Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit
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Little Dorrit: PREFACE
PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 1
Book the First: Poverty CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow 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. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2. Fellow Travellers No more of yesterday’s howling over yonder to-day, Sir; is there?’ ‘I have heard none.’ ‘Then you may be sure there is none. When these people howl, they howl to be heard.’ ‘Most people do, I suppose.’ ‘Ah! but these people are always howling. Never happy otherwise.’ ‘Do you mean the Marseilles people?’
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3. Home It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream When Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed, unlike the son of her old mistress, with her eyes shut. She had a curiously vivid dream that night, and before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours. In fact it was not at all like a
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5. Family Affairs As the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs Clennam was wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the cut-down aspect to her tall cabinet. When she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself at its desk, Jeremiah withdrew—as it might be, to hang himself more effectually—and her son appeared.
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6. The Father of the Marshalsea Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint George, in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7. The Child of the Marshalsea The baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor Haggage’s brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians, like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8. The Lock Arthur Clennam stood in the street, waiting to ask some passer-by what place that was. He suffered a few people to pass him in whose face there was no encouragement to make the inquiry, and still stood pausing in the street, when an old man came up and turned into the
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9. Little Mother The morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall and look in at the Snuggery windows; and when it did come, it would have been more welcome if it had come alone, instead of bringing a rush of rain with it. But the equinoctial gales were blowing out
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10. Containing the whole Science of Government 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
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11. Let Loose Alate, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The stream, like a sullied looking-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the clouds heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there, as if they were half curious, and half afraid, to see their darkening pictures in the water.
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12. Bleeding Heart Yard In London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a suburb of note where in the days of William Shakespeare, author and stage-player, there were Royal hunting-seats—howbeit no sport is left there now but for hunters of men—Bleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much changed in
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13. Patriarchal The mention of Mr Casby again revived in Clennam’s memory the smouldering embers of curiosity and interest which Mrs Flintwinch had fanned on the night of his arrival. Flora Casby had been the beloved of his boyhood; and Flora was the daughter and only child of wooden-headed old Christopher (so he was
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14. Little Dorrit’s Party Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit’s eyes, and shall begin that course by seeing him. Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden,
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what would betide. If the sun ever touched it,
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16. Nobody’s Weakness The time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles family, Clennam, pursuant to contract made between himself and Mr Meagles within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face on a certain Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a cottage-residence of his own. The weather
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17. Nobody’s Rival Before breakfast in the morning, Arthur walked out to look about him. As the morning was fine and he had an hour on his hands, he crossed the river by the ferry, and strolled along a footpath through some meadows. When he came back to the towing-path, he found the ferry-boat
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18. Little Dorrit’s Lover 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
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19. The Father of the Marshalsea in two or three Relations The brothers William and Frederick Dorrit, walking up and down the College-yard—of course on the aristocratic or Pump side, for the Father made it a point of his state to be chary of going among his children on the Poor side, except on
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20. Moving in Society If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it amply in that gallant brother and that dainty
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle’s Complaint Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in Harley Street were very
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22. A Puzzle Mr Clennam did not increase in favour with the Father of the Marshalsea in the ratio of his increasing visits. His obtuseness on the great Testimonial question was not calculated to awaken admiration in the paternal breast, but had rather a tendency to give offence in that sensitive quarter, and to
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23. Machinery in Motion Mr Meagles bestirred himself with such prompt activity in the matter of the negotiation with Daniel Doyce which Clennam had entrusted to him, that he soon brought it into business train, and called on Clennam at nine o’clock one morning to make his report. ‘Doyce is highly gratified by your
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24. Fortune-Telling Little Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish, who, having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in a series of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom that there are
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25. Conspirators and Others The private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville, where he lodged on the second-floor of a professional gentleman in an extremely small way, who had an inner-door within the street door, poised on a spring and starting open with a click like a trap; and who wrote up in
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26. Nobody’s State of Mind If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within it,
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27. Five-and-Twenty Afrequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks’s desire to collect information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return from his long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28. Nobody’s Disappearance Not resting satisfied with the endeavours he had made to recover his lost charge, Mr Meagles addressed a letter of remonstrance, breathing nothing but goodwill, not only to her, but to Miss Wade too. No answer coming to these epistles, or to another written to the stubborn girl by the hand
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29. Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming The house in the city preserved its heavy dulness through all these transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each recurring with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant return of the same sequences
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30. The Word of a Gentleman When Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started back. ‘Death of my soul!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, how did you get here?’ Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31. Spirit Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thoroughfares of the metropolis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be supposed to have dropped from the stars, if there were any star in the Heavens dull enough to be suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creeping along with a
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32. More Fortune-Telling Maggy sat at her work in her great white cap with its quantity of opaque frilling hiding what profile she had (she had none to spare), and her serviceable eye brought to bear upon her occupation, on the window side of the room. What with her flapping cap, and what with
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33. Mrs Merdle’s Complaint Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people, the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught upon it, of which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur, Mrs Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son’s marriage. In her progress to, and
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34. A Shoal of Barnacles Mr Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the cottage, and the day was fixed for the wedding. There was to be a convocation of Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very high and very large family might shed as much lustre on the marriage
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit’s Hand It was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact with Clennam, revealed to him the whole of his gipsy story, and told him Little Dorrit’s fortune. Her father was heir-at-law to a great estate that had long lain unknown of,
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Little Dorrit: Book the First – Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36. The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan And now the day arrived when Mr Dorrit and his family were to leave the prison for ever, and the stones of its much-trodden pavement were to know them no more. The interval had been short, but he had greatly complained of its length, and had been imperious
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1. Fellow Travellers In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps. It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva. The air there was
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2. Mrs General It is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of sufficient importance in the suite of the Dorrit Family to have a line to herself in the Travellers’ Book. Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral town, where she had led the fashion until she
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3. On the Road The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that the new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new existence. To help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone, and
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit Dear Mr Clennam, I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to hear from me. But I know you cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am to write to you; for everything about you is as you
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5. Something Wrong Somewhere The family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference with Mrs General. The time he had reserved in his
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6. Something Right Somewhere To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of two powers in disgust; 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,
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism Mrs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young friend, and Mrs General’s very dear young friend tried hard to receive it. Hard as she had tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that ‘It Never Does’ While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9. Appearance and Disappearance ‘Arthur, my dear boy,’ said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following day, ‘Mother and I have been talking this over, and we don’t feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of ours—that dear lady who was here yesterday—’ ‘I understand,’ said Arthur. ‘Even that affable
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a good deal of time in company with various troublesome Convicts who were under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11. A Letter from Little Dorrit Dear Mr Clennam, As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me, and as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not find leisure for even
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had any capacity
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13. The Progress of an Epidemic That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14. Taking Advice When it became known to the Britons on the shore of the yellow Tiber that their intelligent compatriot, Mr Sparkler, was made one of the Lords of their Circumlocution Office, they took it as a piece of news with which they had no nearer concern than with any other piece of
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons should not be joined together Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had accepted matrimonial overtures from Mr Sparkler, to whom she had plighted her troth, received the communication at once with great dignity and with a large display of
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16. Getting on The newly married pair, on their arrival in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, London, were received by the Chief Butler. 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
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17. Missing The term of Mr Dorrit’s visit was within two days of being out, and he was about to dress for another inspection by the Chief Butler (whose victims were always dressed expressly for him), when one of the servants of the hotel presented himself bearing a card. Mr Dorrit, taking it, read:
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18. A Castle in the Air Manifold are the cares of wealth and state. Mr Dorrit’s satisfaction in remembering that it had not been necessary for him to announce himself to Clennam and Co., or to make an allusion to his having had any knowledge of the intrusive person of that name, had been
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air The sun had gone down full four hours, and it was later than most travellers would like it to be for finding themselves outside the walls of Rome, when Mr Dorrit’s carriage, still on its last wearisome stage, rattled over the solitary Campagna. The savage
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20. Introduces the next The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais. A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide ebbing out towards low water-mark. There had been no more water on the bar than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21. The History of a Self-Tormentor Ihave 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
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22. Who passes by this Road so late? Arthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst of a great pressure of business. A certain barbaric Power with valuable possessions on the map of the world, had occasion for the services of one or two engineers, quick in invention and determined
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional Promise, respecting her Dreams Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist, otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his attention by directing it to any business occupation or train
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24. The Evening of a Long Day That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle, continued his shining course. It began to be widely understood that one who had done society the admirable service of making so much money out of it, could not be suffered to remain a commoner. A baronetcy was
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office The dinner-party was at the great Physician’s. Bar was there, and in full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks rushed into Arthur Clennam’s Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up,
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea The day was sunny, and the Marshalsea, with the hot noon striking upon it, was unwontedly quiet. Arthur Clennam dropped into a solitary arm-chair, itself as faded as any debtor in the jail, and yielded himself to his thoughts. In the unnatural peace of having gone through the
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea The opinion of the community outside the prison gates bore hard on Clennam as time went on, and he made no friends among the community within. Too depressed to associate with the herd in the yard, who got together to forget their cares; too retiring and too unhappy
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29. A Plea in the Marshalsea 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
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30. Closing in The last day of the appointed week touched the bars of the Marshalsea gate. Black, all night, since the gate had clashed upon Little Dorrit, its iron stripes were turned by the early-glowing sun into stripes of gold. Far aslant across the city, over its jumbled roofs, and through the open
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31. Closed The sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when the figure so long unused to them hurried on its way. In the immediate neighbourhood of the old house it attracted little attention, for there were only a few straggling people to notice it; but, ascending from the
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32. Going Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg descrying no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his enlargement, Mr Pancks suffered desperately from self-reproaches. If it had not been for those infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining in imprisonment, ought to be
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33. Going! The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable. It was Little Dorrit’s lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every day, again embraced her in their shadows as their child, while
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Little Dorrit: Book the Second – Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34. Gone On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise restored, sat listening to a voice that read to him. On a healthy autumn day; when the golden fields had been reaped and ploughed again, when the summer fruits had ripened and waned, when the green perspectives of hops had been