Charles Dickens 24 page birthday, with a crowd of speculations and anticipations,
for we had both considered that my guardian could hardly
help saying something definite on that occasion.
I had taken care to have it well understood in Little
Britain, when my birthday was. On the day before it, I re-
ceived an official note from Wemmick, informing me that
Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call upon him at five
in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This convinced us
that something great was to happen, and threw me into an
unusual flutter when I repaired to my guardian’s office, a
model of punctuality.
In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratu-
lations, and incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with
a folded piece of tissuepaper that I liked the look of. But
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he said nothing respecting it, and motioned me with a nod
into my guardian’s room. It was November, and my guard-
ian was standing before his fire leaning his back against the
chimney-piece, with his hands under his coattails.
‘Well, Pip,’ said he, ‘I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. Con-
gratulations, Mr. Pip.’
We shook hands - he was always a remarkably short
shaker - and I thanked him.
‘Take a chair, Mr. Pip,’ said my guardian.
As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his
brows at his boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded
me of that old time when I had been put upon a tombstone.
The two ghastly casts on the shelf were not far from him,
and their expression was as if they were making a stupid
apoplectic attempt to attend to the conversation.
‘Now my young friend,’ my guardian began, as if I were
a witness in the box, ‘I am going to have a word or two with
you.’
‘If you please, sir.’
‘What do you suppose,’ said Mr. Jaggers, bending for-
ward to look at the ground, and then throwing his head
back to look at the ceiling, ‘what do you suppose you are
living at the rate of?’
‘At the rate of, sir?’
‘At,’ repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, ‘the
- rate - of?’ And then looked all round the room, and paused
with his pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half way to his
nose.
I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had thor-
Great Expectations
oughly destroyed any slight notion I might ever have had of
their bearings. Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite unable
to answer the question. This reply seemed agreeable to Mr.
Jaggers, who said, ‘I thought so!’ and blew his nose with an
air of satisfaction.
‘Now, I have asked you a question, my friend,’ said Mr.
Jaggers. ‘Have you anything to ask me?’
‘Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you sev-
eral questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.’
‘Ask one,’ said Mr. Jaggers.
‘Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day?’
‘No. Ask another.’
‘Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?’
‘Waive that, a moment,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘and ask anoth-
er.’I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no pos-
sible escape from the inquiry, ‘Have - I - anything to receive,
sir?’ On that, Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, ‘I thought we
should come to it!’ and called to Wemmick to give him that
piece of paper. Wemmick appeared, handed it in, and dis-
appeared.
‘Now, Mr. Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘attend, if you please.
You have been drawing pretty freely here; your name oc-
curs pretty often in Wemmick’s cash-book; but you are in
debt, of course?’
‘I am afraid I must say yes, sir.’
‘You know you must say yes; don’t you?’ said Mr. Jaggers.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t ask you what you owe, because you don’t know;
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and if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me; you would say
less. Yes, yes, my friend,’ cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his fore-
finger to stop me, as I made a show of protesting: ‘it’s likely
enough that you think you wouldn’t, but you would. You’ll
excuse me, but I know better than you. Now, take this piece
of paper in your hand. You have got it? Very good. Now, un-
fold it and tell me what it is.’
‘This is a bank-note,’ said I, ‘for five hundred pounds.’
‘That is a bank-note,’ repeated Mr. Jaggers, ‘for five hun-
dred pounds. And a very handsome sum of money too, I
think. You consider it so?’
‘How could I do otherwise!’
‘Ah! But answer the question,’ said Mr. Jaggers.
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money.
Now, that handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a
present to you on this day, in earnest of your expectations.
And at the rate of that handsome sum of money per annum,
and at no higher rate, you are to live until the donor of the
whole appears. That is to say, you will now take your mon-
ey affairs entirely into your own hands, and you will draw
from Wemmick one hundred and twenty-five pounds per
quarter, until you are in communication with the fountain-
head, and no longer with the mere agent. As I have told you
before, I am the mere agent. I execute my instructions, and I
am paid for doing so. I think them injudicious, but I am not
paid for giving any opinion on their merits.’
I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor
for the great liberality with which I was treated, when Mr.
Great Expectations
Jaggers stopped me. ‘I am not paid, Pip,’ said he, coolly, ‘to
carry your words to any one;’ and then gathered up his coat-
tails, as he had gathered up the subject, and stood frowning
at his boots as if he suspected them of designs against him.
After a pause, I hinted:
‘There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which you
desired me to waive for a moment. I hope I am doing noth-
ing wrong in asking it again?’
‘What is it?’ said he.
I might have known that he would never help me out; but
it took me aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it
were quite new. ‘Is it likely,’ I said, after hesitating, ‘that my
patron, the fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers,
will soon—’ there I delicately stopped.
‘Will soon what?’ asked Mr. Jaggers. ‘That’s no question
as it stands, you know.’
‘Will soon come to London,’ said I, after casting about for
a precise form of words, ‘or summon me anywhere else?’
‘Now here,’ replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first
time with his dark deep-set eyes, ‘we must revert to the eve-
ning when we first encountered one another in your village.
What did I tell you then, Pip?’
‘You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence
when that person appeared.’
‘Just so,’ said Mr. Jaggers; ‘that’s my answer.’
As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come
quicker in my strong desire to get something out of him.
And as I felt that it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw
that it came quicker, I felt that I had less chance than ever of
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getting anything out of him.
‘Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?’
Mr. Jaggers shook his head - not in negativing the ques-
tion, but in altogether negativing the notion that he could
anyhow be got to answer it - and the two horrible casts of
the twitched faces looked, when my eyes strayed up to them,
as if they had come to a crisis in their suspended attention,
and were going to sneeze.
‘Come!’ said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs
with the backs of his warmed hands, ‘I’ll be plain with you,
my friend Pip. That’s a question I must not be asked. You’ll
understand that, better, when I tell you it’s a question that
might compromise me. Come! I’ll go a little further with
you; I’ll say something more.’
He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was
able to rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made.
‘When that person discloses,’ said Mr. Jaggers, straight-
ening himself, ‘you and that person will settle your own
affairs. When that person discloses, my part in this busi-
ness will cease and determine. When that person discloses,
it will not be necessary for me to know anything about it.
And that’s all I have got to say.’
We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and
looked thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I de-
rived the notion that Miss Havisham, for some reason or
no reason, had not taken him into her confidence as to her
designing me for Estella; that he resented this, and felt a
jealousy about it; or that he really did object to that scheme,
and would have nothing to do with it. When I raised my
Great Expectations
eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me
all the time, and was doing so still.
‘If that is all you have to say, sir,’ I remarked, ‘there can be
nothing left for me to say.’
He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded
watch, and asked me where I was going to dine? I replied at
my own chambers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence,
I asked him if he would favour us with his company, and he
promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on walk-
ing home with me, in order that I might make no extra
preparation for him, and first he had a letter or two to write,
and (of course) had his hands to wash. So, I said I would go
into the outer office and talk to Wemmick.
The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had
come into my pocket, a thought had come into my head
which had been often there before; and it appeared to me
that Wemmick was a good person to advise with, concern-
ing such thought.
He had already locked up his safe, and made prepara-
tions for going home. He had left his desk, brought out
his two greasy office candlesticks and stood them in line
with the snuffers on a slab near the door, ready to be extin-
guished; he had raked his fire low, put his hat and great-coat
ready, and was beating himself all over the chest with his
safe-key, as an athletic exercise after business.
‘Mr. Wemmick,’ said I, ‘I want to ask your opinion. I am
very desirous to serve a friend.’
Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head,
as if his opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of
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that sort.
‘This friend,’ I pursued, ‘is trying to get on in commercial
life, but has no money, and finds it difficult and dishearten-
ing to make a beginning. Now, I want somehow to help him
to a beginning.’
‘With money down?’ said Wemmick, in a tone drier than
any sawdust.
‘With some money down,’ I replied, for an uneasy re-
membrance shot across me of that symmetrical bundle
of papers at home; ‘with some money down, and perhaps
some anticipation of my expectations.’
‘Mr. Pip,’ said Wemmick, ‘I should like just to run over
with you on my fingers, if you please, the names of the vari-
ous bridges up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let’s see; there’s
London, one; Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three; Waterloo,
four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six.’ He had checked off
each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his safe-key on
the palm of his hand. ‘There’s as many as six, you see, to
choose from.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said I.
‘Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,’ returned Wemmick, ‘and
take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into
the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you
know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may know
the end of it too - but it’s a less pleasant and profitable end.’
I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made
it so wide after saying this.
‘This is very discouraging,’ said I.
‘Meant to be so,’ said Wemmick.
Great Expectations
‘Then is it your opinion,’ I inquired, with some little in-
dignation, ‘that a man should never—‘
‘ - Invest portable property in a friend?’ said Wemmick.
‘Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the
friend - and then it becomes a question how much portable
property it may be worth to get rid of him.’
‘And that,’ said I, ‘is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wem-
mick?’
‘That,’ he returned, ‘is my deliberate opinion in this of-
fice.’
‘Ah!’ said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near
a loophole here; ‘but would that be your opinion at Wal-
worth?’
‘Mr. Pip,’ he replied, with gravity, ‘Walworth is one place,
and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person,
and Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded
together. My Walworth sentiments must be taken at Wal-
worth; none but my official sentiments can be taken in this
office.’
‘Very well,’ said I, much relieved, ‘then I shall look you up
at Walworth, you may depend upon it.’
‘Mr. Pip,’ he returned, ‘you will be welcome there, in a
private and personal capacity.’
We had held this conversation in a low voice, well know-
ing my guardian’s ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he
now appeared in his doorway, towelling his hands, Wem-
mick got on his greatcoat and stood by to snuff out the
candles. We all three went into the street together, and from
the door-step Wemmick turned his way, and Mr. Jaggers
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and I turned ours.
I could not help wishing more than once that evening,
that Mr. Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrard-street, or a
Stinger, or a Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his
brows a little. It was an uncomfortable consideration on a
twenty-first birthday, that coming of age at all seemed hard-
ly worth while in such a guarded and suspicious world as he
made of it. He was a thousand times better informed and
cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand times
rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr. Jaggers made
not me alone intensely melancholy, because, after he was
gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire,
that he thought he must have committed a felony and for-
gotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.
Great Expectations
Chapter 37
Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick’s
Walworth sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sun-
day afternoon to a pilgrimage to the Castle. On arriving
before the battlements, I found the Union Jack flying and
the drawbridge up; but undeterred by this show of defiance
and resistance, I rang at the gate, and was admitted in a
most pacific manner by the Aged.
‘My son, sir,’ said the old man, after securing the draw-
bridge, ‘rather had it in his mind that you might happen to
drop in, and he left word that he would soon be home from
his afternoon’s walk. He is very regular in his walks, is my
son. Very regular in everything, is my son.’
I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself
might have nodded, and we went in and sat down by the
fireside.
‘You made acquaintance with my son, sir,’ said the old
man, in his chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the
blaze, ‘at his office, I expect?’ I nodded. ‘Hah! I have heerd
that my son is a wonderful hand at his business, sir?’ I nod-
ded hard. ‘Yes; so they tell me. His business is the Law?’ I
nodded harder. ‘Which makes it more surprising in my son,’
said the old man, ‘for he was not brought up to the Law, but
to the Wine-Coopering.’
Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed
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concerning the reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that
name at him. He threw me into the greatest confusion by
laughing heartily and replying in a very sprightly manner,
‘No, to be sure; you’re right.’ And to this hour I have not the
faintest notion what he meant, or what joke he thought I
had made.
As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, with-
out making some other attempt to interest him, I shouted at
inquiry whether his own calling in life had been ‘the Wine-
Coopering.’ By dint of straining that term out of myself
several times and tapping the old gentleman on the chest
to associate it with him, I at last succeeded in making my
meaning understood.
‘No,’ said the old gentleman; ‘the warehousing, the ware-
housing. First, over yonder;’ he appeared to mean up the
chimney, but I believe he intended to refer me to Liverpool;
‘and then in the City of London here. However, having an
infirmity - for I am hard of hearing, sir—‘
I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment.
‘ - Yes, hard of hearing; having that infirmity coming
upon me, my son he went into the Law, and he took charge
of me, and he by little and little made out this elegant and
beautiful property. But returning to what you said, you
know,’ pursued the old man, again laughing heartily, ‘what
I say is, No to be sure; you’re right.’
I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenu-
ity would have enabled me to say anything that would have
amused him half as much as this imaginary pleasantry,
when I was startled by a sudden click in the wall on one side
Great Expectations
of the chimney, and the ghostly tumbling open of a little
wooden flap with ‘JOHN’ upon it. The old man, following
my eyes, cried with great triumph, ‘My son’s come home!’
and we both went out to the drawbridge.
It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute
to me from the other side of the moat, when we might have
shaken hands across it with the greatest ease. The Aged was
so delighted to work the drawbridge, that I made no offer to
assist him, but stood quiet until Wemmick had come across,
and had presented me to Miss Skiffins: a lady by whom he
was accompanied.
Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was,
like her escort, in the post-office branch of the service. She
might have been some two or three years younger than
Wemmick, and I judged her to stand possessed of portable
property. The cut of her dress from the waist upward, both
before and behind, made her figure very like a boy’s kite;
and I might have pronounced her gown a little too decid-
edly orange, and her gloves a little too intensely green. But
she seemed to be a good sort of fellow, and showed a high
regard for the Aged. I was not long in discovering that she
was a frequent visitor at the Castle; for, on our going in, and
my complimenting Wemmick on his ingenious contrivance
for announcing himself to the Aged, he begged me to give
my attention for a moment to the other side of the chimney,
and disappeared. Presently another click came, and anoth-
er little door tumbled open with ‘Miss Skiffins’ on it; then
Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open; then Miss
Skiffins and John both tumbled open together, and final-
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ly shut up together. On Wemmick’s return from working
these mechanical appliances, I expressed the great admi-
ration with which I regarded them, and he said, ‘Well, you
know, they’re both pleasant and useful to the Aged. And
by George, sir, it’s a thing worth mentioning, that of all the
people who come to this gate, the secret of those pulls is
only known to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me!’
‘And Mr. Wemmick made them,’ added Miss Skiffins,
‘with his own hands out of his own head.’
While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she re-
tained her green gloves during the evening as an outward
and visible sign that there was company), Wemmick invit-
ed me to take a walk with him round the property, and see
how the island looked in wintertime. Thinking that he did
this to give me an opportunity of taking his Walworth sen-
timents, I seized the opportunity as soon as we were out of
the Castle.
Having thought of the matter with care, I approached
my subject as if I had never hinted at it before. I informed
Wemmick that I was anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket,
and I told him how we had first met, and how we had fought.
I glanced at Herbert’s home, and at his character, and at his
having no means but such as he was dependent on his father
for: those, uncertain and unpunctual.
I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first raw-
ness and ignorance from his society, and I confessed that
I feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might have
done better without me and my expectations. Keeping Miss
Havisham in the background at a great distance, I still hint-
Great Expectations
ed at the possibility of my having competed with him in his
prospects, and at the certainty of his possessing a generous
soul, and being far above any mean distrusts, retaliations,
or designs. For all these reasons (I told Wemmick), and be-
cause he was my young companion and friend, and I had a
great affection for him, I wished my own good fortune to
reflect some rays upon him, and therefore I sought advice
from Wemmick’s experience and knowledge of men and af-
fairs, how I could best try with my resources to help Herbert
to some present income - say of a hundred a year, to keep
him in good hope and heart - and gradually to buy him on
to some small partnership. I begged Wemmick, in conclu-
sion, to understand that my help must always be rendered
without Herbert’s knowledge or suspicion, and that there
was no one else in the world with whom I could advise. I
wound up by laying my hand upon his shoulder, and say-
ing, ‘I can’t help confiding in you, though I know it must
be troublesome to you; but that is your fault, in having ever
brought me here.’
Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with
a kind of start, ‘Well you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one
thing. This is devilish good of you.’
‘Say you’ll help me to be good then,’ said I.
‘Ecod,’ replied Wemmick, shaking his head, ‘that’s not
my trade.’
‘Nor is this your trading-place,’ said I.
‘You are right,’ he returned. ‘You hit the nail on the head.
Mr. Pip, I’ll put on my considering-cap, and I think all you
want to do, may be done by degrees. Skiffins (that’s her
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brother) is an accountant and agent. I’ll look him up and
go to work for you.’
‘I thank you ten thousand times.’
‘On the contrary,’ said he, ‘I thank you, for though we
are strictly in our private and personal capacity, still it may
be mentioned that there are Newgate cobwebs about, and it
brushes them away.’
After a little further conversation to the same effect, we
returned into the Castle where we found Miss Skiffins pre-
paring tea. The responsible duty of making the toast was
delegated to the Aged, and that excellent old gentleman was
so intent upon it that he seemed to me in some danger of
melting his eyes. It was no nominal meal that we were go-
ing to make, but a vigorous reality. The Aged prepared such
a haystack of buttered toast, that I could scarcely see him
over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked on to the top-
bar; while Miss Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, that
the pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and
repeatedly expressed his desire to participate in the enter-
tainment.
The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, at
the right moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off from
the rest of Walworth as if the moat were thirty feet wide
by as many deep. Nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the
Castle, but the occasional tumbling open of John and Miss
Skiffins: which little doors were a prey to some spasmodic
infirmity that made me sympathetically uncomfortable un-
til I got used to it. I inferred from the methodical nature of
Miss Skiffins’s arrangements that she made tea there every
Great Expectations
Sunday night; and I rather suspected that a classic brooch
she wore, representing the profile of an undesirable female
with a very straight nose and a very new moon, was a piece
of portable property that had been given her by Wemmick.
We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in propor-
tion, and it was delightful to see how warm and greasy we
all got after it. The Aged especially, might have passed for
some clean old chief of a savage tribe, just oiled. After a
short pause for repose, Miss Skiffins - in the absence of the
little servant who, it seemed, retired to the bosom of her
family on Sunday afternoons - washed up the tea-things,
in a trifling lady-like amateur manner that compromised
none of us. Then, she put on her gloves again, and we drew
round the fire, and Wemmick said, ‘Now Aged Parent, tip
us the paper.’
Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spec-
tacles out, that this was according to custom, and that it
gave the old gentleman infinite satisfaction to read the news
aloud. ‘I won’t offer an apology,’ said Wemmick, ‘for he isn’t
capable of many pleasures - are you, Aged P.?’
‘All right, John, all right,’ returned the old man, seeing
himself spoken to.
‘Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks
off his paper,’ said Wemmick, ‘and he’ll be as happy as a
king. We are all attention, Aged One.’
‘All right, John, all right!’ returned the cheerful old man:
so busy and so pleased, that it really was quite charming.
The Aged’s reading reminded me of the classes at Mr.
Wopsle’s great-aunt’s, with the pleasanter peculiarity that
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it seemed to come through a keyhole. As he wanted the
candles close to him, and as he was always on the verge
of putting either his head or the newspaper into them, he
required as much watching as a powder-mill. But Wem-
mick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, and
the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many rescues.
Whenever he looked at us, we all expressed the greatest in-
terest and amazement, and nodded until he resumed again.
As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I
sat in a shadowy corner, I observed a slow and gradual elon-
gation of Mr. Wemmick’s mouth, powerfully suggestive of
his slowly and gradually stealing his arm round Miss Skif-
fins’s waist. In course of time I saw his hand appear on the
other side of Miss Skiffins; but at that moment Miss Skiffins
neatly stopped him with the green glove, unwound his arm
again as if it were an article of dress, and with the greatest
deliberation laid it on the table before her. Miss Skiffins’s
composure while she did this was one of the most remark-
able sights I have ever seen, and if I could have thought
the act consistent with abstraction of mind, I should have
deemed that Miss Skiffins performed it mechanically.
By-and-by, I noticed Wemmick’s arm beginning to dis-
appear again, and gradually fading out of view. Shortly
afterwards, his mouth began to widen again. After an inter-
val of suspense on my part that was quite enthralling and
almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side of
Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped it with the
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