Little Dorrit quotes

Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.

A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since.

A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since.

Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there.

Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away.

As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim.

Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian ocean.

The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked his great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient movement of one shoulder, and growled, “To the devil with this Brigand of a Sun that never shines in here!”

… word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression, our familiar English “I believe you!”

“Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I’ll live, and a gentleman I’ll die! It’s my intent to be a gentleman. It’s my game. Death of my soul, I play it out wherever I go!”

He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:

Here I stand, with the contamination of a jail upon me; but it is possible that you may think me better suited to her than her former husband was.”

He had a certain air of being a handsome man⁠—which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man⁠—which he was not.

It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

“But I bear those monotonous walls no ill-will now,” said Mr. Meagles.

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind; I dare say a prisoner begins to relent towards his prison, after he is let out.”

They were about thirty in company, and all talking; but necessarily in groups. Father and Mother Meagles sat with their daughter between them, the last three on one side of the table: on the opposite side sat Mr. Clennam;

“Goodbye!” said Mr. Meagles. “This is the last goodbye upon the list, for Mother and I have just said it to Mr. Clennam here, and he only waits to say it to Pet. Goodbye! We may never meet again.”

“In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many strange roads,” was the composed reply; “and what it is set to us to do to them, and what it is set to them to do to us, will all be done.”

There was something in the manner of these words that jarred upon Pet’s ear. It implied that what was to be done was necessarily evil, and it caused her to say in a whisper, “O Father!”

No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world—all taboo with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again.

Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets.

Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up.

albeit my lord, their county member, was amazed that they failed to sleep in company with their butcher’s meat. Miles of close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped for air, stretched far away towards every point of the compass.

Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river.

What secular want could the million or so of human beings whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness of which they had no escape between the cradle and the grave—what secular want could they possibly …

Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion, veiled in gloom and darkness, with lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and destruction, flashing through the sable clouds. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, was a prayer too poor in spirit for her.

Smite Thou my debtors, Lord, wither them, crush them; do Thou as I would do, and Thou shalt have my worship: this was the impious tower of stone she built up to scale Heaven.

“Have you finished, Arthur, or have you anything more to say to me? I think there can be nothing else. You have been short, but full of matter!”

But let him look at me, in prison, and in bonds here. I endure without murmuring, because it is appointed that I shall so make reparation for my sins. Reparation! Is there none in this room? Has there been none here this fifteen years?”

Thus was she always balancing her bargains with the Majesty of heaven, posting up the entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off, and claiming her due.

She was only remarkable in this, for the force and emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands do it, according to their varying manner, every day.

But as “them two clever ones”—Mrs. Affery’s perpetual reference, in whom her personality was swallowed up—were agreed to accept Little Dorrit as a matter of course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit.

Similarly, if the two clever ones had agreed to murder Little Dorrit by candlelight, Mrs. Affery, being required to hold the candle, would no doubt have done it.

In the intervals of roasting the partridge for the invalid chamber, and preparing a baking-dish of beef and pudding for the dining-room, Mrs. Affery made the communications above set forth;

They were welcome to the Marshalsea, he would tell them. Yes, he was the Father of the place. So the world was kind enough to call him; and so he was, if more than twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title.

It looked small at first, but there was very good company there⁠—among a mixture⁠—necessarily a mixture⁠—and very good air.

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.”

“Why, they’re—over there, my dear,” said the turnkey, with a vague flourish of his key. “Just about there.”

“Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?”

The turnkey was discomfited. “Well,” he said. “Not in general.”

But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there.

Through this little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with many mysteries.

“And you are so very, very little, you see,” the milliner objected.

“Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,” returned the Child of the Marshalsea

; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers, which came so often in her way.

“I am so tired of it,” said Tip, “that I have cut it.”

Tip tired of everything.

With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs.

after which unloading of his mind, and after announcing (as it seemed he always did, without anything coming of it) that he was going to write a letter to the papers and show the marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous conversation with the rest.

It was evident from the general tone of the whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally broke out.

In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres flitting about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if they were part of a dream.

It all happened just as he related it. He is very much respected. Everybody who comes in, is glad to know him. He is more courted than anyone else. He is far more thought of than the Marshal is.”

If ever pride were innocent, it was innocent in Little Dorrit when she grew boastful of her father.

“It is often said that his manners are a true gentleman’s, and quite a study. I see none like them in that place, but he is admitted to be superior to all the rest.

The courtyard received them at last, and there he said goodbye to Little Dorrit. Little as she had always looked, she looked less than ever when he saw her going into the Marshalsea lodge passage, the little mother attended by her big child.

The cage door opened, and when the small bird, reared in captivity, had tamely fluttered in, he saw it shut again; and then he came away.

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 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.

… 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;

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.

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.

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;

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.

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.”

One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in the landscape.

Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided.

With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrimmed;

This was old Christopher Casby—recognisable at a glance—as unchanged in twenty years and upward as his own solid furniture—as little touched by the influence of the varying seasons as the old rose-leaves and old lavender in his porcelain jars.

Perhaps there never was a man, in this troublesome world, so troublesome for the imagination to picture as a boy.

And yet he had changed very little in his progress through life. Confronting him, in the room in which he sat, was a boy’s portrait, which anybody seeing him would have identified as Master Christopher Casby, aged ten:

His smooth face had a bloom upon it like ripe wall-fruit. What with his blooming face, and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed to be delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. In like manner, his physiognomical expression seemed to teem with benignity.

Nobody could have said where the wisdom was, or where the virtue was, or where the benignity was; but they all seemed to be somewhere about him.

“Those times, however,” pursued Mr. Casby, “are past and gone, past and gone. I do myself the pleasure of making a visit to your respected mother occasionally, and of admiring the fortitude and strength of mind with which she bears her trials, bears her trials.”

Most men will be found sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an old idea.

It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast is a fatal shock to it.

Such was Clennam’s case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and imagination. That wealth had been, in his desert home, like Robinson Crusoe’s money;

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much.

Flora, whom he had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not much.

Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was a fatal blow.

The conversation still turned on the receipt of rents. Mr. F.’s Aunt after regarding the company for ten minutes with a malevolent gaze, delivered the following fearful remark:

“When we lived at Henley, Barnes’s gander was stole by tinkers.”

Mr. Pancks courageously nodded his head and said, “All right, ma’am.” But the effect of this mysterious communication upon Clennam was absolutely to frighten him. And another circumstance invested this old lady with peculiar terrors.

He looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which the afterglow subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust, and thought, “How soon I too shall pass through such changes, and be gone!”

To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower, and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by one, as he came down towards them.

“From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and unloving home that followed them, through my departure, my long exile, my return, my mother’s welcome, my intercourse with her since, down to the afternoon of this day with poor Flora,” said Arthur …

Stop a bit. I must put something under the cushion for your head. Here’s a burial volume, just the thing! We have got Mrs. Bangham in this book.

But what makes these books interesting to most people is⁠—not who’s in ’em, but who isn’t⁠—who’s coming, you know, and when.

That’s the interesting question.”

This was Mr. Meagles’s invariable habit.

Always to object to everything while he was travelling, and always to want to get back to it when he was not travelling.

“If it was summertime,” said Mr. Meagles, “which I wish it was on your account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds.

No less a question than this: Whether he should allow himself to fall in love with Pet?

He was twice her age.

(He changed the leg he had crossed over the other, and tried the calculation again, but could not bring out the total at less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young in health and strength, young in heart.

The rain fell heavily on the roof, and pattered on the ground, and dripped among the evergreens and the leafless branches of the trees. The rain fell heavily, drearily.

It was a night of tears.

If Clennam had not decided against falling in love with Pet; if he had had the weakness to do it;

Little Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without finding a lover.

Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer shot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and winged a Collegian or two.

Little Dorrit’s lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the sentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fullness of time, to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key;

but he is my brother, sir, my brother, and the voice of Nature is potent!” and steered his brother clear of the handle of the pump by the threadbare sleeve.

Nothing would have been wanting to the perfection of his character as a fraternal guide, philosopher and friend, if he had only steered his brother clear of ruin, instead of bringing it upon him.

“I think, William,” said the object of his affectionate consideration, “that I am tired, and will go home to bed.”

and she looked down into the living grave on which the sun had risen, with her father in it three-and-twenty years, and said, in a burst of sorrow and compassion,

“No, no, I have never seen him in my life!”

As she gently opened the window, and looked eastward down the prison yard, the spikes upon the wall were tipped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern on the sun as it came flaming up into the heavens.

The spikes had never looked so sharp and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy and contracted.

She thought of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes, of the sunrise on great forests where the birds were waking and the trees were rustling;

The curtain shook next moment, and a lady, raising it with a heavily ringed hand, dropped it behind her again as she entered.

The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young and fresh from the hand of her maid.

She had large unfeeling handsome eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling handsome bosom, and was made the most of in every particular.

I wish Society was not so arbitrary, I wish it was not so exacting—Bird, be quiet!”

The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, as if its name were Society and it asserted its right to its exactions.

“But,” resumed Mrs. Merdle, “we must take it as we find it.

and Mrs. Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not aware; but Mr. and Mrs. Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of Mr. and Mrs. Merdle. Society had said “Let us license them; let us know them.”

Mr. Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold.

He was in everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other.

This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson and gold some fifteen years before.

It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon.

Mr. Merdle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation.

“Yes,” said the physician, “yes, you are both right. But I may as well tell you that I can find nothing the matter with Mr. Merdle.

He has the constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and the concentration of an oyster.

As to nerves, Mr. Merdle is of a cool temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you may think strange.

What would be the good of letting ’em? It’s no satisfaction to be done by two men instead of one. One’s enough. A person who can’t pay, gets another person who can’t pay, to guarantee that he can pay.

Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs, to guarantee that he has got two natural legs.

It don’t make either of them able to do a walking match. And four wooden legs are more troublesome to you than two, when you don’t want any.” Mr. Pancks concluded by blowing off that steam of his.

“When he can pay, sir,” replied Pancks. “

Take all you can get, and keep back all you can’t be forced to give up. That’s business.

The lame foreigner with the stick wants a top room down the Yard. Is he good for it?”

Not to mind me when I come and go. It’s very easy. I am no loss, I am not handsome, I am not good company, I am only my proprietors grubber. You need do no more than think, ‘Ah!

Pancks the gipsy at his fortune-telling

—he’ll tell the rest of my fortune one day—I shall live to know it.’ Is it agreed, Miss Dorrit?”

“

Plenty of everything.

”

“We don’t know,” said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain, “that he will not make her happy.”

“We don’t know,” returned his partner, “that the earth will last another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.”

“Well, well!” said Clennam, “we must be hopeful, and we must at least try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity of being), just.

“I?” said Mr. Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded the belief of Mrs. Gowan herself.

“I said, count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.”

Mr. Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of profound regret.

“As it is the last time I shall have the honour,” she said, “and as you have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause.

What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong.

I have nothing more to say to you.”

Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but certainly he bent down on the shore and gently launched them on the flowing river.

Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away.

The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces on which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheerful.

… man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down in that most evil of smiles, and with his surface eyes looking as if they belonged to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting light stopped by some similar process,

Nature, always true, and never working in vain, had set the mark, Beware!

It was not her fault, if the warning were fruitless. She is never to blame in any such instance.

“As happy as most other married people, I suppose,” returned Mr. Flintwinch. “I can’t say. I don’t know. There are secrets in all families.”

“Secrets!” cried Mr. Blandois, quickly. “Say it again, my son.”

“I say,” replied Mr. Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so suddenly that Mr. Flintwinch found his face almost brushed by the dilated chest. “I say there are secrets in all families.”

“Mrs. Merdle,” returned her husband, “I look to you for that.

You supply manner, and I supply money.

”

No intrepid navigator could plant a flagstaff upon any spot of earth, and take possession of it in the British name, but to that spot of earth, so soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle and a despatch-box.

Thus the Barnacles were all over the world, in every direction⁠—despatch-boxing the compass.

But, while the so-potent art of Prospero himself would have failed in summoning the Barnacles from every speck of ocean and dry land on which there was nothing (except mischief) to be done and anything to be pocketed, it was perfectly feasible to assemble a …

“It is but a few hours, sir,” Clennam cheerfully urged upon him.

“A few hours, sir,” he returned in a sudden passion. “You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?”

It was his last demonstration for that time; as, after shedding some more tears and querulously complaining that he couldn’t breathe, he slowly fell into a slumber.

“Yes, I know I am wrong,” she pleaded timidly, “don’t think any worse of me; it has grown up with me here.”

The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little Dorrit’s mind no more than this.

Engendered as the confusion was, in compassion for the poor prisoner, her father, it was the first speck Clennam had ever seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever saw, of the prison atmosphere upon her.

He thought this, and forbore to say another word. With the thought, her purity and goodness came before him in their brightest light.

The little spot made them the more beautiful.

Worn out with her own emotions, and yielding to the silence of the room, her hand slowly slackened and failed in its fanning movement, and her head dropped down on the pillow at her father’s side.

Bear it!”

At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate, and that the Marshalsea was an orphan.

Before they had ceased to ring in the echoes of the prison walls, the family had got into their carriage, and the attendant had the steps in his hand.

… was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness above the mists and shadows.

Seen from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, which was one of them, the ascending Night came up the mountain like a rising water.

When it at last rose to the walls of the convent of the Great Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather-beaten structure were another Ark, and floated on the shadowy waves.

If her countenance and hair had rather a floury appearance, as though from living in some transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she was a chalky creation altogether, than because she mended her complexion with violet powder, or had turned grey.

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express.

If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted well.

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.

A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted well.

Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions.

If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted well.

Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions.

She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs.

General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration.

The more cracked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished it.

There was varnish in Mrs. General’s voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. General’s figure. Mrs.

General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished it.

There was varnish in Mrs. General’s voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. General’s figure.

Mrs. General’s dreams ought to have been varnished—if she had any—lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow falling on his housetop.

He felt that the family dignity was struck at by an assassin’s hand. He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact.

His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.

“Is it possible, sir,” said Mr. Dorrit, reddening excessively, “that you have—ha—had the audacity to place one of my rooms at the disposition of any other person?”

“Papa is a preferable mode of address,” observed Mrs. General. “Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism.

You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company—on entering a room, for instance—Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.”

May I take this opportunity of remarking, as an instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with the attention which I have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young friend of mine? They should not be looked at.

Nothing disagreeable should ever be looked at.

Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind.

It is quite right to know these people. It is a very proper thing. Mr. Merdle’s is a name of—ha—worldwide repute. Mr. Merdle’s undertakings are immense. They bring him in such vast sums of money that they are regarded as—hum—national benefits.

Mr. Merdle is the man of this time. The name of Merdle is the name of the age.

Pray do everything on my behalf that is civil to Mr. and Mrs. Gowan, for we will—ha—we will certainly notice them.”

to want the necessary qualifications for finding promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on neutral ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind, which time is not likely to improve.

The worst class of sum worked in the everyday world is ciphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own.

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it.

If the objection were taken that the thing commended was trash, he would reply, on behalf of his art,

“My good fellow, what do we all turn out but trash? I turn out nothing else, and I make you a present of the confession.”

To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his splenetic state, though this may have had the design in it of showing that he ought to be rich;

But it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs. Gowan by making the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and

Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances.

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already established between the two, which would have carried them over greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted intercourse.

Dorrit’s participation in his elder daughter’s society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case. A perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance, had seized the House of Dorrit.

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

Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home.

but that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since

How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of How not to do it.

In this was to be found the basis of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril:

“I expect,” rejoined that worthy, “I know as much about her as she knows about herself.

She is somebody’s child⁠—anybody’s, nobody’s.

Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents, and her parents may be there for anything she knows.

In the grammar of Mrs. Merdle’s verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present.

Mrs. Merdle’s verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr. Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.

In which state of agitation, Mr. Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes round the Chief Butler’s shoes without raising them to the index of that stupendous creature’s thoughts, had signified to him his intention of giving a special dinner:

With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns.

Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a juryman; and he must get that juryman over, if he could.

“Our illustrious host and friend,” said Bar; “our shining mercantile star;—going into politics?”

He took it ill that Mr. Dorrit had troubled the Department by wanting to pay the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so many years. But Mr. Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, and consequently a weighty one.

All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are believed in.

Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the buttoned-up man.

Sparkler through it too: seeming to say to them all, “If I think proper to march among you in triumphal procession attended by this weak captive in bonds, rather than a stronger one, that is my business. Enough that I choose to do it!”

Mr. Sparkler for his part, questioned nothing; but went wherever he was taken, did whatever he was told

, felt that for his bride-elect to be distinguished was for him to be distinguished on the easiest terms, and was truly grateful for being so openly acknowledged.

That great man was not interested in them, but on the whole endured them. People must continue to be married and given in marriage, or Chief Butlers would not be wanted.

As nations are made to be taxed, so families are made to be butlered.

The Chief Butler, no doubt, reflected that the course of nature required the wealthy population to be kept up, on his account.

Happy?

Fanny must have been happy. No more wishing one’s self dead now.

The Courier had not approved of Mr. Dorrit’s staying in the house of a friend, and had preferred to take him to an hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. Mr.

Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle melted one after another.

Quietly, quietly, the ruled and cross-ruled countenance on which they were traced, became fair and blank.

Quietly, quietly, the reflected marks of the prison bars and of the zigzag iron on the wall-top, faded away. Quietly, quietly, the face subsided into a far younger likeness of her own than she had ever seen under the grey hair, and sank to rest.

Then she sank upon her own bed, and fell into a deep sleep: the sleep of exhaustion and rest, though not of complete release from a pervading consciousness of affliction.

Sleep, good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the night!

It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past the full. When it was high in the peaceful firmament, it shone through half-closed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the stumblings and wanderings of a life had so lately ended.

I have the misfortune of not being a fool.

From a very early age I have detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.

Mrs. Sparkler, looking at another window where her husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view.

Mrs. Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of that view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other two.

“It’s like lying in a well,” said Mrs. Sparkler, changing her position fretfully. “Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don’t you say it?”

“It’s like lying in a well,” said Mrs. Sparkler, changing her position fretfully. “Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don’t you say it?”

Mr. Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, “My life, I have nothing to say.” But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his wife’s couch.

“Good gracious, Edmund!” said Mrs. Sparkler more fretfully still, “you are absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don’t!”

Many wonderful things did he see and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than the Divine Master’s of all healing was.

He went, like the rain, among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man.

Even the daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them “Come and see what I see!” confessed his attraction.

Where he was, something real was. And half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician’s little dinners always presented people in their least conventional lights.

The latter, who had a candle in his hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with dignity; looking on at Physician’s news exactly as he had looked on at the dinners in that very room.

“I should wish,” said the Chief Butler, “to give a month’s notice.”

“Mr. Merdle has destroyed himself.”

The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words.

“Sir, Mr. Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on Mr. Merdle’s part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what you would wish to be done?”

When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust upstairs, rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs. Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told her she had borne pretty well.

Merdle to have said to Physician, “A man can die but once.” By about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly ascertained to be “Pressure.”

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for Bar’s having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past nine.

This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over London by about one, that Mr. Merdle had killed himself. Pressure, however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than ever.

no, nor even that it was ever to be expected in any cool reason that she would or could. She was far above me in all respects at all times. As likewise,” added John, “similarly was her gen‑teel family.”

His chivalrous feeling towards all that belonged to her made him so very respectable, in spite of his small stature and his rather weak legs, and his very weak hair, and his poetical temperament, that a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration at Arthur’s hands.

“You speak, John,” he said, with cordial admiration, “like a Man.”

and that the Marshalsea gate had shut forever on all those perplexed possibilities of a time that was gone.

Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishing-point. Everything in its perspective led to her innocent figure.

He had travelled thousands of miles towards it; previous unquiet hopes and doubts had worked themselves out before it; it was the centre of the interest of his life; it was the termination of everything that was good and pleasant in it;

“Oh! Don’t say so!” returned Ferdinand.

“It’s all right. We must have humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn’t get on without humbug. A little humbug, and a groove, and everything goes on admirably, if you leave it alone.”

With this hopeful confession of his faith as the head of the rising Barnacles who were born of woman, to be followed under a variety of watchwords which they utterly repudiated and disbelieved, Ferdinand rose.

“How do you do today, sir?” said Mr. Rugg. “Is there any little thing I can do for you today, sir?”

Mr. Rugg’s enjoyment of embarrassed affairs was like a housekeeper’s enjoyment in pickling and preserving, or a washerwoman’s enjoyment of a heavy wash, or a dustman’s enjoyment of an overflowing dustbin, or any other professional enjoyment of a mess in the way of business.

“I still look round, from time to time, sir,” said Mr. Rugg, cheerfully, “to see whether any lingering Detainers are accumulating at the gate. They have fallen in pretty thick, sir; as thick as we could have expected.”

Haggard anxiety and remorse are bad companions to be barred up with.

Brooding all day, and resting very little indeed at night, will not arm a man against misery. Next morning, Clennam felt that his health was sinking, as his spirits had already sunk and that the weight under which he bent was bearing him down.

Yet it inspired him with an inward fortitude, that rose with his love. And how dearly he loved her now, what words can tell!

As they sat side by side in the shadow of the wall, the shadow fell like light upon him.

She would not let him speak much, and he lay back in his chair, looking at her. Now and again she would rise and give him the glass that he might drink, or would smooth the resting-place of his head;

Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this Nemesis now looking her in the face, she still abided by her old impiety—still reversed the order of Creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of her Creator.

Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own bad passions.

“When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of abode,” she went on in her torrent of indignation and defence;

Just as you cheat yourself into making out that you didn’t do all this business because you were a rigorous woman, all slight, and spite, and power, and unforgiveness, but because you were a servant and a minister, and were appointed to do it.

Who are you, that you should be appointed to do it? That may be your religion, but it’s my gammon.

And to tell you all the truth while I am about it,” said Mr. Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and becoming the express image of irascible doggedness, “I have been rasped—rasped these forty years—by your taking such high ground even with me, who knows better;

I’ve been telling you for how many years that you’re one of the most opinionated and obstinate of women. That’s what you are.

You call yourself humble and sinful, but you are the most bumptious of your sex.

That’s what you are.

But no—no one but you knows where it is, and that’s power; and, call yourself whatever humble names you will,

I call you a female Lucifer in appetite for power!

On a Sunday night, Arthur comes home. He has not been in this room ten minutes, when he speaks of his father’s watch.

Warmer, but almost as dismal. Wait till she comes back? Yes, certainly; but where is she gone, and how long will she be gone? No matter! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself.

You have lived a gentleman; you will die a gentleman.

You triumph, my little boy; but it is your character to triumph. Whoof!”