Chapter 10

Mrs. Gradgrind, not being a scientific character, usually dismissed her children to their studies with the general injunction that they were to choose their own pursuit.

_II.--Mr. Bounderby of Coketown_

Mr. Josiah Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can be to another man perfectly devoid of sentiment.

He was a rich man--banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare and a metallic laugh. 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 early ignorance and poverty. A man who was the bully of humility.

He was fond of telling, was Mr. Bounderby, how he was born in a ditch, and, abandoned by his mother, how he ran away from his grandmother, who starved and ill-used him, and so became a vagabond. "I pulled through it," he would say, "though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner--Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown."

This myth of his early life was dissipated later; and it turned out that his mother, a respectable old woman, whom Bounderby pensioned off with thirty pounds a year on condition she never came near him, had pinched herself to help him out in life, and put him as apprentice to a trade. From this apprenticeship he had steadily risen to riches.

Mr. Bounderby held strong views about the people who worked for him, the "hands" he called them; and found, whenever they complained of anything, that they always expected to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon.

As time went on, and young Thomas Gradgrind became old enough to go into Bounderby's Bank, Bounderby decided that Louisa was old enough to be married.

Mr. Gradgrind, now member of parliament for Coketown, mentioned the matter to his daughter.

"Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has been made to me."

He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. Strange to relate Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment as his daughter was.

"I have undertaken to let you know that--in short, that Mr. Bounderby has long hoped that the time might arrive when he should offer you his hand in marriage. That time has now come, and Mr. Bounderby has made his proposal to me, and has entreated me to make it known to you."

"Father," said Louisa, "do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?"

Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomforted by this unexpected question. "Well, my child," he returned, "I--really--cannot take upon myself to say."

"Father," pursued Louisa, in exactly the same voice as before, "do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?"

"My dear Louisa, no. No, I ask nothing."

"Father, does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?"

"Really, my dear, it is difficult to answer your question. Because the reply depends so materially, Louisa, on the sense in which we use the expression. Mr. Bounderby does not pretend to anything sentimental. Now, I should advise you to consider this question simply as one of fact. Now, what are the facts of this case? You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age. Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your respective years, but in your means and position there is none; on the contrary, there is a great suitability. Confining yourself rigidly to fact, the questions of fact are: 'Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him?' 'Yes, he does.' And, 'Shall I marry him?'"

"Shall I marry him?" repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.

There was silence between the two before Louisa spoke again. She thought of the shortness of life, of how her brother Tom had said it would be a good thing for him if she made up her mind to do--she knew what.

"While it lasts," she said aloud, "I would like to do the little I can, and the little I am fit for. What does it matter? Mr. Bounderby asks me to marry him. Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that this was my answer. Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I should wish him to know what I said."

"It is quite right, my dear," retorted her father approvingly, "to be exact I will observe your very proper request. Have you any wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my child?"

"None, father. What does it matter?"

They went into the drawing-room, and Mr. Gradgrind presented Louisa to his wife as Mrs. Bounderby.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Gradgrind. "So you have settled it. I am sure I give you joy, my dear, and I hope you may turn all your ological studies to good account. And now, you see, I shall be worrying myself morning, noon, and night, to know what I am to call him!"

"Mrs. Gradgrind," said her husband solemnly, "what do you mean?"

"Whatever am I to call him when he is married to Louisa? I must call him something. It's impossible to be constantly addressing him, and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn't hear of Joe, you very well know. Am I to call my own son-in-law 'Mister?' I believe not, unless the time has arrived when I am to be trampled upon by my relations. Then, what am I to call him?"

There being no answer to this conundrum, Mrs. Gradgrind retired to bed.

The day of the marriage came, and after the wedding-breakfast the bridegroom addressed the company--an improving party, there was no nonsense about any of them--in the following terms.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown. Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same. If you want a speech, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a member of parliament, and you know where to get it. Now, you have mentioned that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind's daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At the same time, I believe I am worthy of her. So I thank you for the goodwill you have shown towards us."

Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might see how the hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons, the happy pair departed for the railroad. As the bride passed downstairs her brother Tom whispered to her. "What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, too!"

She clung to him as she would have clung to some far better nature that day, and was shaken in her composure for the first time.

_III.--Mr. James Harthouse_

The Gradgrind party wanting assistance in the House of Commons, Mr. James Harthouse, who was of good family and appearance, and had tried most things and found them a bore, was sent down to Coketown to study the neighbourhood with a view to entering Parliament.

Mr. Bounderby at once pounced upon him, and James Harthouse was introduced to Mrs. Bounderby and her brother. Tom Gradgrind, junior, brought up under a continuous system of restraint, was a hypocrite, a thief, and, to Mr. James Harthouse, a whelp.

Yet the visitor saw at once that the whelp was the only creature Mrs. Bounderby cared for, and it occurred to him, as time went on, that to win Mrs. Bounderby's affection (for he made no secret of his contempt for politics), he must devote himself to the whelp.

Mr. Bounderby was proud to have Mr. James Harthouse under his roof, proud to show off his greatness and self-importance to this gentleman from London.

"You're a gentleman, and I don't pretend to be one. You're a man of family. I am a bit of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of rag, tag, and bobtail," said Mr. Bounderby.

At the same time Mr. Bounderby blustered at his wife and bullied his hands, so that Mr. Harthouse might understand his independence.

One of these hands, Stephen Blackpool, an old, steady, faithful workman, who had been boycotted by his fellows for refusing to join a trade union, was summoned to Mr. Bounderby's presence in order that Harthouse might see a specimen of the people that had to be dealt with.

Blackpool said he had nought to say about the trade union business; he had given a promise not to join, that was all.

"Not to me, you know!" said Bounderby.

"Oh, no sir; not to you!"

"Here's a gentleman from London present," Mr. Bounderby said, pointing at Harthouse. "A Parliament gentleman. Now, what do you complain of?"

"I ha' not come here, sir, to complain. I were sent for. Indeed, we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town--so rich as 'tis. Look how we live, and where we live, an' in what numbers; and look how the mills is always a-goin', and how they never works us no nigher to any distant object, 'cepting always, death. Sir, I cannot, wi' my little learning, tell the gentleman what will better this; though some working men o' this town could. But the strong hand will never do't; nor yet lettin' alone will never do't. Ratin' us as so much power and reg'latin' us as if we was figures in a sum, will never do't."

"Now, it's clear to me," said Mr. Bounderby, "that you are one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you are such a raspish, ill-conditioned chap that even your own union--the men who know you best--will have nothing to do with you. And I tell you what, I go so far along with them for a novelty, that I'll have nothing to do with you either. You can finish off what you're at, and then go elsewhere."

Thus James Harthouse learnt how Mr. Bounderby dealt with hands.

Mr. Harthouse, however, only felt bored, and took the earliest opportunity to explain to Mrs. Bounderby that he really had no opinions, and that he was going in for her father's opinions, because he might as well back them as anything else.

"The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun and to give a man the best chance. I am quite ready to go in for it to the same extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do if I did believe it?".

"You are a singular politician," said Louisa.

"Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the state, I assure you, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks and were reviewed together."

The more Mr. Harthouse's interest waned in politics the greater became his interest in Mrs. Bounderby. And he cultivated the whelp, cultivated him earnestly, and by so doing learnt from the graceless youth that "Loo never cared anything for old Bounderby," and had married him to please her brother.

Gradually, bit by bit, James Harthouse established a confidence with the whelp's sister from which her husband was excluded. He established a confidence with her that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence at all times of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate recesses, and the barrier behind which she lived had melted away.

And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him. So drifting icebergs, setting with a current, wreck the ships.

_IV.--Mr. Gradgrind and His Daughter_

Mrs. Gradgrind died while her husband was up in London, and Louisa was with her mother when death came.

"You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother," said Mrs. Gradgrind, when she was dying. "Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. But there is something--not an ology at all--that your father has missed, or forgotten. I don't know what it is; I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him to find out, for God's sake, what it is."

It was shortly after Mrs. Gradgrind's death that Mr. Bounderby was called away from home on business for a few days; and Mr. James Harthouse, still not sure at times of his purpose, found himself alone with Mrs. Bounderby.

They were in the garden, and Harthouse implored her to accept him as her lover. She urged him to go away, she commanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him nor raised it, but sat as still as though she were a statue.

Harthouse declared that she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life; that the objects he had lately pursued turned worthless beside her; the success that was almost within his grasp he flung away from him, like the dirt it was, compared with her.

All this, and more, he said, and pleaded for a further meeting.

"Not here," Louisa said calmly.

They parted at the beginning of a heavy shower of rain, and the fall James Harthouse had ridden for was averted.

Mrs. Bounderby left her husband's house, left it for good; not to share Mr. Harthouse's life, but to return to her father.

Mr. Gradgrind, released from parliament for a time, was alone in his study, when his eldest daughter entered.

"What is the matter, Louisa?"

"Father, I want to speak to you. You have trained me from my cradle?"

"Yes, Louisa."

"I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny. How could you give me life, and take from me all the things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Now, hear what I have come to say. With a hunger and a thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased, in a condition where it seemed nothing could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest, you proposed my husband to me."

"I never knew you were unhappy, my child!"

"I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life, perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors."

"What can I do, child? Ask me what you will."

"I am coming to it. Father, chance has thrown into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of--light, polished, easy. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me. It matters little how he gained my confidence. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage he soon knew just as well."

Her father's face was ashy white.

"I have done no worse; I have not disgraced you. This night, my husband being away, he has been with me. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry or ashamed. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means?"

She fell insensible, and he saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system lying at his feet. And it came to Thomas Gradgrind that night and on the morrow when he sat beside his daughter's bed, that there was a wisdom of the heart no less than a wisdom of the head; and that in supposing the latter to be all sufficient, he had erred.

But no such change of mind took place in Mr. Bounderby. Finding his wife absent, he went at once to Stone Lodge, and blustered in his usual way.

Mr. Gradgrind tried to make him understand that the best thing to do was to leave things as they were for a time, and that Louisa, who had been so tried, should stay on a visit to her father, and be treated with tenderness and consideration. It was all wasted on Blunderby.

"Now, I don't want to quarrel with you, Tom Gradgrind!" he retorted. "If your daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, don't come home at noon to-morrow, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and you'll take charge of her in future. What I shall say to people in general of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law will be this: I am Josiah Bounderby, she's the daughter of Tom Gradgrind; and the two horses wouldn't pull together. I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, and most people will understand that it must be a woman rather out of the common who would come up to my mark. I have got no more to say. Good-night!"

At five minutes past twelve next day, Mr. Bounderby directed his wife's property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind's, and then resumed a bachelor's life.

Mr. James Harthouse, learning from Louisa's maid--a young woman greatly attached to her mistress--that his attentions were altogether undesirable, and that he would never see Mrs. Bounderby again, decided to throw up politics and leave Coketown at once. Which he did.

Into how much of futurity did Mr. Bounderby see as he sat alone? Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, was to die in a fit in the Coketown street? Could he foresee Mr. Gradgrind, a white-haired man, making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity, and no longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills? These things were to be.

Could Louisa, sitting alone in her father's house and gazing into the fire, foresee the childless years before her? Could she picture a lonely brother, flying from England after robbery, and dying in a strange land, conscious of his want of love and penitent? These things were to be. Herself again a wife--a mother--lovingly watchful of her children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be an even more beautiful thing, and a possession any hoarded scrap of which is a blessing and happiness to the wisest? Such a thing was never to be.

* * * * *

Little Dorrit

"Little Dorrit" was written at a time when the author was busying himself not only with other literary work, but also with semi-private theatricals. John Forster, Charles Dickens's biographer and friend, even had some sort of fear at that time that Dickens was in danger of adopting the stage as a profession. Domestic troubles, culminating a year later in the separation from his wife, also explain the restlessness and general dissatisfaction which affected the great novelist in the years 1855-57, when this story appeared. Hence there is no surprise that "Little Dorrit" added but little to its author's reputation. It is a very long book, but it will never take a front-rank place. The story, however, on its appearance in monthly parts, the first of which was published in January 1856, and the completed work in 1857, was enormously successful, beating, in Dickens's own words, "'Bleak House' out of the field." Popular with the public, it has never won the critics.

_I.--The Father of the Marshalsea_

Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint George, in the Borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and the world is none the worse without it.

A debtor had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged gentleman who was perfectly clear--"like all the rest of them," the turnkey on the lock said--that he was going out again directly.

The affairs of this debtor, a shy, retiring man, with a mild voice and irresolute hands, were perplexed by a partnership, of which he knew no more than that he had invested money in it.

"Out?" said the turnkey. "He'll never get out unless his creditors take him by the shoulders and shove him out!"

The next day the debtor's wife came to the Marshalsea, bringing with her a little boy of three, and a little girl of two.

"Two children," the turnkey observed to himself. "And you another, which makes three; and your wife another, which makes four."

Six months later a little girl was born to the debtor, and when this child was eight years old, her mother, who had long been languishing, died.

The debtor had long grown accustomed to the place. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull relief in it. His elder children played regularly about the yard. If he had been a man with strength of purpose, he might have broken the net that held him, or broken his heart; but being what he was, he slipped easily into this smooth descent, and never more took one step upward.

The shabby old debtor with the soft manners and the white hair became the Father of the Marshalsea. And he grew to be proud of the title. All newcomers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction of this ceremony. They were welcome to the Marshalsea, he would tell them.

It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at night enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then, at long intervals, even half a sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea, "With the compliments of a collegian taking leave." He received the gifts as tributes to a public character.

Later he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain standing to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The collegian under treatment would often wrap up something in a paper and give it to him, "For the Father of the Marshalsea."

_II.--The Child of the Marshalsea_

The youngest child of the Father of the Marshalsea, born within the jail, was a very, very little creature indeed when she gained the knowledge that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond the prison gate, her father's feet must never cross that line.

At thirteen she could read and keep accounts--that is, could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries they needed would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. From the first she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something for the sake of the rest. Recognised as useful, even indispensable, she took the place of eldest of the three in all but precedence; was the head of the fallen family, and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames. She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day schools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well--no one better--that a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea could be no father to his own children.

To these scanty means of improvement she added others. Her sister Fanny, having a great desire to learn dancing, the Child of the Marshalsea persuaded a dancing-master, detained for a short time, to teach her. And Fanny became a dancer.

There was a ruined uncle in the family group, ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, on whom Fanny's protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined, further than that he left off washing when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. Having been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days, when he fell with his brother he resorted for support to playing a clarionet in a small theatre orchestra. It was the theatre in which his niece became a dancer, and he accepted the task of serving as her escort and guardian.

To get her brother--christened Edward, but called Tip--out of the prison was a more difficult task. Every post she obtained for him he always gave up, returning with the announcement that he was tired of it, and had cut it.