The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told)
the most important Department under Government. No public business of
any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of
the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie,
and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the
plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express
authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had
been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody
would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had
been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks
of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical
correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one
sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country,
was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to
study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through
the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done,
the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments
in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it
invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted
on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public
departments; and the public condition had risen to be--what it was.
It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of
all public departments and professional politicians all round the
Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every
new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as
necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their
utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from
the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had
been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been
asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest
on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had
been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself
that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It
is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session
through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to
do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session
virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable
stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective
chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal
speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and
gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering
with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found
out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not
political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution
Office went beyond it.
Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day,
keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not
to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any
ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be
by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute,
and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It
was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office
that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything.
Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners,
memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent
grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people,
jobbed people, people who couldn’t get rewarded for merit, and people
who couldn’t get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked
up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.
Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates
with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had
better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English
recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony
had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to
rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by
the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and
never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries
minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered,
entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short,
all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office,
except the business that never came out of it; and _its_ name was Legion.
Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes,
parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary
motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as
to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would
the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it
was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket,
and make a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to
that house with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman
foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman
that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter,
but was commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this
matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that,
although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly
right, it never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there
to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his
honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good
sense, more to half the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the
Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then
would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution
Office sitting below the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with
the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And although one
of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution
Office had nothing to say and said it, or that it had something to say
of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one
half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted
immaculate by an accommodating majority.
Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a
long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the
reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from
having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution
Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result
of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to
the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as
a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it
liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant
nuisance.
The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the
Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered
themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction,
and took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles
were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed
all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either
the nation was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the
Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not
quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the
nation theirs.
The Mr Tite Barnacle who at the period now in question usually coached
or crammed the statesman at the head of the Circumlocution Office, when
that noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his
saddle by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper,
was more flush of blood than money. As a Barnacle he had his place,
which was a snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put
in his son Barnacle Junior in the office. But he had intermarried with
a branch of the Stiltstalkings, who were also better endowed in a
sanguineous point of view than with real or personal property, and of
this marriage there had been issue, Barnacle junior and three young
ladies. What with the patrician requirements of Barnacle junior, the
three young ladies, Mrs Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself,
Mr Tite Barnacle found the intervals between quarter day and quarter day
rather longer than he could have desired; a circumstance which he always
attributed to the country’s parsimony.
For Mr Tite Barnacle, Mr Arthur Clennam made his fifth inquiry one day
at the Circumlocution Office; having on previous occasions awaited that
gentleman successively in a hall, a glass case, a waiting room, and a
fire-proof passage where the Department seemed to keep its wind. On this
occasion Mr Barnacle was not engaged, as he had been before, with the
noble prodigy at the head of the Department; but was absent. Barnacle
Junior, however, was announced as a lesser star, yet visible above the
office horizon.
With Barnacle junior, he signified his desire to confer; and found that
young gentleman singeing the calves of his legs at the parental fire,
and supporting his spine against the mantel-shelf. It was a comfortable
room, handsomely furnished in the higher official manner; and presenting
stately suggestions of the absent Barnacle, in the thick carpet, the
leather-covered desk to sit at, the leather-covered desk to stand at,
the formidable easy-chair and hearth-rug, the interposed screen, the
torn-up papers, the dispatch-boxes with little labels sticking out of
them, like medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading smell of leather
and mahogany, and a general bamboozling air of How not to do it.
The present Barnacle, holding Mr Clennam’s card in his hand, had a
youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever
was seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half
fledged like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged
that, if he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died
of cold. He had a superior eye-glass dangling round his neck, but
unfortunately had such flat orbits to his eyes and such limp little
eyelids that it wouldn’t stick in when he put it up, but kept tumbling
out against his waistcoat buttons with a click that discomposed him very
much.
‘Oh, I say. Look here! My father’s not in the way, and won’t be in the
way to-day,’ said Barnacle Junior. ‘Is this anything that I can do?’
(Click! Eye-glass down. Barnacle Junior quite frightened and feeling all
round himself, but not able to find it.)
‘You are very good,’ said Arthur Clennam. ‘I wish however to see Mr
Barnacle.’
‘But I say. Look here! You haven’t got any appointment, you know,’ said
Barnacle Junior.
(By this time he had found the eye-glass, and put it up again.)
‘No,’ said Arthur Clennam. ‘That is what I wish to have.’
‘But I say. Look here! Is this public business?’ asked Barnacle junior.
(Click! Eye-glass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of search
after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless to reply at present.)
‘Is it,’ said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor’s brown face,
‘anything about--Tonnage--or that sort of thing?’
(Pausing for a reply, he opened his right eye with his hand, and stuck
his glass in it, in that inflammatory manner that his eye began watering
dreadfully.)
‘No,’ said Arthur, ‘it is nothing about tonnage.’
‘Then look here. Is it private business?’
‘I really am not sure. It relates to a Mr Dorrit.’
‘Look here, I tell you what! You had better call at our house, if you
are going that way. Twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. My
father’s got a slight touch of the gout, and is kept at home by it.’
(The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye-glass
side, but ashamed to make any further alteration in his painful
arrangements.)
‘Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.’ Young Barnacle seemed
discomfited at this, as not having at all expected him to go.
‘You are quite sure,’ said Barnacle junior, calling after him when he
got to the door, unwilling wholly to relinquish the bright business idea
he had conceived; ‘that it’s nothing about Tonnage?’
‘Quite sure.’
With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken place
if it _had_ been anything about tonnage, Mr Clennam withdrew to pursue his
inquiries.
Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square
itself, but it was very near it. It was a hideous little street of dead
wall, stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited by
coachmen’s families, who had a passion for drying clothes and decorating
their window-sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The principal
chimney-sweep of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews
Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented
about early morning and twilight for the purchase of wine-bottles and
kitchen-stuff. Punch’s shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews
Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of
the neighbourhood made appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet
there were two or three small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews
Street, which went at enormous rents on account of their being abject
hangers-on to a fashionable situation; and whenever one of these fearful
little coops was to be let (which seldom happened, for they were in
great request), the house agent advertised it as a gentlemanly residence
in the most aristocratic part of town, inhabited solely by the elite of
the beau monde.
If a gentlemanly residence coming strictly within this narrow margin had
not been essential to the blood of the Barnacles, this particular branch
would have had a pretty wide selection among, let us say, ten thousand
houses, offering fifty times the accommodation for a third of the money.
As it was, Mr Barnacle, finding his gentlemanly residence extremely
inconvenient and extremely dear, always laid it, as a public servant,
at the door of the country, and adduced it as another instance of the
country’s parsimony.
Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house, with a ramshackle bowed
front, little dingy windows, and a little dark area like a damp
waistcoat-pocket, which he found to be number twenty-four, Mews Street,
Grosvenor Square. To the sense of smell the house was like a sort of
bottle filled with a strong distillation of Mews; and when the footman
opened the door, he seemed to take the stopper out.
The footman was to the Grosvenor Square footmen, what the house was to
the Grosvenor Square houses. Admirable in his way, his way was a back
and a bye way. His gorgeousness was not unmixed with dirt; and both in
complexion and consistency he had suffered from the closeness of his
pantry. A sallow flabbiness was upon him when he took the stopper out,
and presented the bottle to Mr Clennam’s nose.
‘Be so good as to give that card to Mr Tite Barnacle, and to say that I
have just now seen the younger Mr Barnacle, who recommended me to call
here.’
The footman (who had as many large buttons with the Barnacle crest upon
them on the flaps of his pockets, as if he were the family strong box,
and carried the plate and jewels about with him buttoned up) pondered
over the card a little; then said, ‘Walk in.’ It required some judgment
to do it without butting the inner hall-door open, and in the consequent
mental confusion and physical darkness slipping down the kitchen stairs.
The visitor, however, brought himself up safely on the door-mat.
Still the footman said ‘Walk in,’ so the visitor followed him. At the
inner hall-door, another bottle seemed to be presented and another
stopper taken out. This second vial appeared to be filled with
concentrated provisions and extract of Sink from the pantry. After a
skirmish in the narrow passage, occasioned by the footman’s opening the
door of the dismal dining-room with confidence, finding some one there
with consternation, and backing on the visitor with disorder, the
visitor was shut up, pending his announcement, in a close back parlour.
There he had an opportunity of refreshing himself with both the
bottles at once, looking out at a low blinding wall three feet off,
and speculating on the number of Barnacle families within the bills of
mortality who lived in such hutches of their own free flunkey choice.
Mr Barnacle would see him. Would he walk up-stairs? He would, and
he did; and in the drawing-room, with his leg on a rest, he found Mr
Barnacle himself, the express image and presentment of How not to do it.
Mr Barnacle dated from a better time, when the country was not so
parsimonious and the Circumlocution Office was not so badgered. He wound
and wound folds of white cravat round his neck, as he wound and wound
folds of tape and paper round the neck of the country. His wristbands
and collar were oppressive; his voice and manner were oppressive. He
had a large watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to
inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to inconvenience, an unwrinkled
pair of trousers, a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splendid,
massive, overpowering, and impracticable. He seemed to have been sitting
for his portrait to Sir Thomas Lawrence all the days of his life.
‘Mr Clennam?’ said Mr Barnacle. ‘Be seated.’
Mr Clennam became seated.
‘You have called on me, I believe,’ said Mr Barnacle, ‘at the
Circumlocution--’ giving it the air of a word of about five-and-twenty
syllables--‘Office.’
‘I have taken that liberty.’
Mr Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who should say, ‘I do not deny
that it is a liberty; proceed to take another liberty, and let me know
your business.’
‘Allow me to observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite
a stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the
inquiry I am about to make.’
Mr Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table, and, as if he were now
sitting for his portrait to a new and strange artist, appeared to say
to his visitor, ‘If you will be good enough to take me with my present
lofty expression, I shall feel obliged.’
‘I have found a debtor in the Marshalsea Prison of the name of Dorrit,
who has been there many years. I wish to investigate his confused
affairs so far as to ascertain whether it may not be possible, after
this lapse of time, to ameliorate his unhappy condition. The name of
Mr Tite Barnacle has been mentioned to me as representing some highly
influential interest among his creditors. Am I correctly informed?’
It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on
any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle
said, ‘Possibly.’
‘On behalf of the Crown, may I ask, or as private individual?’
‘The Circumlocution Department, sir,’ Mr Barnacle replied, ‘may have
possibly recommended--possibly--I cannot say--that some public claim
against the insolvent estate of a firm or copartnership to which this
person may have belonged, should be enforced. The question may have
been, in the course of official business, referred to the Circumlocution
Department for its consideration. The Department may have either
originated, or confirmed, a Minute making that recommendation.’
‘I assume this to be the case, then.’
‘The Circumlocution Department,’ said Mr Barnacle, ‘is not responsible
for any gentleman’s assumptions.’
‘May I inquire how I can obtain official information as to the real
state of the case?’
‘It is competent,’ said Mr Barnacle, ‘to any member of the--Public,’
mentioning that obscure body with reluctance, as his natural enemy,
‘to memorialise the Circumlocution Department. Such formalities as are
required to be observed in so doing, may be known on application to the
proper branch of that Department.’
‘Which is the proper branch?’
‘I must refer you,’ returned Mr Barnacle, ringing the bell, ‘to the
Department itself for a formal answer to that inquiry.’
‘Excuse my mentioning--’
‘The Department is accessible to the--Public,’ Mr Barnacle was always
checked a little by that word of impertinent signification, ‘if
the--Public approaches it according to the official forms; if
the--Public does not approach it according to the official forms,
the--Public has itself to blame.’
Mr Barnacle made him a severe bow, as a wounded man of family, a wounded
man of place, and a wounded man of a gentlemanly residence, all rolled
into one; and he made Mr Barnacle a bow, and was shut out into Mews
Street by the flabby footman.
Having got to this pass, he resolved as an exercise in perseverance,
to betake himself again to the Circumlocution Office, and try what
satisfaction he could get there. So he went back to the Circumlocution
Office, and once more sent up his card to Barnacle junior by a messenger
who took it very ill indeed that he should come back again, and who was
eating mashed potatoes and gravy behind a partition by the hall fire.
He was readmitted to the presence of Barnacle junior, and found that
young gentleman singeing his knees now, and gaping his weary way on
to four o’clock.
‘I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,’ Said
Barnacle junior, looking over his shoulder.
‘I want to know--’
‘Look here. Upon my soul you mustn’t come into the place saying you
want to know, you know,’ remonstrated Barnacle junior, turning about and
putting up the eye-glass.
‘I want to know,’ said Arthur Clennam, who had made up his mind to
persistence in one short form of words, ‘the precise nature of the claim
of the Crown against a prisoner for debt, named Dorrit.’
‘I say. Look here. You really are going it at a great pace, you know.
Egad, you haven’t got an appointment,’ said Barnacle junior, as if the
thing were growing serious.
‘I want to know,’ said Arthur, and repeated his case.
Barnacle junior stared at him until his eye-glass fell out, and then
put it in again and stared at him until it fell out again. ‘You have
no right to come this sort of move,’ he then observed with the greatest
weakness. ‘Look here. What do you mean? You told me you didn’t know
whether it was public business or not.’
‘I have now ascertained that it is public business,’ returned the
suitor, ‘and I want to know’--and again repeated his monotonous inquiry.
Its effect upon young Barnacle was to make him repeat in a defenceless
way, ‘Look here! Upon my SOUL you mustn’t come into the place saying you
want to know, you know!’ The effect of that upon Arthur Clennam was
to make him repeat his inquiry in exactly the same words and tone
as before. The effect of that upon young Barnacle was to make him a
wonderful spectacle of failure and helplessness.
‘Well, I tell you what. Look here. You had better try the Secretarial
Department,’ he said at last, sidling to the bell and ringing it.
‘Jenkinson,’ to the mashed potatoes messenger, ‘Mr Wobbler!’
Arthur Clennam, who now felt that he had devoted himself to the storming
of the Circumlocution Office, and must go through with it, accompanied
the messenger to another floor of the building, where that functionary
pointed out Mr Wobbler’s room. He entered that apartment, and found two
gentlemen sitting face to face at a large and easy desk, one of whom was
polishing a gun-barrel on his pocket-handkerchief, while the other was
spreading marmalade on bread with a paper-knife.
‘Mr Wobbler?’ inquired the suitor.
Both gentlemen glanced at him, and seemed surprised at his assurance.
‘So he went,’ said the gentleman with the gun-barrel, who was an
extremely deliberate speaker, ‘down to his cousin’s place, and took the
Dog with him by rail. Inestimable Dog. Flew at the porter fellow when he
was put into the dog-box, and flew at the guard when he was taken out.
He got half-a-dozen fellows into a Barn, and a good supply of Rats, and
timed the Dog. Finding the Dog able to do it immensely, made the match,
and heavily backed the Dog. When the match came off, some devil of
a fellow was bought over, Sir, Dog was made drunk, Dog’s master was
cleaned out.’
‘Mr Wobbler?’ inquired the suitor.
The gentleman who was spreading the marmalade returned, without looking
up from that occupation, ‘What did he call the Dog?’
‘Called him Lovely,’ said the other gentleman. ‘Said the Dog was the
perfect picture of the old aunt from whom he had expectations. Found him
particularly like her when hocussed.’
‘Mr Wobbler?’ said the suitor.
Both gentlemen laughed for some time. The gentleman with the gun-barrel,
considering it, on inspection, in a satisfactory state, referred it to
the other; receiving confirmation of his views, he fitted it into its
place in the case before him, and took out the stock and polished that,
softly whistling.
‘Mr Wobbler?’ said the suitor.
‘What’s the matter?’ then said Mr Wobbler, with his mouth full.
‘I want to know--’ and Arthur Clennam again mechanically set forth what
he wanted to know.
‘Can’t inform you,’ observed Mr Wobbler, apparently to his lunch. ‘Never
heard of it. Nothing at all to do with it. Better try Mr Clive, second
door on the left in the next passage.’
‘Perhaps he will give me the same answer.’
‘Very likely. Don’t know anything about it,’ said Mr Wobbler.
The suitor turned away and had left the room, when the gentleman with
the gun called out ‘Mister! Hallo!’
He looked in again.
‘Shut the door after you. You’re letting in a devil of a draught here!’
A few steps brought him to the second door on the left in the next
passage. In that room he found three gentlemen; number one doing nothing
particular, number two doing nothing particular, number three doing
nothing particular. They seemed, however, to be more directly concerned
than the others had been in the effective execution of the great
principle of the office, as there was an awful inner apartment with a
double door, in which the Circumlocution Sages appeared to be assembled
in council, and out of which there was an imposing coming of papers,
and into which there was an imposing going of papers, almost constantly;
wherein another gentleman, number four, was the active instrument.
‘I want to know,’ said Arthur Clennam,--and again stated his case in the
same barrel-organ way. As number one referred him to number two, and
as number two referred him to number three, he had occasion to state
it three times before they all referred him to number four, to whom he
stated it again.
Number four was a vivacious, well-looking, well-dressed, agreeable
young fellow--he was a Barnacle, but on the more sprightly side of
the family--and he said in an easy way, ‘Oh! you had better not bother
yourself about it, I think.’
‘Not bother myself about it?’
‘No! I recommend you not to bother yourself about it.’
This was such a new point of view that Arthur Clennam found himself at a
loss how to receive it.
‘You can if you like. I can give you plenty of forms to fill up. Lots of
‘em here. You can have a dozen if you like. But you’ll never go on with
it,’ said number four.
‘Would it be such hopeless work? Excuse me; I am a stranger in England.’
‘_I_ don’t say it would be hopeless,’ returned number four, with a frank
smile. ‘I don’t express an opinion about that; I only express an opinion
about you. _I_ don’t think you’d go on with it. However, of course, you
can do as you like. I suppose there was a failure in the performance of
a contract, or something of that kind, was there?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘Well! That you can find out. Then you’ll find out what Department the
contract was in, and then you’ll find out all about it there.’
‘I beg your pardon. How shall I find out?’
‘Why, you’ll--you’ll ask till they tell you. Then you’ll memorialise
that Department (according to regular forms which you’ll find out) for
leave to memorialise this Department. If you get it (which you may after
a time), that memorial must be entered in that Department, sent to
be registered in this Department, sent back to be signed by that
Department, sent back to be countersigned by this Department, and then
it will begin to be regularly before that Department. You’ll find out
when the business passes through each of these stages by asking at both
Departments till they tell you.’
‘But surely this is not the way to do the business,’ Arthur Clennam
could not help saying.
This airy young Barnacle was quite entertained by his simplicity in
supposing for a moment that it was. This light in hand young Barnacle
knew perfectly that it was not. This touch and go young Barnacle had
‘got up’ the Department in a private secretaryship, that he might
be ready for any little bit of fat that came to hand; and he fully
understood the Department to be a politico-diplomatic hocus pocus piece
of machinery for the assistance of the nobs in keeping off the
snobs. This dashing young Barnacle, in a word, was likely to become a
statesman, and to make a figure.
‘When the business is regularly before that Department, whatever it is,’
pursued this bright young Barnacle, ‘then you can watch it from time
to time through that Department. When it comes regularly before this
Department, then you must watch it from time to time through this
Department. We shall have to refer it right and left; and when we refer
it anywhere, then you’ll have to look it up. When it comes back to us
at any time, then you had better look _us_ up. When it sticks anywhere,
you’ll have to try to give it a jog. When you write to another
Department about it, and then to this Department about it, and don’t
hear anything satisfactory about it, why then you had better--keep on
writing.’
Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful indeed. ‘But I am obliged to you at
any rate,’ said he, ‘for your politeness.’
‘Not at all,’ replied this engaging young Barnacle. ‘Try the thing, and
see how you like it. It will be in your power to give it up at any time,
if you don’t like it. You had better take a lot of forms away with you.
Give him a lot of forms!’ With which instruction to number two, this
sparkling young Barnacle took a fresh handful of papers from numbers one
and three, and carried them into the sanctuary to offer to the presiding
Idol of the Circumlocution Office.
Arthur Clennam put his forms in his pocket gloomily enough, and went
his way down the long stone passage and the long stone staircase. He had
come to the swing doors leading into the street, and was waiting, not
over patiently, for two people who were between him and them to pass out
and let him follow, when the voice of one of them struck familiarly on
his ear. He looked at the speaker and recognised Mr Meagles. Mr Meagles
was very red in the face--redder than travel could have made him--and
collaring a short man who was with him, said, ‘come out, you rascal,
come Out!’
It was such an unexpected hearing, and it was also such an unexpected
sight to see Mr Meagles burst the swing doors open, and emerge into the
street with the short man, who was of an unoffending appearance, that
Clennam stood still for the moment exchanging looks of surprise with the
porter. He followed, however, quickly; and saw Mr Meagles going down
the street with his enemy at his side. He soon came up with his old
travelling companion, and touched him on the back. The choleric face
which Mr Meagles turned upon him smoothed when he saw who it was, and he
put out his friendly hand.
‘How are you?’ said Mr Meagles. ‘How d’ye _do?_ I have only just come over
from abroad. I am glad to see you.’
‘And I am rejoiced to see you.’
‘Thank’ee. Thank’ee!’
‘Mrs Meagles and your daughter--?’
‘Are as well as possible,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘I only wish you had come
upon me in a more prepossessing condition as to coolness.’
Though it was anything but a hot day, Mr Meagles was in a heated state
that attracted the attention of the passersby; more particularly as
he leaned his back against a railing, took off his hat and cravat, and
heartily rubbed his steaming head and face, and his reddened ears and
neck, without the least regard for public opinion.
‘Whew!’ said Mr Meagles, dressing again. ‘That’s comfortable. Now I am
cooler.’
‘You have been ruffled, Mr Meagles. What is the matter?’
‘Wait a bit, and I’ll tell you. Have you leisure for a turn in the
Park?’
‘As much as you please.’
‘Come along then. Ah! you may well look at him.’ He happened to have
turned his eyes towards the offender whom Mr Meagles had so angrily
collared. ‘He’s something to look at, that fellow is.’
He was not much to look at, either in point of size or in point of
dress; being merely a short, square, practical looking man, whose hair
had turned grey, and in whose face and forehead there were deep lines of
cogitation, which looked as though they were carved in hard wood. He
was dressed in decent black, a little rusty, and had the appearance of
a sagacious master in some handicraft. He had a spectacle-case in his
hand, which he turned over and over while he was thus in question,
with a certain free use of the thumb that is never seen but in a hand
accustomed to tools.
‘You keep with us,’ said Mr Meagles, in a threatening kind of Way, ‘and
I’ll introduce you presently. Now then!’
Clennam wondered within himself, as they took the nearest way to the
Park, what this unknown (who complied in the gentlest manner) could have
been doing. His appearance did not at all justify the suspicion that he
had been detected in designs on Mr Meagles’s pocket-handkerchief; nor
had he any appearance of being quarrelsome or violent. He was a quiet,
plain, steady man; made no attempt to escape; and seemed a little
depressed, but neither ashamed nor repentant. If he were a criminal
offender, he must surely be an incorrigible hypocrite; and if he were no
offender, why should Mr Meagles have collared him in the Circumlocution
Office? He perceived that the man was not a difficulty in his own
mind alone, but in Mr Meagles’s too; for such conversation as they had
together on the short way to the Park was by no means well sustained,
and Mr Meagles’s eye always wandered back to the man, even when he spoke
of something very different.
At length they being among the trees, Mr Meagles stopped short, and
said:
‘Mr Clennam, will you do me the favour to look at this man? His name
is Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You wouldn’t suppose this man to be a notorious
rascal; would you?’
‘I certainly should not.’ It was really a disconcerting question, with
the man there.
‘No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn’t suppose him to be
a public offender; would you?’
‘No.’
‘No. But he is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of?
Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway
robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you say, now?’
‘I should say,’ returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in
Daniel Doyce’s face, ‘not one of them.’
‘You are right,’ said Mr Meagles. ‘But he has been ingenious, and he has
been trying to turn his ingenuity to his country’s service. That makes
him a public offender directly, sir.’
Arthur looked at the man himself, who only shook his head.
‘This Doyce,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘is a smith and engineer. He is not in a
large way, but he is well known as a very ingenious man. A dozen years
ago, he perfects an invention (involving a very curious secret process)
of great importance to his country and his fellow-creatures. I won’t say
how much money it cost him, or how many years of his life he had been
about it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years ago. Wasn’t it a
dozen?’ said Mr Meagles, addressing Doyce. ‘He is the most exasperating
man in the world; he never complains!’
‘Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago.’
‘Rather better?’ said Mr Meagles, ‘you mean rather worse. Well, Mr
Clennam, he addresses himself to the Government. The moment he addresses
himself to the Government, he becomes a public offender! Sir,’ said Mr
Meagles, in danger of making himself excessively hot again, ‘he ceases
to be an innocent citizen, and becomes a culprit. He is treated from
that instant as a man who has done some infernal action. He is a man to
be shirked, put off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this
highly-connected young or old gentleman, to that highly-connected young
or old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a man with no rights in
his own time, or his own property; a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable
to get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by all possible means.’
It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning’s experience, as
Mr Meagles supposed.
‘Don’t stand there, Doyce, turning your spectacle-case over and over,’
cried Mr Meagles, ‘but tell Mr Clennam what you confessed to me.’
‘I undoubtedly was made to feel,’ said the inventor, ‘as if I had
committed an offence. In dancing attendance at the various offices, I
was always treated, more or less, as if it was a very bad offence. I
have frequently found it necessary to reflect, for my own self-support,
that I really had not done anything to bring myself into the Newgate
Calendar, but only wanted to effect a great saving and a great
improvement.’
‘There!’ said Mr Meagles. ‘Judge whether I exaggerate. Now you’ll be
able to believe me when I tell you the rest of the case.’
With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the
established narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course
narrative which we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance
and correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ignorances, and
insults, my lords made a Minute, number three thousand four hundred
and seventy-two, allowing the culprit to make certain trials of his
invention at his own expense. How the trials were made in the presence
of a board of six, of whom two ancient members were too blind to see it,
two other ancient members were too deaf to hear it, one other ancient
member was too lame to get near it, and the final ancient member was too
pig-headed to look at it. How there were more years; more impertinences,
ignorances, and insults. How my lords then made a Minute, number five
thousand one hundred and three, whereby they resigned the business to
the Circumlocution Office. How the Circumlocution Office, in course of
time, took up the business as if it were a bran new thing of yesterday,
which had never been heard of before; muddled the business, addled the
business, tossed the business in a wet blanket. How the impertinences,
ignorances, and insults went through the multiplication table. How there
was a reference of the invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking,
who knew nothing about it; into whose heads nothing could be hammered
about it; who got bored about it, and reported physical impossibilities
about it. How the Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight
thousand seven hundred and forty, ‘saw no reason to reverse the decision
at which my lords had arrived.’ How the Circumlocution Office, being
reminded that my lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the business.
How there had been a final interview with the head of the Circumlocution
Office that very morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had
been, upon the whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it
from the various points of view, of opinion that one of two courses was
to be pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to
leave it alone for evermore, or to begin it all over again.
‘Upon which,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘as a practical man, I then and there, in
that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to
me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the
government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office
door by the collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical
man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here
we are!’
If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told
them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function.
That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship
as long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean
the ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off
once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that
was the ship’s look out, and not theirs.
‘There!’ said Mr Meagles, ‘now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I
own does not improve my state of mind, that even now you don’t hear him
complain.’
‘You must have great patience,’ said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with
some wonder, ‘great forbearance.’
‘No,’ he returned, ‘I don’t know that I have more than another man.’
‘By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!’ cried Mr Meagles.
Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, ‘You see, my experience of these
things does not begin with myself. It has been in my way to know a
little about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am
not worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same
position--than all the others, I was going to say.’
‘I don’t know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case;
but I am very glad that you do.’
‘Understand me! I don’t say,’ he replied in his steady, planning
way, and looking into the distance before him as if his grey eye were
measuring it, ‘that it’s recompense for a man’s toil and hope; but it’s
a certain sort of relief to know that I might have counted on this.’
He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which
is often observable in mechanics who consider and adjust with great
nicety. It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar
way of tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were
contemplating some half-finished work of his hand and thinking about it.
‘Disappointed?’ he went on, as he walked between them under the trees.
‘Yes. No doubt I am disappointed. Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. That’s
only natural. But what I mean when I say that people who put themselves
in the same position are mostly used in the same way--’
‘In England,’ said Mr Meagles.
‘Oh! of course I mean in England. When they take their inventions into
foreign countries, that’s quite different. And that’s the reason why so
many go there.’
Mr Meagles very hot indeed again.
‘What I mean is, that however this comes to be the regular way of our
government, it is its regular way. Have you ever heard of any projector
or inventor who failed to find it all but inaccessible, and whom it did
not discourage and ill-treat?’
‘I cannot say that I ever have.’
‘Have you ever known it to be beforehand in the adoption of any useful
thing? Ever known it to set an example of any useful kind?’
‘I am a good deal older than my friend here,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘and I’ll
answer that. Never.’
‘But we all three have known, I expect,’ said the inventor, ‘a pretty
many cases of its fixed determination to be miles upon miles, and years
upon years, behind the rest of us; and of its being found out persisting
in the use of things long superseded, even after the better things were
well known and generally taken up?’
They all agreed upon that.
‘Well then,’ said Doyce, with a sigh, ‘as I know what such a metal will
do at such a temperature, and such a body under such a pressure, so I
may know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen
will certainly deal with such a matter as mine. I have no right to be
surprised, with a head upon my shoulders, and memory in it, that I fall
into the ranks with all who came before me. I ought to have let it
alone. I have had warning enough, I am sure.’
With that he put up his spectacle-case, and said to Arthur, ‘If I don’t
complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel gratitude; and I assure you that I
feel it towards our mutual friend. Many’s the day, and many’s the way in
which he has backed me.’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Mr Meagles.
Arthur could not but glance at Daniel Doyce in the ensuing silence.
Though it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his
respect for his own case, that he should abstain from idle murmuring,
it was evident that he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer,
for his long endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing
it would have been for this man, if he had taken a lesson from the
gentlemen who were so kind as to take a nation’s affairs in charge, and
had learnt How not to do it.
Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began
to cool and clear up.
‘Come, come!’ said he. ‘We shall not make this the better by being grim.
Where do you think of going, Dan?’
‘I shall go back to the factory,’ said Dan.
‘Why then, we’ll all go back to the factory, or walk in that direction,’
returned Mr Meagles cheerfully. ‘Mr Clennam won’t be deterred by its
being in Bleeding Heart Yard.’
‘Bleeding Heart Yard?’ said Clennam. ‘I want to go there.’
‘So much the better,’ cried Mr Meagles. ‘Come along!’
As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than
one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was no inappropriate destination
for a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the
Barnacles--and perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself might
come to look for lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or other,
if she over-did the Circumlocution Office.