I can’t take it. Don’t go on in that way with a
subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum,
my boy, you had better address yourself to a principal; there
are plenty of principals in the profession, you know, and
what is not worth the while of one, may be worth the while
of another; that’s my recommendation to you, speaking as
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