1854
HARD TIMES
by Charles Dickens
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
BOOK THE FIRST
SOWING
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CHAPTER 1
The One Thing Needful
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'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and
root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning
animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to
them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and
this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to
Facts, sir!'
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and
the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by
underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's
sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a
forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found
commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide,
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice,
which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by
the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a
plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all
covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had
scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The
speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square
shoulders- nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the
throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was-
all helped the emphasis.
'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!'
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person
present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined
plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to
have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full
to the brim.
CHAPTER 2
Murdering the Innocents
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THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and
calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two
are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into
allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir- peremptorily
Thomas- Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the
multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and
measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes
to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You
might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of
George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or
Joseph Gradgrind (all suppositious, non-existent persons), but into
the head of Thomas Gradgrind- no, sir!
In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself,
whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in
general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words 'boys and
girls', for 'sir', Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind
to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of
facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before
mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts,
and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one
discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim
mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to
be stormed away.
'Girl number twenty,' said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with
his square forefinger, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'
'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing up,
and curtseying.
'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself
Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'
'It's father as calls me Sissy, sir,' returned the young girl in a
trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
'Then he has no business to do it,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'Tell him
he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?'
'He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.'
Mr Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with
his hand.
'We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell
us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?'
'If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break
horses in the ring, sir.'
'You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe
your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr Gradgrind,
for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty
possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of
animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on
Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of
sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely
whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the
face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the
centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row
on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which
Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows
in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and
dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous
colour from the sun when it shone upon her, the boy was so
light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw
out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would
hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by
bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than
themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have
been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and
face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge,
that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'
'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders,
four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in
marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be
shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more)
Bitzer.
'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'You know what a
horse is.'
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could
have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer,
after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and
so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they
looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his
freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and
drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other
people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a
system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be
heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all
England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming
up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself
an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever
with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore
his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall
upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common-sense,
and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had
it in charge from high authority to bring about the great
public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
'Very well,' said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his
arms. 'That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you
paper a room with representations of horses?'
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, 'Yes, sir!'
Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that Yes was
wrong, cried out in chorus, 'No, sir!'- as the custom is, in these
examinations.
'Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?'
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of
breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn't paper a room at
all, but would paint it.
'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it
or not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?'
'I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and a
dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of
horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of
rooms in reality- in fact? Do you?'
'Yes, sir!' from one half. 'No, sir!' from the other.
'Of course no,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the
wrong half. 'Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't
see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in
fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.'
Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
'This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,' said
the gentleman. 'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to
carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of
flowers upon it?'
There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was
always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very
strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe.
'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm
strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
'So you would carpet your room- or your husband's room, if you
were a grown woman, and had a husband- with representations of
flowers, would you,' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'
'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.
'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have
people walking over them with heavy boots?'
'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither if you
please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and
pleasant, and I would fancy-'
'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite
elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to
fancy.'
'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to
do anything of that kind.'
'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!'
repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the
gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact,
composed of comissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a
people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word
Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have,
in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in
fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to
walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and
butterflies come and perch upon your crockery. You never meet with
quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds
represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all
these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of
mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration.
This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.'
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked
as if she were frightened by the matter of fact prospect the world
afforded.
'Now, if Mr M'Choakumchild,' said the gentleman, 'will proceed to
give his first lesson here, Mr Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your
request, to observe his mode of procedure.'
Mr Gradgrind was much obliged. 'Mr M'Choakumchild, we only wait
for you.'
So, Mr M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one
hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the
same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many
pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of
paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions.
Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy,
geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound
proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and
drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled
fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty's most
Honourable Privy Council's Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the
higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German,
Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the
world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples,
and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the
productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all
their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the
compass. Ah, rather overdone, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learnt
a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in
the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one
after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild.
When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and
by, dost thou think, that thou wilt always kill outright the robber
Fancy lurking within- or sometimes only maim him and distort him!
CHAPTER 3
A Loophole
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MR GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of
considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be
a model. He intended every child in it to be a model- just as the
young Gradgrinds were all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one.
They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like
little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been
made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they
had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large
black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre.
Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing
castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one,
taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens
by the hair.
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in
the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had
ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I
wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on
the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old
dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's
Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever
associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled
horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate
the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it
had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced
to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several
stomachs.
To his matter of fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr
Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the
wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now
looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical
figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile
or two of a great town- called Coketown in the present faithful
guide-book.
A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge
was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that
uncompromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a
heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master's heavy
brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and
proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that
side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other
wing: four and twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and
garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical
account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all
of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fireproof from top to
bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their brushes
and brooms; everything that heart could desire.
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets
in various departments of science too. They had a little conchological
cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little
mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and
labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might
have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard
instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle legend of
Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If the
greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it for
good gracious goodness sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped
at!
Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind.
He was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably
have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a
definition) as 'an eminently practical' father. He had a particular
pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to
have a special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting
held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some
Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently
practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently
practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due was
acceptable.
He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town,
which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when
his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and
banging band attached to the horse-riding establishment which had
there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A
flag, floating from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind
that it was 'Sleary's Horse-riding' which claimed their suffrages.
Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow,
in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the
money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips
of printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments
with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other
pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be
believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to 'elucidate the diverting
accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs'. He
was also to exhibit 'his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five
hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head thus
forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before
attempted in this or any other country and which having elicited
such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be
withdrawn'. The same Signor Jupe was to 'enliven the varied
performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips
and retorts'. Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his
favourite character of Mr William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the
highly novel and laughable hippo-comedietta of The Tailor's Journey to
Brentford'.
Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but
passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the
noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of
Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by the back of the
booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were
congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in
at the hidden glories of the place.
This brought him to a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,' said
he, 'attracting the young rabble from a model school.'
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the
young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for
any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost
incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own
metallurgical Louisa peeping with all her might through a hole in a
deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the
ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean
flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his
family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and
said:
'Louisa!! Thomas!!'
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father
with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at
him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr Gradgrind,
leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'
'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa shortly.
'What it was like?'
'Yes, father.'
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and
particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the
dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest
upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping
life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with
the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager,
doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to
the changes on a blind face groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day
would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as
he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he
thought in his eminently practical way), but for her bringing-up.
'Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to
believe that you, with your education and resources, should have
brought your sister to a scene like this.'
'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to
come.'
'I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It
makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.'
She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
'You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open;
Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and
you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and
you, here!' cried Mr Gradgrind. 'In this degraded position! I am
amazed.'
'I was tired. I have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.
'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.
'I don't know of what- of everything I think.'
'Say not another word,' returned Mr Gradgrind. 'You are childish.
I will hear no more.' He did not speak again until they had walked
some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: 'What
would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their
good opinion? What would Mr Bounderby say?'
At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him,
remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing
of it, for before he looked at her she had again cast down her eyes!
'What,' he repeated presently, 'would Mr Bounderby say!' All the way
to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents
home, he repeated at intervals 'What would Mr Bounderby say!'- as if
Mr Bounderby had been Mrs Grundy.
CHAPTER 4
Mr Bounderby
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NOT being Mrs Grundy, who was Mr Bounderby?
Why, Mr Bounderby was as near being Mr Gradgrind's bosom friend,
as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual
relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So
near was Mr Bounderby- or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A
big, loud man, with a stare and a metallic laugh. A man made out of
a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much
of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins
in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to
hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading
appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to
start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made
man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy
speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old
poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr
Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had
the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He
had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and
that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition
from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the
hearth-rug, warming himself before the fire, Mr Bounderby delivered
some observations to Mrs Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being
his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool
spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of
Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly
because he thus took up a commanding position, from which to subdue
Mrs Gradgrind.
'I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such
a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a
pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was
new to me, for I was born in a ditch.'
Mrs Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of
surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic
without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming
to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling
on her; Mrs Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
'No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,' said Mr Bounderby.
'Enough to give a baby cold,' Mrs Gradgrind considered.
'Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of
everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,'
returned Mr Bounderby. 'For years, maam, I was one of the most
miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was
always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you
wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.'
Mrs Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate
thing her imbecility could think of doing.
'How I fought through it, I don't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was
determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later
life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs Gradgrind, anyhow,
and nobody to thank for my being here but myself.'
Mrs Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother-
'My mother? Bolted, ma'am!' said Bounderby.
Mrs Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
'My mother left me to my grandmother,' said Bounderby; 'and,
according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the
wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little
pair of shoes by any chance, she would take 'em off and sell 'em for
drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and
drink her fourteen glasses of liquor before breakfast!'
Mrs Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality,
looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency
of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
'She kept a chandler's shop,' pursued Bounderby, 'and kept me in
an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as
I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a
young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and
starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me.
They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a
nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that, very well.'
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great
social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest,
was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.
'I was to pull through it I suppose, Mrs Gradgrind. Whether I was to
do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody
threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter,
clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.
Those are the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs
Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from
studying the steeple clock of St Giles's Church, London, under the
direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief and an
incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your
district schools and your model schools, and your training schools,
and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct- he hadn't such
advantages- but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people- the
education that made him won't do for everybody, he knows well- such
and such his education was, however, and you may force him to
swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the
facts of his life.'
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend,
still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room. His
eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave
Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, 'Behold your Bounderby!'
'Well!' blustered Mr Bounderby, 'what's the matter? What is young
Thomas in the dumps about?'
He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
'We were peeping at the circus,' muttered Louisa haughtily,
without lifting up her eyes, 'and father caught us.'
'And Mrs Gradgrind,' said her husband in a lofty manner, 'I should
as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.'
'Dear me,' whimpered Mrs Gradgrind. 'How can you, Louisa and Thomas!
I wonder at you. I declare you're enough to make one regret ever
having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I
hadn't. Then what would you have done, I should like to know.'
Mr Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent
remarks. He frowned impatiently.
'As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't go
and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you,
instead of circuses!' said Mrs Gradgrind. 'You know, as well as I
do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets,
or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to
know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that's what
you want. With my head in its present state, I couldn't remember the
mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to.'
'That's the reason!' pouted Louisa.
'Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can be nothing of the
sort,' said Mrs Gradgrind. 'Go and be somethingological directly.' Mrs
Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her
children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their
pursuit.
In truth, Mrs Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully
defective; but Mr Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial
position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most
satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had 'no
nonsense' about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is
probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human
being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and
Mr Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again,
without collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once
more died away, and nobody minded her.
'Bounderby,' said Mr Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside,
'you are always so interested in my young people- particularly in
Louisa- that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed
by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you
know) to the education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as
you know) the only faculty to which education should be addressed. And
yet, Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of
today, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into
Thomas's and Louisa's minds which is- or rather, which is not- I don't
know that I can express myself better than by saying- which has
never been intended to be developed, and in which their reason has
no part.'
'There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel
of vagabonds,' returned Bounderby. 'When I was a vagabond myself,
nobody looked with any interest at me; I know that.'
'Then comes the question,' said the eminently practical father, with
his eyes on the fire, 'in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?'
'I'll tell you in what. In idle imagination.'
'I hope not,' said eminently practical; 'I confess, however, that
the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.'
'In idle imagination, Gradgrind,' repeated Bounderby. 'A very bad
thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I
should ask Mrs Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but that she
knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects
refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn't a refined bringing
up.'
'Whether,' said Mr Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his
pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, 'whether any instructor
or servant can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can
have been reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions,
any idle story-book can have got into the house? Because, in minds
that have been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle
upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible.'
'Stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, who all this time had been
standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture
of the room with explosive humility. 'You have one of those strollers'
children in the school.'
'Cecilia Jupe, by name,' said Mr Gradgrind, with something of a
stricken look at his friend.
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby again. 'How did she come there?'
'Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only
just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as
not regularly belonging to our town, and- yes, you are right,
Bounderby, you are right.'
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, once more, 'Louisa saw her
when she came?'
'Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application
to me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs Gradgrind's
presence.'
'Pray, Mrs Gradgrind,' said Bounderby, 'what passed?'
'Oh, my poor health!' returned Mrs Gradgrind. 'The girl wanted to
come to the school, and Mr Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the
school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to
come, and that Mr Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it
possible to contradict them when such was the fact!'
'Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!' said Mr Bounderby. 'Turn this girl
to the rightabout, and there's an end of it.'
'I am much of your opinion.'
'Do it at once,' said Bounderby, 'has always been my motto from a
child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my
grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!'
'Are you walking?' asked his friend. 'I have the father's address.
Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?'
'Not the least in the world,' said Mr Bounderby, 'as long as you
do it at once!'
So, Mr Bounderby threw on his hat- he always threw it on, as
expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making
himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat- and with his hands
in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. 'I never wear gloves,' it
was his custom to say. 'I didn't climb up the ladder in them.
Shouldn't be so high up, if I had.'
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr Gradgrind
went upstairs for the address, he opened the door of the children's
study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which,
notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of
learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of
a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the
window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas
stood snifling revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two
younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane,
after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with
slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
'It's all right now, Louisa; it's all right, young Thomas,' said
Mr Bounderby; 'you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's being
all over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't it?'
'You can take one, Mr Bounderby,' returned Louisa, when she had
coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously
raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
'Always my pet; an't you, Louisa?' said Mr Bounderby. 'Good-bye,
Louisa!'
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek
he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She
was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
'What are you about, Loo?' her brother sulkily remonstrated. 'You'll
rub a hole in your face.'
'You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I
wouldn't cry!'
CHAPTER 5
The Key-note
-
COKETOWN, to which Messrs Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was
a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs
Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before
pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red
if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was
a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever,
and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that
ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of
windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and
where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and
down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.
It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many
small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally
like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with
the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to
whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every
year the counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the
work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off,
comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine
lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of
its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there- as the members
of eighteen religious persuasions had done- they made it a pious
warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this only in highly
ornamented examples) a bell in a bird-cage on the top of it. The
solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a
square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like
florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were
painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might
have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the
town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for
anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their
construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of
the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The
M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all
fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and
everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery,
and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchaseable
in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never
should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of
course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me! No.
Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like
gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the
place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because,
whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk
through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them
the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and
nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own
close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged
listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing
with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the
stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization
in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House
of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of
parliament that should make these people religious by main force.
Then, came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people
would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get
drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine
(except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of
getting drunk. Then, came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular
statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk, they took
opium. Then, came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more
tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements,
and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden
from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing,
and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next
birthday, and committed for eighteen months' solitary, had himself
said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of
belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that
otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then, came Mr
Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment
walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could,
on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own
personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen,
from which it clearly appeared- in short it was the only clear thing
in the case- that these same people were a bad lot altogether,
gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful
for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never
knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh
butter, and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts
of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In
short it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
-
There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
-
Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the
case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds?
Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures,
are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost
elements in the existence of the Coketown working people had been
for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any
Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead
of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they
worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within them for some
physical relief- some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good
spirits, and giving them a vent- some recognized holiday, though it
were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music- some
occasional light pie in which even M'Choakumchild had no finger- which
craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would
inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?
'This man lives at Pod's End, and I don't quite know Pod's End,'
said Mr Gradgrind. 'Which is it, Bounderby?'
Mr Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more
respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.
Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the
street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr
Gradgrind recognized. 'Halloa!' said he. 'Stop! Where are you going?
Stop!' Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a
curtsey.
'Why are you tearing about the streets,' said Mr Gradgrind, 'in this
improper manner?'
'I was- I was run after, sir,' the girl panted, 'and I wanted to get
away.'
'Run after?' repeated Mr Gradgrind. 'Who would run after you?'
The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by
the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such
blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement,
that he brought himself up against Mr Gradgrind's waistcoat, and
rebounded into the road.
'What do you mean, boy?' said Mr Gradgrind. 'What are you doing? How
dare you dash against- everybody- in this manner?'
Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off;
and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an
accident.
'Was this boy running after you, Jupe?' asked Mr Gradgrind.
'Yes, sir,' said the girl reluctantly.
'No, I wasn't, sir!' cried Bitzer. 'Not till she run away from me.
But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they're famous for
it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they
say,' addressing Sissy. 'It's as well known in the town as- please,
sir, as the multiplication table isn't known to the horse-riders.'
Bitzer tried Mr Bounderby with this.
'He frightened me so,' said the girl, 'with his cruel faces!'
'Oh!' cried Bitzer. 'Oh! An't you one of the rest! An't you a
horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know
how to define a horse tomorrow, and offered to tell her again, and she
ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to
answer when she was asked. You wouldn't have thought of saying such
mischief if you hadn't been a horse-rider!'
'Her calling seems to be pretty well known among 'em,' observed Mr
Bounderby. 'You'd have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a
week.'
'Truly, I think so,' returned his friend. 'Bitzer, turn you about
and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of
your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me
through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go
along.'
The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead
again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.
'Now, girl,' said Mr Gradgrind, 'take this gentleman and me to
your father's; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle
you are carrying?'
'Gin,' said Mr Bounderby.
'Dear, no sir! It's the nine oils.'
'The what?' cried Mr Bounderby.
'The nine oils, sir. To rub father with.' Then, said Mr Bounderby,
with a loud, short laugh, 'what the devil do you rub your father
with nine oils for?'
'It's what our people always use, sir, when they get any hurts in
the ring,' replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure
herself that her pursuer was gone. 'They bruise themselves very bad
sometimes.'
'Serve 'em right,' said Mr Bounderby, 'for being idle.' She
glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.
'By George!' said Mr Bounderby, 'when I was four or five years
younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty
oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em by
posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing
for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.'
Mr Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man
as Mr Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things
considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had
only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it, years
ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned
down a narrow road, 'And this is Pod's End; is it, Jupe?'
'This is it, sir, and- if you wouldn't mind, sir- this is the
house.'
She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public house,
with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want
of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all
drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
'It's only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn't
mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you
should hear a dog, sir, it's only Merrylegs, and he only barks.'
'Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!' said Mr Bounderby, entering last with
his metallic laugh. 'Pretty well this, for a self-made man!'
CHAPTER 6
Sleary's Horsemanship
-
THE name of the public house was the Pegasus's Arms. The Pegasus's
legs might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged
horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus's Arms was inscribed in Roman
letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the
painter had touched off the lines:
-
Good malt makes good beer,
Walk in, and they'll draw it here;
Good wine makes good brandy,
Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.
-
Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was
another Pegasus- a theatrical one- with real gauze let in for his
wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness
made of red silk.
As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had
not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr Gradgrind and
Mr Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They
followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting any one,
and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. They
expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the
highly-trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the
candle appeared together.
'Father is not in our room, sir,' she said, with a face of great
surprise. 'If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him directly.'
They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away
with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily-furnished room,
with a bed in it. The white night-cap, embellished with two
peacock's feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe
had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances with his
chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts, hung upon a nail; but no other
portion of his wardrobe, or other token of himself or his pursuits,
was to be seen anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of
the highly-trained animal who went aboard the ark, might have been
accidentally shut out of it, for any sign of a dog that was manifest
to eye or ear in the Pegasus's Arms.
They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy
went from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they
heard voices expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a
great hurry, opened a battered and mangey old hair trunk, found it
empty, and looked round with her hands clasped and her face full of
terror.
'Father must have gone down to the Booth, Sir. I don't know why he
should go there, but he must be there; I'll bring him in a minute!'
She was gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark,
childish hair streaming behind her.
'What does she mean!' said Mr Gradgrind. 'Back in a minute? It's
more than a mile off.'
Before Mr Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door,
and introducing himself with the words, 'By your leaves, gentlemen!'
walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin,
and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair brushed into a
roll all round his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were
very robust, but shorter than legs of good proportions should have
been. His chest and back were as much too broad, as his legs were
too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting
trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw,
orange-peel, horses' provender, and sawdust; and looked a most
remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the
play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could
have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the
bills of the day as Mr E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his
daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American
Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old
face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being
carried upside down over his father's shoulder, by one foot, and
held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his
father's hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which
wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up
with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful
young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the
chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but, in private,
where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an
extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy.
'By your leaves, gentlemen,' said Mr E. W. B. Childers, glancing
round the room. 'It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see
Jupe?'
'It was,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'His daughter has gone to fetch him,
but I can't wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for
him with you.'
'You see, my friend,' Mr Bounderby put in, 'we are the kind of
people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people
who don't know the value of time.'
'I have not,' retorted Mr Childers, after surveying him from head to
foot, 'the honour of knowing you;- but if you mean that you can make
more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your
appearance, that you are about right.
'And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,'
said Cupid.
'Kidderminster, stow that!' said Mr Childers. (Master
Kidderminster was Cupid's mortal name.)
'What does he come here cheeking us for, then?' cried Master
Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. 'If you want to
cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.'
'Kidderminster,' said Mr Childers, raising his voice, 'stow that!-
Sir,' to Mr Gradgrind, 'I was addressing myself to you. You may or you
may not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience),
that Jupe has missed his tip very often, lately.'
'Has- what has he missed?' asked Mr Gradgrind, glancing at the
potent Bounderby for assistance.
'Missed his tip.'
'Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 'em
once,' said Master Kidderminster. 'Missed his tip at the banners, too,
and was loose in his ponging.'
'Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in
his tumbling,' Mr Childers interpreted.
'Oh!' said Mr Gradgrind, 'that is tip, is it?'
'In a general way that's missing his tip,' Mr E. W. B. Childers
answered.
'Nine-oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and
Ponging, eh!' ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. 'Queer
sort of company, too, for a man who has raised himself.'
'Lower yourself, then,' retorted Cupid. 'Oh Lord! if you've raised
yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.'
'This is a very obtrusive lad!' said Mr Gradgrind, turning, and
knitting his brows on him.
'We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you
were coming,' retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. 'It's
a pity you don't have a bespeak, being so particular. You're on the
Tight-Jeff, ain't you?'
'What does this unmannerly boy mean,' asked Mr Gradgrind, eyeing him
in a sort of desperation, 'by Tight-Jeff?'
'There! Get out, get out!' said Mr Childers, thrusting his young
friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. 'Tight-Jeff or
Slack-Jeff, it don't much signify: it's only tight-rope and
slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for Jupe?'
'Yes, I was.'
'Then,' continued Mr Childers, quickly, 'my opinion is, he will
never receive it. Do you know much of him?'
'I never saw the man in my life.'
'I doubt if you ever will see him now. It's pretty plain to me, he's
off.'
'Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?'
'Ay! I mean,' said Mr Childers, with a nod, 'that he has cut. He was
goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was
goosed today. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and
he can't stand it.'
'Why has he been- so very much- Goosed?' asked Mr Gradgrind, forcing
the word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
'His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,' said
Childers. 'He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can't get a
living out of them.'
'A Cackler!' Bounderby repeated. 'Here we go again!'
'A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,' said Mr E. W. B.
Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his
shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair- which all
shook at once. 'Now, it's a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man
deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go
through with it.'
'Good!' interrupted Mr Bounderby. 'This is good, Gradgrind! A man so
fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish
good! Ha! ha! Now, I'll tell you what, young man. I haven't always
occupied my present station of life. I know what these things are. You
may be astonished to hear it, but my mother ran away from me.'
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all
astonished to hear it.
'Very well,' said Bounderby. 'I was born in a ditch, and my mother
ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused
her for it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably
the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken
grandmother. There's no family pride about me, there's no
imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I
call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or
any favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of
Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and
a vagabond, that's what he is, in English.'
'It's all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in
English or whether in French,' retorted Mr E. W. B. Childers, facing
about. 'I am telling your friend what's the fact; if you don't like to
hear it, you can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth
enough, you do; but give it mouth in your own building at least,'
remonstrated E. W. B. with stern irony. 'Don't give it mouth in this
building, till you're called upon. You have got some building of
your own, I dare say, now?'
'Perhaps so,' replied Mr Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
'Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you
please?' said Childers. 'Because this isn't a strong building, and too
much of you might bring it down!'
Eyeing Mr Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him,
as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr Gradgrind.
'Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then
was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes and a
bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe
it of him, but he has cut away and left her.'
'Pray,' said Mr Gradgrind, 'why will she never believe it of him?'
'Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder.
Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,' said
Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr
Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in a curious manner; with
their legs wider apart than the general run of men, and with a very
knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. This walk was common
to all the male members of Sleary's company, and was understood to
express, that they were always on horseback.
'Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,' said Childers,
giving his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box.
'Now, he leaves her without anything to take to.'
'It is creditable to you who have never been apprenticed, to express
that opinion,' returned Mr Gradgrind, approvingly.
'I never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.'
'Oh! Indeed?' said Mr Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having
been defrauded of his good opinion. 'I was not aware of its being
the custom to apprentice young persons to-'
'Idleness,' Mr Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. 'No, by the
Lord Harry! Nor I!'
'Her father always had it in his head,' resumed Childers, feigning
unconsciousness of Mr Bounderby's existence, 'that she was to be
taught the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I
can't say; I can only say that it never got out. He has been picking
up a bit of reading for her, here- and a bit of writing for her,
there- and a bit of cyphering for her, somewhere else- these seven
years.'
Mr E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets,
stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a
little hope, at Mr Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to
conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.
'When Sissy got into the school here,' he pursued, 'her father was
as pleased as Punch. I couldn't altogether make out why, myself, as we
were not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I
suppose, however, he had this move in his mind- he was always
half-cracked- and then considered her provided for. If you should
happen to have looked in tonight, for the purpose of telling him
that you were going to do her any little service,' said Mr Childers,
stroking his face again, and repeating his look, 'it would be very
fortunate and well timed; very fortunate and well timed.'
'On the contrary,' returned Mr Gradgrind. 'I came to tell him that
her connexions made her not an object for the school, and that she
must not attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her,
without any connivance on her part- Bounderby, let me have a word with
you.'
Upon this, Mr Childers politely betook himself, with his
equestrian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood
stroking his face and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he
overheard such phrases in Mr Bounderby's voice as 'No. I say no. I
advise you not. I say by no means.' While, from Mr Gradgrind, he heard
in his much lower tone the words, 'But even as an example to Louisa,
of what this pursuit which has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity,
leads to and ends in. Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.'
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary's company gradually
gathered together from the upper regions, where they were quartered,
and, from standing about, talking in low voices to one another and
to Mr Childers, gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room.
There were two or three handsome young women among them, with their
two or three husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight
or nine little children, who did the fairy business when required. The
father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father
of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of a
third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master
Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base; all the
fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch
knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over
everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could (and did)
dance, upon the slack wire and the tight rope, and perform rapid
acts on barebacked steeds; none of them were at all particular in
respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek
chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all
assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in
their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their
domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole
company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet
there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people,
a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring
readiness to help and pity one another, deserving, often of as much
respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the
everyday virtues of any class of people in the world.
Last of all appeared Mr Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned,
with one fixed eye and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so)
like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface,
and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.
'Thquire!' said Mr Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose
breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, 'Your
thervant! Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You've
heard of my Clown and hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?'
He addressed Mr Gradgrind, who answered 'Yes.'
'Well Thquire,' he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the
lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside it for the
purpose. 'Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl,
Thquire?'
'I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,' said
Mr Gradgrind.
'Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the
child, any more than I want to thtand in her way. I'm willing to
take her prentith, though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a
little huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by them ath don't know me;
but if you'd been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled
and heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I have been,
your voithe wouldn't have lathted out, Thquire, no more then mine.'
'I dare say not,' said Mr Gradgrind.
'What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give
it a name, Thquire!' said Mr Sleary, with hospitable ease.
'Nothing for me, I thank you,' said Mr Gradgrind.
'Don't thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you
haven't took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.'
Here his daughter Josephine- a pretty fair-haired girl of
eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had
made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her,
expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the two
piebald ponies- cried 'Father, hush! she has come back!' Then came
Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And when
she saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and saw no father
there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge on the
bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the
family way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep
over her.
'Ith an infernal thame, upon my thoul it ith,' said Sleary.
'O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You
are gone to try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my
sake, I am sure. And how miserable and helpless you will be without
me, poor, poor father, until you come back!' It was so pathetic to
hear her saying many things of this kind, with her face turned upward,
and her arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop his departing
shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr Bounderby
(growing impatient) took the case in hand.
'Now, good people all,' said he, 'this is wanton waste of time.
Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you
like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what's your name!
Your father has absconded- deserted you- and you mustn't expect to see
him again as long as you live.'
They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in
that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of
being impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it
in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered 'Shame!' and the women
'Brute!' and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint,
apart to Mr Bounderby.
'I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith
that you had better cut it thort, and drop it. They're a very good
natur'd people, my people, but they're accuthtomed to be quick in
their movementh; and if you don't act upon my advithe, I'm damned if I
don't believe they'll pith you out o' winder.'
Mr Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr
Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposition of
the subject.
'It is of no moment, said he, 'whether this person is to be expected
back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no
present expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all
hands.'
'Thath agreed, Thquire. Thtick to that!' From Sleary.
'Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor
girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any more,
in consequence of there being practical objections, into which I
need not enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so
employed, am prepared in these altered circumstances to make a
proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate
you, and provide for you. The only condition (over and above your good
behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at once, whether to
accompany me or remain here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is
understood that you communicate no more with any of your friends who
are here present. These observations comprise the whole of the case.'
'At the thame time,' said Sleary, 'I mutht put in my word,
Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If
you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the work
and you know your companionth. Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you're a
lyin' at prethent, would be a mother to you, and Joth'-phine would
be a thithter to you. I don't pretend to be of the angel breed
mythelf, and I don't thay but what, when you mith'd your tip, you'd
find me cut up rough, and thwear a oath or two at you. But what I
thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did
a horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that
I don't expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a
rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have thed my
thay.'
The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr Gradgrind, who
received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked.
'The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of
influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a
sound practical education, and that even your father himself (from
what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to have known and felt
that much.'
The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her
wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned
her face full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force
of the change, and drew a long breath together, that plainly said,
'she will go!'
'Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,' Mr Gradgrind cautioned
her; 'I say no more. Be sure you know your own mind!'
'When father comes back,' cried the girl, bursting into tears
again after a minute's silence, 'how will he ever find me if I go
away!'
'You may be quite at ease,' said Mr Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out
the whole matter like a sum: 'you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on
that score. In such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out
Mr-.'
'Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all
over England, and alwayth paythe ith way.'
'Must find out Mr Sleary, who would then let him know where you
went. I should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he
would have no difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr Thomas
Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well known.'
'Well known,' assented Mr Sleary, rolling his loose eye. 'You're one
of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethious thight of money out
of the houthe. But never mind that at prethent.'
There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with
her hands before her face, 'Oh give me my clothes, give me my clothes,
and let me go away before I break my heart!'
The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together- it
was soon done, for they were not many- and to pack them in a basket
which had often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time, upon
the ground, still sobbing and covering her eyes. Mr Gradgrind and
his friend Bounderby stood near the door, ready to take her away. Mr
Sleary stood in the middle of the room, with the male members of the
company about him, exactly as he would have stood in the centre of the
ring during his daughter Josephines performance. He wanted nothing but
his whip.
The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and
smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about
her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and
embracing her; and brought the children to take leave of her; and were
a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether.
'Now, Jupe,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'If you are quite determined, come!'
But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company
yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all
assumed the professional attitude when they found themselves near
Sleary), and give her a parting kiss- Master Kidderminster excepted,
in whose young nature there was an original flavour of the
misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimonial views,
and who moodily withdrew. Mr Sleary was reserved until the last.
Opening his arms wide he took her by both her hands, and would have
sprung her up and down, after the riding-master manner of
congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act; but
there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him crying.
'Goodbye, my dear!' said Sleary. 'You'll make your fortun, I hope,
and none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I'll pound it. I
with your father hadn't taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth
to have the dog out of the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he
wouldn't have performed without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath
ith long!'
With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed
his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed
her to Mr Gradgrind as to a horse.
'There the ith, Thquire,' he said, sweeping her with a
professional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, 'and
the'll do you juthtithe. Goodbye, Thethilia!'
'Goodbye, Cecilia!' 'Goodbye, Sissy! 'God bless you, dear! In a
variety of voices from all the room.
But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils
in her bosom, and he now interposed with 'Leave the bottle, my dear;
ith large to carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!'
'No, no!' she said, in another burst of tears. 'Oh no! Pray let me
keep it for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes
back. He had never thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I
must keep it for him, if you please!'
'Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell,
Thethilial My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of
your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if,
when you're grown up and married and well off, you come upon any
horthe-riding ever, don't be hard upon it, don't be croth with it,
give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might do wurth. People
must be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,' continued Sleary, rendered more
pursy than ever, by so much talking; 'they can't be alwath a
working, nor yet they can't be alwayts a learning. Make the betht of
uth; not the wurtht. I've got my living out of horthe-riding all my
life, I know; but I conthider that I lay down the philothophy of the
thubject when I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the
wurtht!'
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs; and
the fixed eye of Philosophy- and its rolling eye, too- soon lost the
three figures and the basket in the darkness of the street.
CHAPTER 7
Mrs Sparsit
-
MR BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his
establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs
Sparsit was this lady's name; and she was a prominent figure in
attendance on Mr Bounderby's car, as it rolled along in triumph with
the Bully of humility inside.
For, Mrs Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly
connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady
Scadgers. Mr Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been
by the mother's side what Mrs Sparsit still called 'a Powler'.
Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were
sometimes observed not to know what a Powler was, and even to appear
uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a
profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not
need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who
could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not
surprising if they sometimes lost themselves- which they had rather
frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew
monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors Court.
The late Mr Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Powler, married
this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an
immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher's
meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for
fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was
just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly
supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth
mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it
all before he came into it, and spent it twice over immediately
afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his
decease, Calais, and the cause brandy), he did not leave his widow,
from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in
affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than
he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady
Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain
herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly
days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black
eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr Bounderby's tea as he
took his breakfast.
If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs Sparsit a captive
Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions,
he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he
habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to
depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs
Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to
have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he
brightened Mrs Sparsit's juvenile career with every possible
advantage, and showered wagon-loads of early roses all over that
lady's path. 'And yet, sir,' he would say, 'how does it turn out after
all? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a hundred,
which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house of Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown!'
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third
parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable
briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of
Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated
other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in
him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in
Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made
him out to be the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull,
Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An Englishman's house is his
castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together.
And as often (and it was very often) as an orator of this kind brought
into his peroration,
-
Princes and Lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made,
-
-it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that
he had heard of Mrs Sparsit.
'Mr Bounderby,' said Mrs Sparsit, 'you are unusually slow, sir, with
your breakfast this morning.'
'Why, ma'am,' he returned, 'I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind's
whim'; Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking- as
if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to
say Thomas, and he wouldn't; 'Tom Gradgrind's whim, ma'am, of bringing
up the tumbling-girl.'
'The girl is now waiting to know,' said Mrs Sparsit, 'whether she is
to go straight to the school, or up to the Lodge.'
'She must wait, ma'am,' answered Bounderby, 'till I know myself.
We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he
should wish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can,
ma'am.'
'Of course she can if you wish it, Mr Bounderby.'
'I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order
that he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any
association with Louisa.'
'Indeed, Mr Bounderby? Very thoughtful of you!'
Mrs Sparsit's Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the
nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.
'It's tolerably clear to me,' said Bounderby, 'that the little
puss can get small good out of such companionship.'
'Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr Bounderby?'
'Yes, ma'am, I am speaking of Louisa.'
'Your observation being limited to "little puss",' said Mrs Sparsit,
'and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which
might be indicated by that expression.'
'Louisa,' repeated Mr Bounderby. 'Louisa, Louisa.'
'You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.' Mrs Sparsit took a
little more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over
her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were
invoking the infernal gods.
'If you had said I was another father to Tom- young Tom, I mean, not
my friend Tom Gradgrind- you might have been nearer the mark. I am
going to take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my
wing, ma'am.'
'Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?' Mrs Sparsit's
'sir', in addressing Mr Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather
exacting consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.
'I'm not going to take him at once; he is to finish his
educational cramming before then,' said Bounderby. 'By the Lord Harry,
he'll have enough of it, first and last! He'd open his eyes, that
boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw was, at his
time of life.' Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had
heard of it often enough. 'But it's extraordinary the difficulty I
have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one on equal
terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking to you this morning
about tumblers. Why, what do you know about tumblers? At the time
when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would have
been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the
Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma'am, in
white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn't a penny to
buy a link to light you.'
'I certainly, sir,' returned Mrs Sparsit, with a dignity serenely
mournful, 'was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.'
'Egad, ma'am, so was I,' said Bounderby,'- with the wrong side of
it. A hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure
you. People like you, ma'am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down
feathers, have no idea how hard a paving-stone is, without trying
it. No no, it's of no use my talking to you about tumblers. I should
speak of foreign dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair,
and lords and ladies and honourables.'
'I trust, sir,' rejoined Mrs Sparsit, with decent resignation, 'it
is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I
have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I
have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive
experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit
for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment.'
'Well, ma'am,' said her patron, 'perhaps some people may be
pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way,
what Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, has gone through. But you must
confess that you were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. Come,
ma'am, you know you were born in the lap of luxury.'
'I do not, sir,' returned Mrs Sparsit with a shake of her head,
'deny it.'
Mr Bounderby was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his
back to the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his
position.
'And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,' he said,
warming his legs.
'It is true, sir,' returned Mrs Sparsit, with an affectation of
humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of
jostling it.
'You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,' said Mr
Bounderby.
'Yes, sir,' returned Mrs Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood
upon her. 'It is unquestionably true.'
Mr Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his
legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr and Miss
Gradgrind being then announced, he received the former with a shake of
the hand, and the latter with a kiss.
'Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?' asked Mr Gradgrind.
Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr
Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in
her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs Sparsit. Observing this, the
blustrous Bounderby had the following remarks to make:
'Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot,
is Mrs Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a
highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any
room in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don't
behave towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I
don't care a button what you do to me, because I don't affect to be
anybody. So far from having high connexions I have no connexions at
all, and I come of the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I
do care what you do; and you shall do what is deferential and
respectful, or you shall not come here.'
'I hope, Bounderby,' said Mr Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice,
'that this was merely an oversight.'
'My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs Sparsit,' said Bounderby,
'that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are
aware, ma'am, I don't allow of even oversights towards you.'
'You are very good indeed, sir,' returned Mrs Sparsit, shaking her
head with her State humility. 'It is not worth speaking of.'
Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with
tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr
Gradgrind. She stood, looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly
by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
'Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when
you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs
Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss
Louisa- this is Miss Louisa- the miserable but natural end of your
late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of
that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more. From this
time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.'
'Yes, sir, very,' she answered, curtseying.
'I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly
educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into
communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will
receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit,
now, of reading to your father, and those people I found you among,
I dare say?' said Mr Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before
he said so, and dropping his voice.
'Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father,
when Merrylegs was always there.'
'Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,' said Mr Gradgrind, with a passing
frown. 'I don't ask about him. I understand you to have been in the
habit of reading to your father?'
'O yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest- O, of all
the happy times we had together, sir!'
It was only now, when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at
her.
'And what,' asked Mr Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, 'did you
read to your father, Jupe?'
'About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the
Genies,' she sobbed out; 'and about-'
'Hush!' said Mr Gradgrind, 'that is enough. Never breathe a word
of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for
rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest.'
'Well,' returned Mr Bounderby, 'I have given you my opinion already,
and I shouldn't do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are
bent upon it, very well!'
So, Mr Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to
Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or
bad. And Mr Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs Sparsit
got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat,
all the evening.
CHAPTER 8
Never Wonder
-
LET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.
When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard
to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying 'Tom, I
wonder'- upon which Mr Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing,
stepped forth into the light, and said, 'Louisa, never wonder!'
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating
the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and
affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never
wonder. Bring to me, says M'Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to
walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.
Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to
be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been
walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming
creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen
denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one
another's hair, by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for
their improvement- which they never did; a surprising circumstance,
when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered.
Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable
and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well
united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder.
Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body
number two, said they must take everything on political economy.
Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the
good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad
grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under
dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy
indeed), made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of
knowledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled
and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to
wonder.
There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy.
Mr Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read
in this library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements
periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements,
which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a
disheartening circumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these
readers persisted in wondering. They wondered about human nature,
human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and
defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths, of
common men and women! They sometimes, after fifteen hours' work, sat
down to read mere fables about men and women, more or less like
themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. They took
De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the
whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr Gradgrind was for
ever working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he
never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.
'I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate
everybody except you,' said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in
the hair-cutting chamber at twilight.
'You don't hate Sissy, Tom?'
'I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,' said
Tom moodily.
'No she does not, Tom, I am sure.'
'She must,' said Tom. 'She must just hate and detest the whole
set-out of us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before they
have done with her. Already she's getting as pale as wax, and as heavy
as- I am.'
Young Thomas expressed these sentiments, sitting astride of a
chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face
on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside,
now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped
upon the hearth.
'As to me,' said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with
his sulky hands, 'I am a Donkey, that's what I am. I am as obstinate
as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one,
and I should like to kick like one.'
'Not me, I hope, Tom?'
'No, Loo; I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you at
first. I don't know what this- jolly old- Jaundiced Jail,' Tom had
paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for
the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by
the strong alliteration of this one, 'would be without you.'
'Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?'
'Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it!'
returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify
his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit.
'Because Tom,' said his sister, after silently watching the sparks
awhile, 'as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit
wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't
reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don't know what
other girls know. I can't play to you, or sing to you. I can't talk to
you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights
or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to
you to talk about, when you are tired.'
'Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am
a Mule too, which you're not. If father was determined to make me
either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to
reason, I must be a Mule. And so I am,' said Tom, desperately.
'It's a great pity,' said Louisa, after another pause, and
speaking thoughtfully out of her dark corner; 'it's a great pity, Tom.
It's very unfortunate for both of us.'
'Oh! You,' said Tom; 'you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of
it better than a boy does. I don't miss anything in you. You are the
only pleasure I have- you can brighten even this place- and you can
always lead me as you like.'
'You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such
things, I don't so much mind knowing better. Though I do know
better, Tom, and am very sorry for it.' She came and kissed him, and
went back into her corner again.
'I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,' said
Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, 'and all the Figures, and all the
people who found them out; and I wish I could put a thousand barrels
of gunpowder under them, and blow them all up together! However,
when I go to live with old Bounderby, I'll have my revenge.'
'Your revenge, Tom?'
'I mean, I'll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something,
and hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way in which I have
been brought up.'
'But don't disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr Bounderby
thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half
so kind.'
'Oh'; said Tom, laughing; 'I don't mind that. I shall very well know
how to manage and smoothe old Bounderby!'
Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high
presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the
ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark
cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination- if such treason could have been
there- might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject, and
of its lowering association with their future.
'What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a
secret?'
'Oh!' said Tom, 'if it is a secret, it's not far off. It's you.
You are his little pet, you are his favourite; he'll do anything for
you. When he says to me what I don't like, I shall say to him, "My
sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr Bounderby. She always
used to tell me she was sure you would be easier with me than this."
That'll bring him about, or nothing will.'
After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom
wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning
round and about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more
and more, until he suddenly looked up, and asked:
'Have you gone to sleep, Loo?'
'No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.'
'You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,'
said Tom. 'Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.'
'Tom,' inquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she
were reading what she asked, in the fire, and it were not quite
plainly written there, 'do you look forward with any satisfaction to
this change to Mr Bounderby's?'
'Why, there's one thing to be said of it,' returned Tom, pushing his
chair from him and standing up; 'it will be getting away from home.'
'There is one thing to be said of it,' Louisa repeated in her former
curious tone; 'it will be getting away from home. Yes.'
'Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and
to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or
not; and I had better go where I can take with me some advantage of
your influence, than where I should lose it altogether. Don't you
see?'
'Yes, Tom.'
The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision
in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to
contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from her point of view,
and see what he could make of it.
'Except that it is a fire,' said Tom, 'it looks to me as stupid
and blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a
circus?'
'I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have
been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.
'Wondering again!' said Tom.
'I have such unmanageable thoughts,' returned his sister, 'that they
will wonder.'
'Then I beg of you, Louisa,' said Mrs Gradgrind, who had opened
the door without being heard, 'to do nothing of that description,
for goodness' sake you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the
last of it from your father. And Thomas, it is really shameful, with
my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as
you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should
be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father
has expressly said that she is not to do it.'
Louisa denied Tom's participation in the offence; but her mother
stopped her with the conclusive answer, 'Louisa, don't tell me, in
my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is
morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.'
'I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red
sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me
think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could
hope to do in it.'
'Nonsense!' said Mrs Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic.
'Nonsense! Don't stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my
face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your
father's ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the
trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have
attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you
myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on
with your master about combustion, and calcinaton, and calorification,
and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid
distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and
ashes! I wish,' whimpered Mrs Gradgrind, taking a chair, and
discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these mere
shadows of facts, 'yes, I really do wish that I had never had a
family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!'
CHAPTER 9
Sissy's Progress
-
SISSY JUPE had not an easy time of it, between Mr M'Choakumchild and
Mrs Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first
months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long
so very hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a
closely-ruled cyphering-book, that assuredly she would have run
away, but for only one restraint.
It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of
no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all
calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities that any
Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The girl believed
that her father had not deserted her; she lived in the hope that he
would come back, and in the faith that he would be made the happier by
her remaining where she was.
The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation,
rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical
basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr
Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? M'Choakumchild reported
that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed
with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable
interest in its exact measurements; that she was extremely slow in the
acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be
connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required
(by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred
and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteenpence halfpenny; that she was
as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of
induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only
yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for
returning to the question, 'What is the first principle of this
science?' the absurd answer, 'To do unto others as I would that they
should do unto me.'
Mr Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad;
that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of
knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular
statements A to Z; and that Jupe 'must be kept to it.' So Jupe was
kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.
'It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!' she said, one
night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next
day something clearer to her.
'Do you think so?'
'I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me
now, would be so easy then.'
'You might not be the better for it, Sissy.'
Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, 'I should not be the
worse, Miss Louisa.' To which Miss Louisa answered, 'I don't know
that.'
There had been so little communication between these two- both
because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of
machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of the
prohibition relative to Sissy's past career- that they were still
almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to
Louisa's face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.
'You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I
can ever be,' Louisa resumed. 'You are pleasanter to yourself, than
I am to my self.'
'But, if you please Miss Louisa,' Sissy pleaded, 'I am- O so
stupid!'
Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be
wiser by and by.
'You don't know,' said Sissy, half crying, 'what a stupid girl I am.
All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr and Mrs M'Choakumchild
call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can't
help them. They seem to come natural to me.'
'Mr and Mrs M'Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I
suppose, Sissy?'
'O no!' she eagerly returned. 'They know everything.'
'Tell me some of your mistakes.'
'I am almost ashamed,' said Sissy, with reluctance. 'But today,
for instance, Mr M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural
Prosperity.'
'National, I think it must have been,' observed Louisa.
'Yes, it was.- But isn't it the same?' she timidly asked.
'You had better say, National, as he said so,' returned Louisa, with
her dry reserve.
'National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation.
And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn't this a
prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn't this a prosperous nation,
and a'n't you in a thriving state?'
'What did you say?' asked Louisa.
'Miss Louisa, I said I didn't know. I thought I couldn't know
whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a
thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and
whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. It was
not in the figures at all,' said S |
