Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

Mr. Merdle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mortimer* might have married on the same speculation. Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels showed to the richest advantage. The bosom, moving in Society with the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society approving, Mr. Merdle was satisfied. He was the most disinterested of men,—did everything for Society, and got as little for himself, out of all his gain and care, as a man might.

the young gentleman (whose expressive name was Sparkler) being monomaniacal in offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young ladies, and in remarking of every successive young lady to whom he tendered a matrimonial proposal that she was “a doosed fine gal—well educated too—with no biggodd nonsense about her.”

Like a person with two wooden legs, getting another person with two wooden legs, to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match. And four wooden legs are more troublesome to you than two, when you don’t want any.” Mr. Pancks concluded by blowing off that steam of his.

It may not give you a very flattering idea of my business habits, that I failed to make my terms beforehand,” continued Clennam; “but I prefer to make them a point of honor. I have seen so much business done on sharp principles that, to tell you the truth, Mr. Pancks, I am tired of them.”

“It’s pauperizing a man, sir, I have been shown, to let him into a Hospital?”* said Pancks.

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait again. The artist had given it a head that would have been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy for Shakespeare.

This young man’s disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in the eyes of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to effect a precipitate retirement from the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she had had her laugh out.

If it should happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough to have heard of such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against yourself.”

“Have you undergone many privations? You and your father, and who else there may be of you?” asked Mrs. Clennam, speaking deliberately and meditatively turning the watch over and over. “Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,” said Little Dorrit, in her soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way; “but I think not harder—as to that—than many people find it.” “That’s well said!” Mrs. Clennam quickly returned. “That’s the truth! You are a good, thoughtful girl. You are a grateful girl too, or I much mistake you.” “It is only natural to be that. There is no merit in being that,” said Little Dorrit. “I am indeed.” Mrs. Clennam, with a gentleness of which the dreaming Affery had never dreamed her to be capable, drew down the face of her little seamstress, and kissed her on the forehead.

“You may be heart-free here, sir,” she returned to Mr. Blandois. “Those letters are not intended, I believe, for the initials of any name.” “Of a motto perhaps,” said Mr. Blandois, casually. “Of a sentence. They have always stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget!”

“Does it disgrace anybody,” said Little Dorrit, very gently, “to take care of this poor old man?” “Yes, miss,” returned her sister, “and you ought to know it does. And you do know it does. And you do it because you know it does. The principal pleasure of your life is to remind your family of their misfortunes. And the next great pleasure of your existence is to keep low company. But, however, if you have no sense of decency, I have. You’ll please to allow me to go on the other side of the way, unmolested.”

“When I lie down to-night, and my thoughts come back—as they will, for they do every night, even when I have not seen you—to this sad place, I may believe that there is no grief beyond this room, now, and its usual occupants, which preys on Little Dorrit’s mind?” She seemed to catch at these words—that he remembered, too, long afterwards—and said, more brightly, “Yes, Mr. Clennam; yes, you may!”

“As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that he should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to do with marriage.

“From what I can make out,” said Mrs. Gowan, “I believe I may say that Henry will be relieved from debt——” “Much in debt?” asked Mrs. Merdle through her eye-glass. “Why tolerably, I should think,” said Mrs. Gowan. “Meaning the usual thing; I understand; just so,” Mrs. Merdle observed in a comfortable sort of way.

I simply request you to care about nothing—or to seem to care about nothing—as everybody else does.”

“Why, no doubt everybody has heard it noticed!” Which in truth was no unreasonable inference; seeing that Mr. Sparkler would probably be the last person, in any assemblage of the human species, to receive an impression from anything that passed in his presence.

wherever there was a square yard of ground in British occupation, under the sun or moon, with a public post upon it, sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a flag-staff upon any spot of earth, and take possession of it in the British name, but to that spot of earth, so soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle and a dispatch-box.

“Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by a beautiful and charming girl whom I love with all my heart.” (“Is there much of it?” Clennam thought.

Precedent and Precipitate together frightened all objection out of most people.

they did all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and barking, under directions from the heads of the family; and they put dummy motions on the paper in the way of other men’s motions, and they stalled disagreeable subjects off until late in the night and late in the session, and then with virtuous patriotism cried out that it was too late;

The fiction that it was not Mr. Meagles who had stood in the way, but that it was the Family greatness, and that the Family greatness had made a concession, and there was now a soothing unanimity, pervaded the affair, though it was never openly expressed.

“Of Mr. Casby?” said Clennam. “He’s a fine old fellow.” “Noble old boy; an’t he?” said Mr. Pancks, entering on a series of the dryest of snorts. “Generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent I engaged to pay him, sir. But we never do business for less, at our shop.” Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of having, in his exultant condition, been a little premature.

“He will be a rich man. He is a rich man. A great sum of money is waiting to be paid over to him as his inheritance; you are all henceforth very wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank Heaven that you are rewarded!” As he kissed her, she turned her head towards his shoulder, and raised her arm towards his neck; cried out “Father! Father! Father!” and swooned away.

I congratulate you with all my soul on this change of fortune, and on the happy future into which you are soon to carry the treasure you have been blest with here—the best of all the riches you can have elsewhere—the treasure at your side.”

“Mr. Clennam, will he pay all his debts before he leaves here?” “No doubt. All.” “All the debts for which he has been imprisoned here, all my life and longer?” “No doubt.” There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look; something that was not all satisfaction. He wondered to detect it, and said: “You are glad that he should do so?” “Are you?” asked Little Dorrit, wistfully. “Am I? Most heartily glad!” “Then I know I ought to be.” “And are you not?” “It seems to me hard,” said Little Dorrit, “that he should have lost so many years and suffered so much, and at last pay all the debts as well. It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both.”

“Your position, my dear Frederick, is now a fine one. Your position as my brother is a very fine one. And I know that it belongs to your conscientious nature, to try to become worthy of it, my dear Frederick, and to try to adorn it. To be no discredit to it, but to adorn it.”

here is that child Amy disgracing us, to the last moment and at the last moment, by being carried out in that dress after all. And by that Mr. Clennam too!” The offence was proved, as she delivered the indictment. Clennam appeared at the carriage-door, bearing the little insensible figure in his arms. “She has been forgotten,” he said, in a tone of pity not free from reproach. “I ran up to her room (which Mr. Chivery showed me), and found the door open, and that she had fainted on the floor, dear child. She appeared to have gone to change her dress, and to have sunk down overpowered. It may have been the cheering, or it may have happened sooner. Take care of this poor cold hand, Miss Dorrit. Don’t let it fall.” “Thank you, sir,” returned Miss Dorrit, bursting into tears. “I believe I know what to do, if you’ll give me leave. Dear Amy, open your eyes, that’s a love! Oh, Amy, Amy, I really am so vexed and ashamed! Do rouse yourself, darling! Oh, why are they not driving on! Pray, Pa, do drive on!”

“She is very pretty,” she said to herself. “I never saw so beautiful a face. O how unlike me!” It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for it filled her eyes with tears. “I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I could very easily be wrong on any other subject. But not on this, not on this!” With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the sleeper’s hair, and then touched the hand that lay outside the covering. “I like to look at her,” she breathed to herself. “I like to see what has affected him so much.”

“To the winds with the family credit!” cried the old man, with great scorn and indignation. “Brother, I protest against pride. I protest against ingratitude. I protest against any one of us here who have known what we have known, and have seen what we have seen, setting up any pretension that puts Amy at a moment’s disadvantage, or to the cost of a moment’s pain. We may know that it’s a base pretension by its having that effect. It ought to bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest against it, in the sight of God!”

It chanced, however, that his wife expressed a dislike to the engaging Blandois, and that the balance of feeling in the hotel was against him. Upon that, Gowan resolved to encourage him.

Mr. Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired up the great staircase by Mr. Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which there is not any reason to doubt) that she had no nonsense about her, rather deceived himself.

He is as dead as the Doges!”

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of Marshalsea.

No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything.

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to mistake him.

within the short compass of the last financial half-year, this much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering).

Dear Mr. Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you—and others—so much by day, that I have had no thoughts left to wander round you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer from homesickness—that I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it.

Jobbery was suspected by the malicious; perhaps because it was indisputable that if the adherence of the immortal Enemy of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles would have jobbed him—for the good of the country, for the good of the country.

Mr. Pancks listened with such interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and occupied his hands during the whole recital in so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over his head, that he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in conversation with his father’s spirit.*

Give me your hand, Young John, give me your hand.” Young John gave it; but Mr. Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and nothing could change his face now, from its white, shocked look.

The whole business of the human race, between London and Dover, being spoliation, Mr. Dorrit was way-laid at Dartford, pillaged at Gravesend, rifled at Rochester, fleeced at Sittingbourne, and sacked at Canterbury.

it was worth my while, for my own pleasure—the gratification of a strong feeling—to pay a spy who would fetch and carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had wanted to make such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and if he could have done it in the dark, free from all risk, he would have taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money.

I HAVE the misfortune of not being a fool.

Accordingly, the men who were wanted, were sought out and found: which was in itself a most uncivilised and irregular way of proceeding. Being found, they were treated with great confidence and honor (which again showed dense political ignorance), and were invited to come at once and do what they had to do. In short, they were regarded as men who meant to do it, engaging with other men who meant it to be done.

Being a great reader of all kinds of literature (and never at all apologetic for that weakness), he sat down comfortably to read.

All last night I thought of what I would do; what remains is to do it.”

“You surprise me. That’s singular, sir. I have generally found, in my experience, that it’s their own money people are most particular about. I have seen people get rid of a good deal of other people’s money, and bear it very well; very well indeed.”

If I, a man, with a man’s advantages and means and energies, had slighted the whisper in my heart, that if my father had erred, it was my first duty to conceal the fault and to repair it, what youthful figure with tender feet going almost bare on the damp ground, with spare hands ever working, with its slight shape but half protected from the sharp weather, would have stood before me to put me to shame? Little Dorrit’s.