of whose imprisonment he had just heard. He told Mr. Pickwick that his
daughter Emily had fallen in love with Snodgrass, and that, discovering
it, he had brought her to London to ask the advice of Mr. Pickwick in
the matter. While they talked he sent the fat boy back to the inn to
tell Emily that Mr. Pickwick would dine there with them.
The fat boy went on this errand, and coming suddenly into the inn
sitting-room, discovered Emily, with her waist encircled with
Snodgrass's arm while Arabella and her pretty housemaid were obligingly
looking out of the window. There was but one thing to do: they bribed
the fat boy not to tell!
Snodgrass, unluckily, stayed too long. As he was leaving, he heard Mr.
Wardle, with Mr. Pickwick and Winkle, coming up the stair. He was
obliged to retreat, and took refuge in Mr. Wardle's bedroom, from which
there was no escape, save through the dining-room.
The dinner hour was a painful one to Emily, for the fat boy's secret
kept him awake, and he winked at her and at Arabella so often that Mr.
Wardle noticed it. The latter sent him into the bedroom finally for his
snuff-box and he came out very pale, Mr. Snodgrass having seized him
there, and begged him to tell some one secretly to release him.
Accordingly the fat boy made desperate efforts to attract Mr. Pickwick's
attention--first by making faces at him when he thought no one else was
looking and finally by running a pin into his leg. But this did not have
the desired results. Mr. Pickwick concluded he was crazy, and Mr. Wardle
was about to have him taken down stairs, when into the confusion, with a
very red face, walked Snodgrass, out of the bedroom. He explained his
presence there, declared his love for Emily, was forgiven on the spot
and joined the dinner.
The happiness of all was complete when old Mr. Winkle arrived (having
made up his mind to see his son's wife and judge for himself) and found
Arabella so sweet that he kissed her and forgave Winkle on the instant.
Thus the last adventure of the Pickwickians ended happily. Mr. Pickwick
had seen, before this, that the marriage of his companions would change
his own life. He withdrew his name from the Pickwick Club (which
thereupon went to pieces), and purchased a house near London for the
entertainment of his friends, and there a few days later Snodgrass and
Emily were married in the presence of Mr. Wardle and all the
Pickwickians.
After the wedding, Snodgrass bought a farm near Dingley Dell where, with
Emily, he lived many years, and was always accounted a great poet on
account of his pensive and absent-minded manner. Winkle, with Arabella,
settled a half-mile from Mr. Pickwick. Tupman never again fell in love,
though for years his romantic air made him the admiration of numerous
single ladies of the neighborhood.
Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer went to India as surgeons where (after having
had yellow fever fourteen times) they became teetotalers and thereafter
did well. Mrs. Bardell continued to let lodgings to single gentlemen,
but never had another breach of promise suit. Old Tony Weller finally
gave up business and retired to live on the interest of the money Mr.
Pickwick had invested for him, having, to the end of his life, a great
dislike for widows. His son, Sam, remaining faithful to his master, Mr.
Pickwick at length made Mary, the pretty maid, his housekeeper, on
condition that she marry Sam, which she did at once.
Mr. Pickwick lived happily, occupied in writing his adventures and in
acting as godfather to the children of Snodgrass and Winkle. He never
regretted what he had done for Jingle and Job Trotter, who became in
time worthy members of society. He was a favorite with all and the
children loved him. Every year he went to Mr. Wardle's to a large
merrymaking, attended by his faithful Sam Weller, between whom and his
master there was a regard that nothing but death could end.
LITTLE DORRIT
Published 1855-1857
_Scene_: London and Various Places on the Continent
_Time_: 1827 to 1830
CHARACTERS
Mr. Dorrit An inmate of the debtors' prison
Known as "The Father of the Marshalsea." Later a
wealthy man of the world
"Little Dorrit" His daughter Amy
Fanny His older daughter
"Tip" His son
Mrs. General His daughters' chaperon
Arthur Clennam Little Dorrit's champion
Mr. Clennam His father
Mrs. Clennam His supposed mother
Flintwinch A family servant
Later Mrs. Clennam's partner in business
Affery His wife, and Mrs. Clennam's servant
Pancks A rent collector. Little Dorrit's friend
John Chivery The son of one of the prison turnkeys
Little Dorrit's suitor
Maggy A half-witted woman
Doyce An inventor. Arthur's partner in business
Rigaud A blackmailing adventurer and jailbird
Mr. Tite Barnacle A self-important official in the
"Circumlocution Office"
Mr. Merdle A supposedly wealthy man of affairs in London
Mrs. Merdle His wife
Mr. Meagles A business man. Arthur's friend
Mrs. Meagles His wife
"Pet" Their daughter
"Tattycoram" Pet's maid
LITTLE DORRIT
I
HOW ARTHUR CAME HOME FROM CHINA
A long, long time ago there lived in London a young man named Clennam.
He was an orphan, and was brought up by a stern uncle, who crushed and
repressed his youth and finally forced him to marry a cold, unfeeling,
stubborn woman whom he did not in the least love.
Some time before this marriage, the nephew had met a beautiful young
woman, also an orphan, whom a rich man named Dorrit was educating to be
a singer, since she had a remarkable voice. Clennam had fallen in love
with her and had persuaded her to give him all her love in return. There
had even been a kind of ceremony of marriage between them.
But they were both very poor and could not really marry for fear of the
anger of Clennam's cruel uncle, who finally compelled his nephew to
marry the other woman, whom he had picked out for him. And the singer,
because she loved him and could not bear to see him made a beggar, gave
him up. So Clennam married one woman while loving another, and this, as
all wrong things must do, resulted in unhappiness for them both.
The singer had given him a little silk watch-paper worked in beads with
the initials D. N. F. These letters stood for the words, "Do Not
Forget."
The wife saw the paper with her husband's watch in his secret drawer and
wondered what it meant. One day she found an old letter, that had passed
between her husband and the singer, which explained the initials and
betrayed the secret of their love.
She was hard and unforgiving. Though she had never loved Clennam
herself, her anger was terrible. She went to the singer, and under
threat of for ever disgracing her in the eyes of the world, she made her
give up to her her baby boy, Arthur, to rear as her own. She promised,
in return, that the little Arthur should be provided for and should
never know the real history of his parentage. She also compelled her
husband and the singer to take an oath that neither would ever see or
communicate with the other again.
Mrs. Clennam, in taking this terrible revenge, cheated herself into
believing that she was only the instrument of God, carrying out His will
and punishment. But in reality she was satisfying the rage and hatred of
her own heart. Year by year she nursed this rage in the gloomy house in
which Clennam lived and where he carried on the London branch of his
business.
It was an old brick house separated from the street by a rusty
courtyard. It seemed to have once been about to slide down sidewise, but
had been propped up as though it leaned on some half-dozen gigantic
crutches. Inside it was dark and miserable, with sunken floors and
blackened furniture. In a corner of the sitting-room was an ugly old
clock that was wound once a week with an iron handle, and on the walls
were pictures showing the "Plagues of Egypt." The only pleasure the grim
woman enjoyed was reading aloud from those parts of the Old Testament
which call for dreadful punishments to fall upon all the enemies of the
righteous, and in these passages she gloried.
In this melancholy place the boy Arthur Clennam grew up in silence and
in dread, wondering much why they lived so lonely and why his father and
mother (for so he thought Mrs. Clennam to be) sat always so silent with
faces turned from each other.
There were but two servants, an old woman named Affery, and Flintwinch,
her husband, a short, bald man, who was both clerk and footman, and who
carried his head awry and walked in a one-sided crab-like way, as though
he were falling and needed propping up like the house. Flintwinch was
cunning and without conscience. Very few secrets his mistress had which
he did not know, and they often quarreled.
At length the uncle, who had compelled the unhappy marriage of Arthur's
father, died. Feeling sorry at the last for the wretched singer, whose
life had been ruined, he left her in his will a sum of money, and
another sum to the youngest niece of the man who had befriended and
educated her--Mr. Dorrit.
This money, however, Mrs. Clennam did not intend either the woman she
hated or the niece of her patron should get. She hid the part of the
will which referred to it, and made Flintwinch (who, beside her husband,
was the only one who knew of it) promise not to tell. Arthur's father
she compelled to sail to China, to take charge of the branch of his
business in that country, and when Arthur was old enough, she sent him
there also.
For twenty years, while Arthur stayed with his father on the other side
of the world, Mrs. Clennam, cold and unforgiving as ever, lived on in
the old, tumbling house, carrying on the London business with the aid of
Flintwinch.
The poor, forsaken singer lost her mind and at last died. Mr. Dorrit, of
course, knowing nothing about the hidden will, could not claim his
share, and the guilty secret remained (except for Arthur's unhappy
father) in possession of only Mrs. Clennam and the crafty Flintwinch.
So the years rolled by, and Mrs. Clennam's cold gray eyes grew colder,
her gray hair grayer and her face more hard and stony. She went out
less and less, and finally paralysis made her keep to her room and her
chair.
The time came when Arthur's father lay dying with his son beside him. On
his death-bed he did not forget the money which had never been restored.
He had not strength to write, but with his dying hand he gave Arthur his
watch, making him promise to take it back to England to the wife whose
anger and hatred still lived. The watch still held the little paper with
the bead initials that stood for "Do not forget," and he meant thus to
remind her of the wrong which was still unrighted.
Many times thereafter, on his way back to London, Arthur thought of his
father's strange manner and wondered if it could be that some wrong deed
lay on his conscience. This idea clung to him, so that when he saw Mrs.
Clennam again on his arrival, and spoke to her of his father's last
hours, he asked her if she thought this might be so. But at this her
anger rose; she upbraided him and declared if he ever referred again to
the subject she would renounce him as her son and cast him off for ever.
It was her guilty conscience, of course, that caused this burst of rage.
And yet, just because it was not for the money's sake that she had done
that evil act, but because she so hated the woman to whom it should have
been given, she tried to convince herself that she had acted rightly,
as the instrument of God, to punish wickedness. She had told herself
this falsehood over and over again so often that she had ended by quite
believing it to be the truth.
Arthur said no more to her about the matter. He was a man now, and his
father's death had made him master of a very considerable fortune. He
decided that he would not carry on the business, but would make a new
one for himself. This resolution angered Mrs. Clennam greatly, but she
grimly determined to carry it on herself, and in Arthur's place took the
wily Flintwinch as her partner and told Arthur coldly to go his own way.
II
THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA
On the first night of his return to the house of his childhood Arthur
had noticed there a little seamstress, with pale, transparent face,
hazel eyes and a figure as small as a child's. She wore a spare thin
dress, spoke little, and passed through the rooms noiselessly and shy.
They called her "Little Dorrit." She came in the morning and sewed
quietly till nightfall, when she vanished. It had been so rare in the
old days for any one to please the mistress of that gloomy house that
the little creature's presence there interested Arthur greatly and he
longed to know something of her history.
He soon found there was nothing to be learned from Flintwinch, and so
one night he followed Little Dorrit when she left the house. To his
great surprise he saw her finally enter a great bare building surrounded
with spiked walls and called The Marshalsea.
This was a famous prison where debtors were kept. In those days the law
not only permitted a man to be put in jail for debt, but compelled him
to stay there till all he owed was paid--a strange custom, since while
he was in jail he was unable to earn any money to pay with. In fact, in
many cases poor debtors had to stay there all their lives.
Inside the walls of the Marshalsea the wives and children of unfortunate
prisoners were allowed to come to live with them just as in a
boarding-house or hotel, but the debtors themselves could never pass out
of the gate. Arthur entered the prison ignorant of its rules and so
stayed too long, for presently the bell for closing rang, the gates were
shut, and he had to stay inside all night. This was not so pleasant, but
it gave him a chance easily to find out all he wished to learn of Little
Dorrit's history.
Her father, before she was born, had lost all his money through a
business failure, and had thus been thrown into the Marshalsea. There
Amy, or Little Dorrit, as they came to call her, was born; there her
mother had languished away, and there she herself had always lived,
mothering her pretty frivolous sister Fanny, and her lazy, ne'er-do-well
brother, "Tip."
Her father had been an inmate of the prison so many years that he was
called "The Father of the Marshalsea." From being a haughty man of
wealth, he had become a shabby old white-haired dignitary with a soft
manner, who took little gifts of money which any one gave him
half-shame-facedly and to the mortification of Little Dorrit alone.
The child had grown up the favorite of the turnkeys and of all the
prison, calling the high, blank walls "home." When she was a little slip
of a girl she had her sister and brother sent to night-school for a
time, and later taught herself fine sewing, so that at the time Arthur
Clennam returned to London she was working every day outside the walls,
for small wages. Each night she returned to the prison to prepare her
father's supper, bringing him whatever she could hide from her own
dinner at the house where she sewed, loving him devotedly through all.
She even had a would-be lover, too. The son of one of the turnkeys, a
young man with weak legs and weak, light hair, soft-hearted and
soft-headed, had long pursued her in vain. He was now engaged in seeking
comfort for his hopeless love by composing epitaphs for his own
tombstone, such as:
_______________________________________________
| |
| Here Lie the Mortal Remains of |
| JOHN CHIVERY |
| Never Anything Worth Mentioning |
| Who Died of a Broken Heart, Requesting With |
| His Last Breath that the Word |
| AMY |
| Might be Inscribed Over His Ashes |
| Which Was Done by His Afflicted Parents |
|_______________________________________________|
Old Mr. Dorrit held his position among the Marshalsea prisoners with
great fancied dignity and received all visitors and new-comers in his
room like a man of society at home. During that evening Arthur called on
him and treated the old man so courteously and talked to Little Dorrit
with such kindness that she began to love him from that moment.
Many things of Little Dorrit's pathetic story Arthur learned that night.
His first surprise at finding her in the Clennam house mingled strangely
with his old thought that his father on his death-bed seemed to be
troubled by some remorseful memory; and as he slept in the gloomy prison
he dreamed that the little seamstress was in some mysterious way mingled
with this wrong and remorse.
There was more truth than fancy in this dream. Not knowing the true
history of his parentage, and wholly ignorant of the sad life and death
of the poor singer, his own unhappy mother, Arthur had never heard the
name Dorrit. He did not know, to be sure, that it was the name of the
wealthy patron who had once educated her. As a matter of fact, this
patron had been Little Dorrit's own uncle, who now was living in
poverty. It was to his youngest niece that the will Mrs. Clennam had
wickedly hidden declared the money should go. And as Little Dorrit was
this niece, it rightfully belonged to her. The real reason of Mrs.
Clennam's apparent kindness to Little Dorrit was the pricking of her
conscience, which gave her no rest.
But all this Arthur could not guess. Nevertheless, he had gained such an
interest in the little seamstress that next day he determined to find
out all he could about her father's unfortunate affairs.
He had great difficulty in this. The Government had taken charge of old
Mr. Dorrit's debts, and his affairs were in the hands of a department
which some people sneeringly called the "Circumlocution Office"--because
it took so much time and talk for it to accomplish anything. This
department had a great many clerks, every one of whom seemed to have
nothing to do but to keep people from troubling them by finding out
anything.
Arthur went to one clerk, who sent him to a Mr. Tite Barnacle, a fat,
pompous man with a big collar, a big watch chain and stiff boots. Mr.
Barnacle treated him quite as an outsider and would give him no
information whatever. Then he tried another department, where they said
they knew nothing of the matter. Still a third advised him not to bother
about it. So at last he had to give up, quite discouraged.
Though he could do nothing for Little Dorrit's father, Arthur did what
he could for her lazy brother. He paid his debts so that he was released
from the Marshalsea, and this kindness, though Tip himself was
ungrateful to the last degree, endeared him still more to Little Dorrit,
who needed his friendship so greatly.
The night her brother was released she came to Arthur to thank
him--alone save for a half-witted woman named Maggie, who believed she
herself was only ten years old, and called Little Dorrit "Little
Mother," and who used to go with her when she went through the streets
at night. Little Dorrit was dressed so thinly and looked so slight and
helpless that when she left, Arthur felt as if he would like to take her
up in his arms and carry her home again.
It would have been better if he had. For when they got back to the
Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to
stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly
dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come
in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a
while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this
adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him for
fear he should blame himself for letting them go home alone.
Little Dorrit had one other valuable friend beside Arthur at this time.
This was a rent collector named Pancks, who was really kind-hearted, but
who was compelled to squeeze rent money out of the poor by his master.
The latter looked so good and benevolent that people called him "The
Patriarch," but he was at heart a genuine skinflint, for whose meanness
Pancks got all the credit. Pancks was a short, wiry man, with a scrubby
chin and jet-black eyes, and when he walked or talked he puffed and blew
and snorted like a little steam-engine.
Little Dorrit used sometimes to go to sew at the house of "The
Patriarch," and Pancks often saw her there. One day he greatly surprised
her by asking to see the palm of her hand, and then he pretended to read
her fortune. He told her all about herself (which astonished her, for
she did not know that he knew anything of her history), and then, with
many mysterious puffs and winks, he told her she would finally be happy.
After that she seemed to meet Pancks wherever she went--at Mrs.
Clennam's and at the Marshalsea as well--but at such meetings he would
pretend not to know her. Only sometimes, when no one else was near, he
would whisper:
"I'm Pancks, the gipsy--fortune-telling."
[Illustration: Arthur Clennam calling on Little Dorrit and her father at
The Marshalsea
_See page 269_]
These strange actions puzzled Little Dorrit very much. But she was far
from guessing the truth: that Pancks had for some time been interested
(as had Arthur Clennam) in finding out how her father's affairs stood.
He had discovered thus, accidentally, that old Mr. Dorrit was probably
the heir at law to a great estate that had lain for years forgotten,
unclaimed and growing larger all the time. The question now was to prove
this, and this, Pancks, out of friendship for Little Dorrit, was busily
trying to do.
One day the rent-collector came to Arthur to tell him that he had
succeeded. The proof was all found. Mr. Dorrit's right was clear; all he
had to do was to sign his name to a paper, and the Marshalsea gates
would open and he would be free and a rich man.
Arthur found Little Dorrit and told her the glad tidings. They made her
almost faint for joy, although all her rejoicing was for her father.
Then he put her in a carriage and drove as fast as possible with her to
the prison to carry her father the great news.
Little Dorrit told the old man with her arms around his neck, and as she
clasped him, thinking that she had never yet in her life known him as he
had once been, before his prison years, she cried:
"I shall see him as I never saw him yet--my dear love, with the dark
cloud cleared away! I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him long
ago! O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!"
So "The Father of the Marshalsea" left the old prison, in which he had
lived so long, and all the prisoners held a mass-meeting and gave him a
farewell address and a dinner.
On the last day, when they drove away from the iron gates, old Mr.
Dorrit was in fine, new clothing, and Tip and Fanny were clad in the
height of fashion. Poor Little Dorrit, in joy for her father and grief
at parting from Arthur (for they were to go abroad at once), did not
appear at the last moment, and Arthur, who had come to see them off,
hastening to her room, found that she had fainted away. He carried her
gently down to the carriage, and as he lifted her in, he saw she had put
on the same thin little dress that she had worn on the day he had first
seen her.
So, amid cheers and good wishes, they drove away, and Arthur, as he
walked back through the crowded streets, somehow felt very lonely.
III
WHAT RICHES BROUGHT TO THE DORRITS
Great changes came to old Mr. Dorrit with his money. As they traveled
slowly through Switzerland and into Italy, he put on greater dignity
daily. He lived each day suspecting that every one was in some way
trying to slight him and grew very much ashamed of his past years in the
Marshalsea, and forbade all mention of them. He hired a great number of
servants, and, to improve the manners of Fanny and Little Dorrit, he
employed a woman named Mrs. General, who had many silly notions of
society.
Little Dorrit could not even say "father" without being reproved by Mrs.
General. "Papa is preferable, my dear," the lady would insist, "and,
besides, it gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry,
prunes and prisms are all good words for the lips. You will find it
serviceable in the formation of a demeanor, if you say to yourself in
company--on entering a room, for instance--'Papa, potatoes, poultry,
prunes and prisms!'"
Fanny and Tip were as spoiled as possible. Fanny, morning and night,
thought of nothing but wearing costly dresses and "going into society,"
and Tip did little but play cards and bet on horse-races. Only Little
Dorrit, through all, kept her old sweet self unchanged.
Wherever they went they lived in splendid hotels. In Venice the palace
they occupied was six times as big as the whole Marshalsea. Mr. Dorrit,
when he remembered Arthur Clennam at all, spoke of him as an upstart who
had intruded his presence upon them in their poverty, and quickly
forgot all his kindness and his efforts to help and comfort them.