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Charles Dickens (1812-1870; pen name ‘Boz’) used a lot of interesting and wonderful words. Whether because they are old words, or because they are more British than American words, or because my vocabulary is not what it ought to be, or for all of these reasons, as I read Dickens I find many words that I don't know, or don't know as well as I had thought. I am posting some of these words here, along with short passages from the pages of the books where they appear, in order to amuse and educate myself, and perhaps others.
The first words that appear here are from Hard Times, which I had just finished, and Little Dorrit, which I was in the process of reading, when I started this site. Since then I've added words from Martin Chuzzlewit, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, the five Christmas books, and Dombey and Son, American Notes, Nicholas Nickelby, Oliver Twist, and The Old Curiosity Shop, and am currently posting words from Barnaby Rudge. The Pickwick Papers and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are up next, to be followed by words from some of Dickens's short fiction and non-fiction works.
Unfortunately, the idea for this site did not occur to me until after I had read A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield, and so no words from those novels (and very few from Hard Times) appear here as of yet. When I get around to re-reading those books I'll post some words from them as well.
The name of the site, if you haven't guessed, is derived from Sketches by Boz, Dickens's collection of short works published in 1836 (and which, oddly enough, I have not yet read). This site is a work in progress. I'll try to improve and add features to it as I learn more and have time to work on it. (As yet I haven't had much time, so haven't improved it much) It's been over two years since I started the site. Perhaps I'll find some time to give it a makeover for Dickens's 200th birthday, which isn't too far off!
Rather than include definitions here, I have linked the words to their corresponding pages at www.wordswarm.net, which provides entries from multiple dictionaries and thesauruses for each word. This usually includes a definition from the Oxford Reference Dictionary, and this definition tends to be the most accurate and complete of the list. I would prefer to link directly to the unabbridged Oxford English Dictionary, but online access to this reference is by subscription only (which, through my work, I am fortunate enough to have), and so we must make do with what is free. If you have access to an OED, I recommend having a look at the full list of forms and senses, and examples of uses from the literature, provided there.
G.D.
(12/18/11)
‘Master has no intentions, sir,’ murmured Miggs as she sidled up to him, ‘but to be as grateful as his natur will let him, for everythink he owns which it is in his powers to appreciate. But we never sir’ – said Miggs, looking sideways at Mrs Varden, and interlarding her discourse with a sigh – ‘we never know the full value of some wines and fig-trees till we lose ‘em. So much the worse sir, for them as has the slighting of ‘em on their conscience when they’re gone to be in full blow elsewhere.’ And Miss Miggs cast up her eyes to signify where that might be.
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 27, p. 226 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… It was a part of John’s character. He made a point of going to sleep at the coach’s time. He despised gadding about; he looked upon coaches as things that ought to be indicted; as disturbances of the peace of mankind; as restless, bustling, busy, horn-blowing contrivances, quite beneath the dignity of men, and only suited to giddy girls that did nothing but chatter and go a-shopping. …
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 25, p. 216 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… Many a private chair too, inclosing some fine lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and preceded by running-footmen bearing flambeaux – for which extinguishers are yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the better sort – made the way gay and light as it danced along, and darker and more dismal when it had passed. …
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 16, p. 140 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… He hurried along the terrace-walk, and darted up a flight of broad steps leading into an old and gloomy hall, whose walls were ornamented with rusty suits of armour, antlers, weapons of the chase, and suchlike garniture.
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 14, p. 123 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… Neither man nor beast had turned a single hair; and, saving for his soiled skirts and spatterdashes, this gentleman, with his blooming face, white teeth, exact-ordered dress, and perfect calmness, might have come from making an elaborate and leisurely toilet, to sit for an equestrian portrait at old John Willet’s gate.
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 10, p. 87 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘In league with that ill-looking figure that might have fallen from a gibbet – he listening and hiding here – Barnaby first upon the spot last night – can he who has always borne so fair a name be guilty of such crimes in secret!’ said the locksmith, musing.
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 6, p. 63 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Father,’ returned Joe, ‘I know what I say and mean, well – better than you do when you hear me. I can bear with you, but I cannot bear the contempt that your treating me in the way you do, brings upon me from others every day. Look at other young men of my age. Have they no liberty, no will, no right to speak? Are they obliged to sit mumchance, and to be ordered about till they are the laughing-stock of young and old? …’
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 3, p. 31 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
…At this remark, which evidently had reference to the scrutiny he had undergone, as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the eyes of John Willet and his friends were diverted with marvelous rapidity to the copper boiler again. Not so with Joe, who, being a mettlesome fellow, returned the stranger’s angry glance with a steady look, and rejoined:
‘It’s not a very bold thing to wonder at your going out to-night. Surely you have been asked such a harmless question in an inn before, and in better weather than this. I thought you mightn’t know the way, as you seem strange to this part.’
Barnaby Rudge, ch. 2, p. 21 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… When he had given him this information, and a tin porringer containing his breakfast, the man locked him up again; and went clattering along the stone passage, opening and shutting a great many other doors, and raising numberless loud echoes which resounded through the building for a long time, as if they were in prison too, and unable to get out.
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 61, p. 456 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
Now the man who did the sexton’s duty was a little older than he, though much more active. But he was deaf; and when the sexton (who peradventure, on a pinch, might have walked a mile with great difficulty in a half-a-dozen hours) exchanged a remark with him about his work, the child could not help noticing that he did so with an impatient kind of pity for his infirmity, as if he were himself the strongest and heartiest man alive.
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 54, p. 406 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
Quilp said not a word in reply, but walking up so close to Kit as to bring his eyes within two or three inches of his face, looked fixedly at him, retreated a little distance without averting his gaze, approached again, again withdrew, and so on for half-a-dozen times, like a head in a phantasmagoria. …
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 48, p. 368 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
The plain, frank kindness of the honest schoolmaster, the affectionate earnestness of his speech and manner, the truth which was stamped upon his every word and look, gave the child a confidence in him, which the utmost arts of treachery and dissimulation could never have awakened in her breast. …
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 46, p. 350 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
‘Me,’ said Kit. ‘She’s at – at Little Bethel, I suppose?’ – getting out the name of the obnoxious conventicle with some reluctance, and laying a spiteful emphasis upon the words.
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 41, p. 310 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
… In the smaller public-houses, fiddles with all their might and main were squeaking out the tune to staggering feet; drunken men, oblivious of the burden of their song, joined in a senseless howl, which drowned the tinkling of the feeble bell and made them savage for their drink; vagabond groups assembled round the doors to see the stroller woman dance, and add their uproar to the shrill flageolet and deafening drum.
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 19, p. 154 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
… The several duties of instruction in this establishment were thus discharged. English grammar, composition, geography, and the use of the dumb-bells, by Miss Melissa Wackles; writing, arithmetic, dancing, music, and general fascination, by Miss Sophia Wackles; the art of needle-work, marking, and samplery, by Miss Jane Wackles; corporal punishment, fasting, and other tortures and terrors, by Mrs Wackles. …
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 8, p. 69 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
… Once more opening his mouth and shutting his eyes, and laughing like a stentor, Kip gradually backed to the door, and roared himself out.
The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 1, p. 17 (Penguin Classics, 2000, paperback)
… Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous wagons which bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. …
Oliver Twist, III, ch. 12, p. 417 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
He rose betimes next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who, after a delay which seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.
Oliver Twist, III, ch. 7, p. 376 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Sitch a rabbit pie, Bill!’ exclaimed that young gentleman, disclosing to view a huge pastry; ‘sitch delicate creeturs, with sitch tender limbs, Bill, that the wery bones melt in your mouth, and there’s no occasion to pick ‘em; half a pound of seven and sixpenny green, so precious strong that if you mix it with boiling water, it’ll go nigh to blow the lid of the teapot off; a pound and a half of moist sugar that the niggers didn’t work at all at afore they got it to sitch a pitch of goodness, – oh no! two half-quartern brans; pound of best fresh; piece of double Glo’ster, and, to wind up all, some of the rightest sort you ever lushed.’ Uttering this last panegyric, Master Bates produced from one of his extensive pockets a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully corked, while Mr Dawkins at the same instant poured out a wine-glassful of raw spirits from the bottle he carried, which the invalid tossed down his throat without a moment’s hesitation.
Oliver Twist, III, ch. 2, p. 321 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘A murrain on the young devils!’ cried the stranger impatiently; ‘I speak of one, a meek-looking pale-faced hound, who was apprenticed, down here, to a coffin-maker, (I wish he had made his coffin, and screwed his body in it,) and who afterwards ran away to London, as it is supposed.’
Oliver Twist, II, ch. 14, p. 303 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘And the place the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which miserable drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to themselves – gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear, and hid their shame, rot ‘em, in the grave.’
Oliver Twist, II, ch. 14, p. 303 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned with a steaming jorum, of which the first gulph brought the water into Mr Bumble’s eyes.
Oliver Twist, II, ch. 14, p. 302 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Mrs Mann,’ said Mr Bumble, – not sitting upon, or dropping himself into a seat, as any common jackanapes would, but letting himself gradually and slowly down into a chair, – ‘Mrs Mann, ma’am, good morning!’.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 17, p. 136 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… We behold with throbbing bosoms the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron, her virtue and her life alike are in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightaway transported to the great hall of the castle, where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, caroling perpetually.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 17, p. 135 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie appeared plunged in his own reflections, not excepting the dog, who by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might encounter in the street when he went out.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 13, p. 100 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
When the Dodger and his accomplished friend Master Bates joined in the hue and cry which was raised at Oliver’s heels, in consequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr Brownlow’s personal property, as has been already described with great perspicuity in a foregoing chapter, they were actuated, as we therein took occasion to observe, by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves: and forasmuch as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual are among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman, so I need hardly beg the reader to observe that this action must tend to exalt them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in almost as great a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their own preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little code of laws which certain profound and sound-judging philosophers have laid down as the mainsprings of all Madam Nature’s deeds and actions; the said philosophers were wisely reducing the good lady’s proceedings to matters of maxim and theory, and, by a very neat and pretty compliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely out of sight any consideration of heart, or generous impulse and feeling, as matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by universal admission to be so far beyond the numerous little foibles and weaknesses of her sex.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 13, p. 94 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Stop Thief! stop Thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray, the baker his basket, the milkman his pail, the errand-boy his parcels, the schoolboy his marbles, the paviour his pick-axe, the child his battledore: away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slip-dash, tearing, yelling, and screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls; and streets, squares, and courts re-echo with the sound.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 10, p. 77 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Stop Thief! stop Thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray, the baker his basket, the milkman his pail, the errand-boy his parcels, the schoolboy his marbles, the paviour his pick-axe, the child his battledore: away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slip-dash, tearing, yelling, and screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls; and streets, squares, and courts re-echo with the sound.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 10, p. 77 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Mr Dawkins’s appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the comforts which his patron’s interest obtained for those whom he took under his protection; but as he had a somewhat flighty and dissolute mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate friends he was better known by the sobriquet of ‘The artful Dodger,’ Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the good opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if he found the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he should, to decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 8, p. 62 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr Sowerberry had anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the churchyard in which the nettles grew, and the parish graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived, and the clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it might be an hour or so before he came. So they set the bier down on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp clay with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin. Mr Sowerberry and Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him, and read the paper.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 5, p. 43 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The occasion was not long in coming; for, half an hour after breakfast next morning, Mr Bumble entered the shop, and supporting his cane against the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book, from which he selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over to Sowerberry.
‘Aha!’ said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively countenance; ‘an order for a coffin, eh?’
‘For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards,’ replied Mr Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book, which, like himself, was very corpulent.
‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice.
‘Bayton,’ said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to Mr Bumble; ‘I never heard the name before.’
Bumble shook his head as he replied, ‘Obstinate people, Mr. Sowerberry, very obstinate; proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Proud, eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer – ‘Come, that’s too much.’
‘Oh, it’s sickening,’ replied the beadle. ‘perfectly antimonial, Mr Sowerberry!’
‘So it is,’ asquiesced the undertaker.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 5, p. 39 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The evening arrived: the boys took their places; The master in his cook’s uniform stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out, and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared, and the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver, while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity –
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear.
‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, –
‘Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir; – Oliver Twist has asked for more!’ There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.
‘For more!’ said Mr. Limbkins. ‘Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?’
‘He did, sir,’ replied Bumble.
‘That boy will be hung,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat; ‘I know that boy will be hung.’
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 2, p. 15 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered, – the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes, – a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round, – a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. ‘Oho!’ said the board, looking very knowing; ‘we are the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.’ So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they,) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a-day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors’ Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people.
Oliver Twist, I, ch. 2, p. 13 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘I disappointed!’ cried Nicholas; ‘am I interested?’
‘I think you are,’ replied Newman. ‘I have a crotchet in my head that it must be so. I have found out a man, who plainly knows more than he cares to tell at once. And he has already dropped such hints to me as puzzle me — I say, as puzzle me,’ said Newman, scratching his red nose into a state of violent inflammation, and staring at Nicholas with all his might and main meanwhile.
Nicholas Nickelby, ch. 51, p. 638 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… ‘Now, upon my life,’ said the friend, affecting to speak in a whisper, ‘it’s an uncommonly bold and game thing in Hawk to show himself so soon. I say it advisedly; there’s a vast deal of courage in it. You see he has just rusticated long enough to excite curiosity, and not long enough for men to have forgotten that deuced unpleasant — by-the-bye — you know the rights of the affair, of course? Why did you never give those confounded papers the lie? I seldom read the papers, but I looked in the papers for that, and may I be —’
Nicholas Nickelby, ch. 50, p. 620 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Drinking-tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, laughing, talking, begging, gambling, and mummery.
Nicholas Nickelby, ch. 50, p. 617 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Shot beyond him, I mean,’ resumed Nicholas, ‘in quite another respect, for, whereas he brought within the magic circle of his genius, traditions peculiarly adapted for his purpose, and turned familiar things into constellations which should enlighten the world for ages, you drag within the magic circle of your dulness, subjects not at all adapted to the purposes of the stage, and debase as he exalted. For instance, you take the uncompleted books of living authors, fresh from their hands, wet from the press, cut, hack, and carve them to the powers and capacities of your actors, and the capability of your theatres, finish unfinished works, hastily and crudely vamp up ideas not yet worked out by their original projector, but which have doubtless cost him many thoughtful days and sleepless nights; by a comparison of incidents and dialogue, down to the very last word he may have written a fortnight before, do your utmost to anticipate his plot – all this without his permission, and against his will; and then, to crown the whole proceeding, publish in some mean pamphlet, an unmeaning farrago of garbled extracts from his work, to which your name as author, with the honourable distinction annexed, of having perpetrated a hundred other outrages of the same description. Now, show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man’s pocket in the street: unless, indeed, it be, that the legislature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs, and leaves men's brains, except when they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves.’
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 598 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– Dickens takes a swipe here at the hacks that were producing dramatizaitons of his work, even before it was finished. There were at least 25 such dramatizaitons of Nicholas Nickelby produced. Dickens has Nicholas meet and dress down one of these "literary gentlemen."
Such was old Arthur Gride, in whose face there was not a wrinkle, in whose dress there was not one spare fold or plait, but expressed the most covetous and griping penury, and sufficiently indicated his belonging to that class of which Ralph Nickleby was a member. Such was old Arthur Gride, as he sat in a low chair looking up into the face of Ralph Nickleby, who, lounging upon the tall office stool, with his arms upon his knees, looked down into his; a match for him on whatever errand he had come.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 578 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘For this reason,’ resumed Ralph, ‘I address myself to you, ma’am. For this reason, partly, and partly because I do not wish to be disgraced by the acts of a vicious stripling whom I was obliged to disown, and who, afterwards, in his boyish majesty, feigns to – ha! ha! – to disown me, I present myself here tonight. …
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 555 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
A very merry party they had been. Mrs Nickleby, knowing of her son’s obligations to the honest Yorkshireman, had, after some demur, yielded her consent to Mr and Mrs Browdie being invited out to tea; in the way of which arrangement, there were at first sundry difficulties and obstacles, arising out of her not having had an opportunity of ‘calling’ upon Mrs Browdie first; for although Mrs Nickleby very often observed with much complacency (as most punctilious people do), that she had not an atom of pride or formality about her, still she was a great stickler for dignity and ceremonies; and as it was manifest that, until a call had been made, she could not be (politely speaking, and according to the laws of society) even cognisant of the fact of Mrs Browdie's existence, she felt her situation to be one of peculiar delicacy and difficulty.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 551 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
To do the excellent Miss Knag justice, she had been mainly instrumental in bringing about this altered state of things, for, finding by daily experience, that there was no chance of the business thriving, or even continuing to exist, while Mr Mantalini had any hand in the expenditure, and having now a considerable interest in its well-doing, she had sedulously applied herself to the investigation of some little matters connected with that gentleman’s private character, which she had so well elucidated, and artfully imparted to Madame Mantalini, as to open her eyes more effectually than the closest and most philosophical reasoning could have done in a series of years. To which end, the accidental discovery by Miss Knag of some tender correspondence, in which Madame Mantalini was described as ‘old’ and ‘ordinary,’ had most providentially contributed.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 548 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
It was quite impossible to find language to express the degree of mental prostration to which such an adventurous wight would be reduced in the keen encounter with Tim Linkinwater, so Tim gave up the rest of his declaration in pure lack of words, and mounted his stool again.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 531 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The ticket porter leans idly against the post at the corner: comfortably warm, but not hot, although the day is broiling. His white apron flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks with both eyes at once; even he is unable to withstand the soporific influence of the place, and is gradually falling asleep.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 446 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Smike had made good speed while Nicholas was absent, and with his help everything was soon ready for their departure. They scarcely stopped to take a morsel of breakfast, and in less than half an hour arrived at the coach-office: quite out of breath with the haste they had made to reach it in time. There were yet a few minutes to spare, so, having secured the places, Nicholas hurried into a slopseller’s hard by, and bought Smike a great-coat. It would have been rather large for a substantial yeoman, but the shopman averring (and with considerable truth) that it was a most uncommon fit, Nicholas would have purchased it in his impatience if it had been twice the size.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 381 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Miss Snevellicci’s papa being greatly exalted by this triumph, and incontestable proof of his popularity with the fair sex, quickly grew convivial, not to say uproarious; volunteering more than one song of no inconsiderable length, and regaling the social circle between-whiles with recollections of divers splendid women who had been supposed to entertain a passion for himself, several of whom he toasted by name, taking occasion to remark at the same time that if he had been a little more alive to his own interest, he might have been rolling at that moment in his chariot-and-four. These reminiscences appeared to awaken no very torturing pangs in the breast of Mrs Snevellicci, who was sufficiently occupied in descanting to Nicholas upon the manifold accomplishments and merits of her daughter. Nor was the young lady herself at all behindhand in displaying her choicest allurements; but these, heightened as they were by the artifices of Miss Ledrook, had no effect whatever in increasing the attentions of Nicholas, who, with the precedent of Miss Squeers still fresh in his memory, steadily resisted every fascination, and placed so strict a guard upon his behaviour that when he had taken his leave the ladies were unanimous in pronouncing him quite a monster of insensibility.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 378 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
At the theatre entrance there was more banging and more bustle, and there were also Messrs Pyke and Pluck waiting to escort her to her box; and so polite were they, that Mr Pyke threatened with many oaths to ‘smifligate’ a very old man with a lantern who accidentally stumbled in her way—to the great terror of Mrs Nickleby, who, conjecturing more from Mr Pyke's excitement than any previous acquaintance with the etymology of the word that smifligation and bloodshed must be in the main one and the same thing, was alarmed beyond expression, lest something should occur. Fortunately,however, Mr Pyke confined himself to mere verbal smifligation, and they reached their box with no more serious interruption by the way, than a desire on the part of the same pugnacious gentleman to ‘smash’the assistant box-keeper for happening to mistake the number.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 337 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– Apparently this is not an accepted word, and does not appear in any dictionary, although it is close to the word 'spiflicate', whose meaning could fit in this context. It may be that Mr Pyke was speaking through a blocked nose, in which case 'spiflicate' might sound like 'smifiligate'. Or perhaps 'smifligate' just had the sound that Dickens thought at that moment aptly described what Mr Pyke would be threatening.
But the most interesting object of all was, perhaps, the open scrapbook, displayed in the midst of some theatrical duodecimos that were strewn upon the table; and pasted into which scrapbook were various critical notices of Miss Snevellicci’s acting, extracted from different provincial journals, together with one poetic address in her honour, commencing— …
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 298 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The manager’s voice recalled him from a more careful inspection of the building, to the opposite side of the proscenium, where, at a small mahogany table with rickety legs and of an oblong shape, sat a stout, portly female, apparently between forty and fifty, in a tarnished silk cloak, with her bonnet dangling by the strings in her hand, and her hair (of which she had a great quantity) braided in a large festoon over each temple.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 281 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
But, before he had gone five hundred yards, some other and different feeling would come upon him, and then he would lag again, and pulling his hat over his eyes, give way to the melancholy reflections which pressed thickly upon him. To have committed no fault, and yet to be so entirely alone in the world; to be separated from the only persons he loved, and to be proscribed like a criminal, when six months ago he had been surrounded by every comfort, and looked up to, as the chief hope of his family – this was hard to bear. He had not deserved it either. Well, there was comfort in that; and poor Nicholas would brighten up again, to be again depressed, as his quickly shifting thoughts presented every variety of light and shade before him.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 250 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Whose ears have been poisoned by you,’ said Nicholas; ‘by you – who, under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers as it grows. I call Heaven to witness,’ said Nicholas, looking eagerly round, ‘that I have seen all this, and that he knows it.’
‘Refute these calumnies,’ said Kate, ‘and be more patient, so that you may give them no advantage. Tell us what you really did, and show that they are untrue.’
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 247 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Well, now, indeed, Madame Mantalini, ’said Miss Knag, as Kate was taking her weary way homewards on the first night of her noviciate; ‘that Miss Nickleby is a very creditable young person – a very creditable young person indeed – hem – upon my word, Madame Mantalini, it does very extraordinary credit even to your discrimination that you should have found such a very excellent, very well-behaved, very – hem – very unassuming young woman to assist in the fitting on. …’
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 213 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Question number three – and last – ‘ said Mr Pugstyles, emphatically. ‘Whether, sir, you did not state upon the hustings, that it was your firm and determined intention to oppose everything proposed; to divide the house upon every question, to move for returns on every subject, to place a motion on the books every day, and, in short, in your own memorable words, to play the very devil with everything and everybody?’ With this comprehensive inquiry, Mr Pugstyles folded up his list of questions, as did all his backers.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 193 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… To all of which flattering expressions, Mr and Mrs Kenwigs replied, by thanking every lady and gentleman, seriatim, for the favour of their company, and hoping they might have enjoyed themselves only half as well as they said they had.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 184 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
This brief explanation over, the infant, who, as he was christened after the collector, rejoiced in the names of Lillyvick Kenwigs, was partially suffocated under the caresses of the audience, and squeezed to his mother’s bosom, until he roared again. The attention of the company was then directed, by a natural transition, to the little girl who had had the audacity to burn her hair off, and who, after receiving sundry small slaps and pushes from the more energetic of the ladies, was mercifully sent home; the ninepence, with which she was to have been rewarded, being escheated to the Kenwigs family.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 182 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
It so fell out, that Mrs Squeers’s journey, to some distance, to fetch three new boys, and dun the relations of two old ones for the balance of a small account, was fixed that very afternoon, for the next day but one; and on the next day but one, Mrs Squeers got up outside the coach, as it stopped to change at Greta Bridge, taking with her a small bundle containing something in a bottle, and some sandwiches, and carrying besides a large white top-coat to wear in the night-time; with which baggage she went her way.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 112 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘”Just that,” replied the figure, playing with his stake, and examining the ferrule. “Be as quick as you can, will you, for there’s a young gentleman who is afflicted with too much money and leisure wanting me now, I find.”
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 84 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– From the second story, The Baron of Grogzwig, told by the merry-faced gentleman (see note to the previous word).
‘”There is little need,” said the monk, with a meaning look, “to fritter away the time in gewgaws which shall raise up the pale ghosts of hopes of early years. Bury them, heap penance and mortification on their heads, keep them down, and let the convent be their grave!”
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 76 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– From the story of The Five Sisters of York, told by the grey-headed gentleman to pass the time while the traveling party of Nicholas, Squeers (on their way to the Dotheboys school) and other passengers on their ways to other places waited at a public-house for new horses to be fetched - after a minor accident in which their horses had been released from the toppled coach and promptly trotted back to their stable at the last stage. This, and the following story, The Baron of Grogzwig, were apparently added by Dickens to fill out the second part.
A stage or two further on, the lamps were lighted, and a great to-do occasioned by the taking up, at a roadside inn, of a very fastidious lady with an infinite variety of cloaks and small parcels, who loudly lamented, for the behoof of the outsides, the non-arrival of her own carriage which was to have taken her on, and made the guard solemnly promise to stop every green chariot he saw coming; which, as it was a dark night and he was sitting with his face the other way, that officer undertook, with many fervent asseverations, to do.
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 64 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then; which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal) fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and had often told him she might have married better (as indeed she had, very often), and that she never knew in his lifetime how the money went, but that if he had confided in her they might all have been better off that day; with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies, either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods.…
Nicholas Nickelby, p. 39 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Another prominent feature is the love of ‘smart’ dealing: which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter; though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century.
American Notes, p. 267 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
‘You carry,’ says the stranger, ‘this jealousy and distrust into every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the suffrage, who, in their very act, disgrace your Institutions and your people’s choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so given to change, that your inconstancy has passed into a proverb; for you no sooner set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments: and this, because directly you reward a benefactor, or a public servant, you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded; and immediately apply yourselves to find out, either that you have been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in his deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you, from the President downwards, may date his downfall from that moment; for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the character of the governors or the governed, among you?’
American Notes, p. 267 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in respect of which our national character is changing fast, let the plain Truth be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about the bush by hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are drawn by Englishmen in conflict let it be said and known: ‘We owe this change to Republican Slavery. These are the weapons of Freedom. With sharp points and edges such as these, Liberty in America hews and hacks her slaves; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote them to a better use, and turn them on each other.’
American Notes, p. 265 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
What! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland, and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who hamstring cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation which their slaves shall wear for life and carry to the grave, breaking living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless creatures up for targets! Shall we whimper over legends of the tortures practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon the cruelties of Christian men! Shall we, so long as these things last, exult above the scattered remnants of that race, and triumph in the white enjoyment of their possessions? Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian village; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter in the breeze; replace the streets and squares by wigwams; and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors fill the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave.
American Notes, p. 265 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
What! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland, and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who hamstring cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation which their slaves shall wear for life and carry to the grave, breaking living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless creatures up for targets! Shall we whimper over legends of the tortures practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon the cruelties of Christian men! Shall we, so long as these things last, exult above the scattered remnants of that race, and triumph in the white enjoyment of their possessions? Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian village; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter in the breeze; replace the streets and squares by wigwams; and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors fill the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave.
American Notes, p. 265 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it is very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich; and the good that is in them, shines the brighter for it. In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded deck. Strip from his fair young wife her silken dress and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much privation, array her faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be nothing but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall put it to the proof indeed. So change his station in the world, that he shall see in those young things who climb about his knee: not records of his wealth and name: but little wrestlers with him for his daily bread; so many poachers on his scanty meal; so many units to divide his every sum of comfort, and farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all its pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice, and querulous endurance: let its prattle be, not of engaging infant fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and hunger: and if his fatherly affection outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender; careful of his children’s lives, and mindful always of their joys and sorrows; then send him back to Parliament, and Pulpit, and to Quarter Sessions, and when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from hand to mouth, and labour hard to do it, let him speak up, as one who knows, and tell those holders forth that they, by parallel with such a class, should be High Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble siege to Heaven at last.
American Notes, p. 231 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but there is a macadamised road (rare blessing!) the whole way, and the rate of travelling upon it is six miles an hour.
American Notes, p. 208 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour: its strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees: now twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy, lazy foam works up, to float upon the water’s top; now rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair; now glancing singly by like giant leeches; and now writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything: nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon.
American Notes, p. 191 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia; and in its shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding forth to the hot noon day. By dint of constant repetition, however, these constitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so many parochial vestries; and I was glad to exchange this one for a lounge in a well-arranged public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco manufactory, where the workmen are all slaves.
American Notes, p. 152 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… A hundred times in every week, some new most paltry exhibition of that narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit, which is the Simoom of America, sickening and blighting everything of wholesome life within its reach, was forced upon my notice; but I never turned my back upon it with feelings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt, as when I crossed the threshold of this madhouse.
American Notes, p. 104 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or fire-arms, or even cudgels, are kept; nor is it probable that, so long as its present excellent management continues, any weapon, offensive or defensive, will ever be required within its bounds.
Such are the Institutions at South Boston! In all of them, the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefully instructed in their duties both to God and man; are surrounded by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness that their condition will admit of; are appealed to, as members of the great human family, however afflicted, indigent, or fallen; are ruled by the strong Heart, and not by the strong (though immeasurably weaker) Hand. …
American Notes, p. 63 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… If I thought it would do any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. …
American Notes, p. 61 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
Mrs. Blimber was impressing on Mrs. Toots the necessity of caution, when Mr. Feeder, B.A., offered her his arm, and led her down to the carriages that were in waiting to go to church. Doctor Blimber escorted Mrs. Toots. Mr. Toots escorted the fair bride, around whose lambent spectacles two gauzy little bridesmaids fluttered like moths. Mr. Feeder's brother, Mr. Alfred Feeder, M.A., had already gone on, in advance, to assume his official functions.
Dombey and Son, p. 918 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr. Morfin the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of the House – its head, of course, excepted – who was heartily and deeply affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr. Dombey with due respect and deference through many years, but he had never disguised his natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered his master passion for the advancement of his own purposes. …
Dombey and Son, p. 827 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
… The unfortunate Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.
Dombey and Son, p. 827 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.
Dombey and Son, p. 827 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘How many times,’ said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, ‘has your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of love for that sweet, injured girl, and lacerated it? How often have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?’
Dombey and Son, p. 821 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mrs. Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least idea.
Dombey and Son, p. 773 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘I should like to speak to him,’ said Florence, rising hurriedly as if to go down stairs.
‘I'll rouse him up here, Beauty,’ said the Captain, ‘in a trice.’
Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book – for he made it a point of duty to read none but very large books on a Sunday, as having a more staid appearance: and had bargained, years ago, for a prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly confounded him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of what subject it treated – and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.
Dombey and Son, p. 767 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Captain Cuttle, without quite understanding this, greatly approved of it, and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was quite abaft.
Dombey and Son, p. 758 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
What to do, or where to live, Florence – poor, inexperienced girl! – could not yet consider. She had indistinct dreams of finding, a long way off, some little sisters to instruct, who would be gentle with her, and to whom, under some feigned name, she might attach herself, and who would grow up in their happy home, and marry, and be good to their old governess, and perhaps intrust her, in time, with the education of their own daughters. And she thought how strange and sorrowful it would be, thus to become a grey-haired woman, carrying her secret to the grave, when Florence Dombey was forgotten. But it was all dim and clouded to her now. She only knew that she had no Father upon earth, and she said so, many times, with her suppliant head hidden from all, but her Father who was in Heaven.
Dombey and Son, p. 736 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Those who study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the health of Man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering in a dense black cloud above such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupt the better portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that rises with them, and, in the eternal laws of outraged Nature, is inseparable from them, could be made discernible too, how terrible the revelation! …
Dombey and Son, p. 701 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘I have no suspicions,’ said the Manager. ‘Mine are certainties. You pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, all canting the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouring the same transparent secret.’
Dombey and Son, p. 697 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘… Mr. Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked me – I had it from his own lips yesterday morning – to be his go between to you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he intends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besides that, because he really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am an ambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity – not of the lady to whom I have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind – but of his wife, a part of himself, to receive. …’
Dombey and Son, p. 681 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
– The feindish, toothy, grinning, feline Carker, the manager, plays double agent, informing Edith Dombey of her husband's cruel intentions, while simultaneously carrying them out; with aim of ruining Mr. Dombey while stealing his wife. A locomotive in the face will be his final reward, and destroy that evil, gleaming smile of his at last.
Mr. Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was, stopped the cabriolet in a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission, at which she cried more than before.
Dombey and Son, p. 674 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in the hall, with Mrs. Pipchin driving her forth, and Diogenes jumping about her, and terrifying Mrs. Pipchin to the last degree by making snaps at her bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of her voice—for the good duenna was the dearest and most cherished aversion of his breast. But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants all round, and turn once to look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes bound out after the cab, and want to follow it, and testify an impossibility of conviction that he had no longer any property in the fare; and the door was shut, and the hurry over, and her tears flowed fast for the loss of an old friend, whom no one could replace. No one. No one.
Dombey and Son, p. 674 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘There's your money,’ said Mrs. Pipchin, who in pursuance of her system, and in recollection of the mines, was accustomed to rout the servants about, as she had routed her young Brighton boarders; to the everlasting acidulation of Master Bitherstone, ‘and the sooner this house sees your back the better.’
Dombey and Son, p. 673 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘Nothing,’ said Mr. Dombey, ‘but this. You will be good enough to observe, Carker, that no message to Mrs. Dombey with which you are or may be charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no reply. Mrs. Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise or treat upon any matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say is final.’
Dombey and Son, p. 651 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
On the very night when he left the Captain’s service, Rob, after disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had gone straight down to Mr. Carker’s house, and hotly presented himself before his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation.
‘What, scapegrace’ said Mr. Carker, glancing at his bundle. ‘Have you left your situation and come to me?’
Dombey and Son, p. 639 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr. Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the subject. Mr. Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey’s health, observing, ‘Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I propose that toast.’ Mr. Feeder replies, ‘Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.’ Mr. Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr. Feeder likewise says, that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr. Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to ‘em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.
Dombey and Son, p. 632 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
And gentle Mr. Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr. Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of being brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in the country, training (at Toots’s cost) for his great mill with the Larkey Boy.
Dombey and Son, p. 627 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘Come, Captain,’ cried the injured youth, ‘give my crime a name! What have I been and done? Have I stolen any of the property? have I set the house a-fire? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it? But to take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant to you, because he can't afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and what a bad return for faithful service! This is the way young coves is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do.’
All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backing carefully towards the door.
Dombey and Son, p. 595 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
The Captain did not, however, in his musings, neglect his own improvement, or the mental culture of Rob the Grinder. That young man was generally required to read out of some book to the Captain, for one hour, every evening; and as the Captain implicitly believed that all books were true, he accumulated, by this means, many remarkable facts. On Sunday nights, the Captain always read for himself, before going to bed, a certain Divine Sermon once delivered on a Mount; and although he was accustomed to quote the text, without book, after his own manner, he appeared to read it with as reverent an understanding of its heavenly spirit, as if he had got it all by heart in Greek, and had been able to write any number of fierce theological disquisitions on its every phrase.
Dombey and Son, p. 590 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘Very good of you to say so, Sir,’ rejoined Miss Tox, ‘and I really do assure you now, unfeignedly, that it will be a great comfort to me, and that whatever good I may be fortunate enough to do the children, you will more than pay back to me, if you'll enter into this little bargain comfortably, and easily, and good-naturedly, without another word about it.’
Dombey and Son, p. 587 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
The apposite display of the diamonds, or the peach-velvet bonnet (she sat in the bonnet to receive visitors, weeks before she could stir out of doors), or the dressing of her up in some gaud or other, usually stopped the tears that began to flow hereabouts; and she would remain in a complacent state until Edith came to see her; when, at a glance of the proud face, she would relapse again.
Dombey and Son, p. 576 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mrs. Skewton, reposing on her sofa, and sipping her chocolate, had heard nothing but the low word business, for which she had a mortal aversion, insomuch that she had long banished it from her vocabulary, and had gone nigh, in a charming manner and with an immense amount of heart, to say nothing of soul, to ruin divers milliners and others in consequence. Therefore Mrs. Skewton asked no questions, and showed no curiosity. Indeed, the peach-velvet bonnet gave her sufficient occupation out of doors; for being perched on the back of her head, and the day being rather windy, it was frantic to escape from Mrs. Skewton’s company, and would be coaxed into no sort of compromise. When the carriage was closed, and the wind shut out, the palsy played among the artificial roses again like an almshouse-full of superannuated zephyrs; and altogether Mrs Skewton had enough to do, and got on but indifferently.
Dombey and Son, p. 574 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
There was a sharpness in the good mother's glance at both her children as she spoke, that may have been expressive of a direct and well-considered purpose hidden between these rambling words. That purpose, providently to detach herself in the beginning from all the clankings of their chain that were to come, and to shelter herself with the fiction of her innocent belief in their mutual affection, and their adaptation to each other.
Dombey and Son, p. 565 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
… Ladies, he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take upon himself to invite – but if Mrs. Skewton and her daughter, Mrs. Dombey, should ever find themselves in that direction, and would do him the honour to look at a little bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and a poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and two or three little attempts of that sort without any pretension, they would distinguish him very much.…
Dombey and Son, p. 555 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
… All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for ‘em – but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life. Mr. Towlinson is saturnine and grim, and says that’s his opinion too, and give him War besides, and down with the French – for this young man has a general impression that every foreigner is a Frenchman and must be by the laws of nature.
Dombey and Son, p. 541 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilderness of house-tops, and looked for something cheery there in vain.
Dombey and Son, p. 496 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
So thought Mr Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in an air of scant and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in colour a dark brown, with black hatchments of pictures blotching the walls, and twenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails in them as so many coffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the Turkey carpet; and two exhausted negroes holding up two withered branches of candelabra on the sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing as if the ashes of ten thousand dinners were entombed in the sarcophagus below it.…
Dombey and Son, p. 468 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Miss Tox endued herself with a pair of ancient gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was accustomed to perform these avocations – hidden from human sight at other times in a table drawer – and went methodically to work; beginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a natural association of ideas, to her bird – a very high-shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess’s Place well knew; taking, next in order, the little china ornaments, paper fly-cages, and so forth; and coming round, in good time, to the plants, which generally required to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for some botanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox.
Dombey and Son, p. 446 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
… Previous to the institution of this equipage, Mr. Toots sounded the Chicken on a hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a young lady named Mary, and to have conceived the intention of starting a boat of his own, what would he call that boat? The Chicken replied, with divers strong asseverations, that he would either christen it Poll or The Chicken’s Delight. …
Dombey and Son, p. 438 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Captain Cuttle, though no sluggard, did not turn out so early on the morning after he had seen Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing in the parlour, with the Midshipman upon the counter, and Rob the Grinder making up his bed below it, but that the clocks struck six as he raised himself on his elbow, and took a survey of his little chamber. …
Dombey and Son, p. 388 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘No, Miss,’' returned Susan, ‘I should like to see him make so bold as do it to my face! No, Miss, but he goes on about some bothering ginger that Mr. Walter was to send to Mrs. Perch, and shakes his dismal head, and says he hopes it may be coming; anyhow, he says, it can't come now in time for the intended occasion, but may do for next, which really,’ said Miss Nipper, with aggravated scorn, ‘puts me out of patience with the man, for though I can bear a great deal, I am not a camel, neither am I,’ added Susan, after a moment's consideration, ‘if I know myself, a dromedary neither.’
Dombey and Son, p. 357 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
… There were no talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but the house was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings and the pavement – particularly round the corner where the side wall was – and drew ghosts on the stable door; and being sometimes driven off by Mr. Towlinson, made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out horizontally from under his hat. …
Dombey and Son, p. 350 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this abode, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrifaction of an arbour over the threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that seemed to say, ‘Who enter here, leave light behind!’…
Dombey and Son, p. 350 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Now it is certain that Mr. Toots had a filmy something in his mind, which led him to conclude that if he could aspire successfully in the fulness of time, to the hand of Florence, he would be fortunate and blest. It is certain that Mr. Toots, by some remote and roundabout road, had got to that point, and that there he made a stand. His heart was wounded; he was touched; he was in love. He had made a desperate attempt, one night, and had sat up all night for the purpose, to write an acrostic on Florence, which affected him to tears in the conception. But he never proceeded in the execution further than the words `For when I gaze,' – the flow of imagination in which he had previously written down the initial letters of the other seven lines, deserting him at that point.
Dombey and Son, p. 346 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr. Toots, emancipated from the Blimber thraldom and coming into the possession of a certain portion of his worldly wealth, ‘which,’ as he had been wont, during his last half-year’s probation, to communicate to Mr. Feeder every evening as a new discovery, ‘the executors couldn’t keep him out of,’ had applied himself, with great diligence, to the science of Life. ...
Dombey and Son, p. 344 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘And take care,’ returned his patron, bending forward to advance his grinning face closer to the boy’s, and pat him on the shoulder with the handle of his whip: ‘take care you talk about affairs of mine to nobody but me.’
‘To nobody in the world, Sir,’ replied Rob, shaking his head.
‘Neither there,’ said Mr Carker, pointing to the place they had just left, ‘nor anywhere else. I’ll try how true and grateful you can be. I’ll prove you!’ Making this, by his display of teeth and by the action of his head, as much a threat as a promise, he turned from Rob’s eyes, which were nailed upon him as if he had won the boy by a charm, body and soul, and rode away. But again becoming conscious, after trotting a short distance, that his devoted henchman, girt as before, was yielding him the same attendance, to the great amusement of sundry spectators, he reined up, and ordered him off. To insure his obedience, he turned in the saddle and watched him as he retired. It was curious to see that even then Rob could not keep his eyes wholly averted from his patron’s face, but, constantly turning and turning again to look after him, involved himself in a tempest of buffetings and jostlings from the other passengers in the street: of which, in the pursuit of the one paramount idea, he was perfectly heedless.
Dombey and Son, p. 343 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
– Like many little words, this one has myriad loosely-related uses and senses. I believe that it is the nautical sense of this word that Dickens intends in this instance: OED: girt, ppl a., 2. Naut , e.g.: FALCONER Dict. Marine, Girt: the situation of a ship which is moored so strait by her cables, extending from the hawse to two distant anchors, as to be prevented from swinging or turning about. This interpretation is supported by the facts, first, that it fits well (Rob is thus fixed upon and unable to turn from Mr Carker, as the ship ‘moored so strait by her cables, ...’) and second, that Dombey and Son is replete with nautical terms and references. (This sense is not listed on the wordswarm page)
‘Yes, Sir, that's wagging, Sir,’ returned the quondam Grinder, much affected. ‘I was chivied through the streets, Sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged and hid myself, and that began it.’
Dombey and Son, p. 336 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
They seemed to have brought him down to a velveteen jacket and trousers very much the worse for wear, a particularly small red waistcoat like a gorget, an interval of blue check, and the hat before mentioned.
Dombey and Son, p. 336 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
So! from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his great house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking before them, every one set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy, and was a bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman had wept over his pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, waking from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed and brightened when she came in!
Dombey and Son, p. 310 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lily-white handkerchief. Mr. Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly – very coldly even for him – and honouring her with the slightest possible inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a very discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles.
Dombey and Son, p. 307 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
... The Native had previously packed, in all possible and impossible parts of Mr. Dombey's chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major himself: and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any instant of the journey, he announced that everything was ready. ...
Dombey and Son, p. 307 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
‘Where is my scoundrel!’ said the Major, looking wrathfully round the room.
The Native, who had no particular name, but answered to any vituperative epithet, presented himself instantly at the door and ventured to come no nearer.
Dombey and Son, p. 303 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
And did that breast of Florence – Florence, so ingenuous and true – so worthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his last faint words – whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of her face, and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice – did that young breast hold any other secret? Yes. One more.
Dombey and Son, p. 276 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr Carker the manager, standing on the hearth-rug before the empty fire-place, which was ornamented with a castellated sheet of brown paper, looked at the Captain as he came in, with no very special encouragement.
Dombey and Son, p. 259 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
In spite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not help inwardly rejoicing at the absence of the sage, and devoutly hoping that his limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on his difficulties until they were quite settled.
Dombey and Son, p. 238 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Not even the influence of the softer passion on the young gentlemen – and they all, to a boy, doted on Florence – could restrain them from taking quite a noisy leave of Paul; waving their hats after him, pressing down stairs to shake hands with him, crying individually ‘Dombey, don’t forget me!’ and indulging in many such ebullitions of feeling, uncommon among those young Chesterfields. Paul whispered Florence, as she wrapped him up before the door was opened, Did she hear them? Would she ever forget it? Was she glad to know it? And a lively delight was in his eyes as he spoke to her.
Dombey and Son, p. 228 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
For this reason he smiled on her with so much urbanity, and asked her how she did, so often, in the course of her visits to little Paul, that at last she one night told him plainly, she wasn’t used to it, whatever he might think; and she could not, and she would not bear it, either from himself or any other puppy then existing: at which unexpected acknowledgement of his civilities, Mr Toots was so alarmed that he secreted himself in a retired spot, until she had gone. Nor did he ever again face the doughty Mrs Pipchin, under Doctor Blimber’s roof.
Dombey and Son, p. 207 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr Dombey’s offices were in a court where there was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs’ collars, and Windsor soap; and sometimes a pointer or an oil painting.
Dombey and Son, p. 192 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
It was drowned by the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding again with great fury, there was a general move towards the dining-room; still excepting Briggs the stoney boy, who remained where he was, and as he was; and on its way to whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lying crosswise on the top of it.
Dombey and Son, p. 177 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
... The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stoney-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents and guardians, in four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied Quintius Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world.
Dombey and Son, p. 164 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved away as usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most meritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerable sacrifices of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But all these immolations of Berry were somehow carried to the credit of Mrs Pipchin, by Mrs Pipchin’s friends and admirers; and were made to harmonise with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased Mr Pipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines.
Dombey and Son, p. 157 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Mr Dombey then turned to a side-table, and wrote a note and sealed it. During the interval, Paul and Florence whispered to Walter, and Captain Cuttle beamed on the three, with such aspiring and ineffably presumptuous thoughts as Mr Dombey never could have believed in. The note being finished, Mr Dombey turned to his former place, and held it out for Walter.
Dombey and Son, p. 154 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
But when Walter told what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle, after a moment’s reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole stock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat; further enriched that repository with the contents of his plate chest, consisting of two withered atomies of teaspoons, and an obsolete pair of knock-knee’d sugar tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver watch from the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself that that valuable was sound and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.
Dombey and Son, p. 139 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. ...
Dombey and Son, p. 136 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There was the usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden midshipman made it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to be, and bore Mr Brogley’s warrant on their fronts in large characters. The broker seemed to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose into the sky with an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it plainly.
Dombey and Son, p. 136 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Dombey and Son, p. 124 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
At one o’clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was shampoo’d every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin’s niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
Dombey and Son, p. 119 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
... It was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in all the windows of the front parlour, which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin....
Dombey and Son, p. 118 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
There was another private house besides Miss Tox’s in Princess’s Place: not to mention an immense pair of gates, with an immense pair of lion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody’s stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess’s Place; and Miss Tox’s bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a view of the Mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families, usually hung, like Macbeth’s banners, on the outward walls.
Dombey and Son, p. 102 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined, and greatly improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she was on terms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried so much that she might now be called the red-eyed, and who was very silent and depressed) caught her in her arms without a word of contradiction or reproach, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then converting the parlour, for the nonce, into a private tyring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey as her natural disqualifications admitted of her being made.
Dombey and Son, p. 99 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Poor little Florence took them off with equal alacrity, only too glad to have any more means of conciliation about her. The old woman then produced some wretched substitutes from the bottom of the heap of rags, which she turned up for that purpose; together with a girl’s cloak, quite worn out and very old; and the crushed remains of a bonnet that had probably been picked up from some ditch or dunghill. In this dainty raiment, she instructed Florence to dress herself; and as such preparation seemed a prelude to her release, the child complied with increased readiness, if possible.
Dombey and Son, p. 88 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
... There were frowzy fields, and cowhouses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. ...
Dombey and Son, p. 80 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the inhabitants of Stagg’s Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a designation which the Stranger’s Map of London, as printed (with a view to pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket-handkerchiefs, condenses, with some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two nurses bent their steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carrying Paul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence by the hand, and giving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer.
Dombey and Son, p. 78 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned them to the front. Here they waited some little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener – partly in consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage party might not forget her – went about the building coughing like a grampus.
Dombey and Son, p. 72 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands with uncle and nephew; but seemed to be of a laconic disposition, and merely said:
‘How goes it?’
Dombey and Son, p. 56 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the city of London, and within hearing of Wow Bells, when their clashing voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were there hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of the adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes’ walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England with its vaults of gold and silver ‘down among the dead men’ underground, was their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the rich East India House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones, tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins, and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on carpets with their slippers very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere in the immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of ships speeding away full sail to all parts of the world; outfitting warehouses ready to pack off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half an hour; and little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the shopdoors of nautical instrument-makers in taking observations of the hackney coaches.
Dombey and Son, p. 46 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought she saw that Mr Dombey’s colour changed; that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.
Dombey and Son, p. 41 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
The funeral of the deceased lady having been ‘performed,’ to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the various members of Mr Dombey’s household subsided into their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who’d have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn’t hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.
Dombey and Son, p. 33 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic and unlikely – though possible, there was no denying – he could not help pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his condition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he was grown old. Whether a man so situated, would be able to pluck away the result of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and endow a stranger with it?
Dombey and Son, p. 31 (Penguin Classics, 2002, paperback)
–Our first word from Dombey and Son
‘Well, Mr Rouncewell,’ George replies, leaning forward, with his left arm on his knee, and his hat in his hand; and very chary of meeting his brother’s eye; ‘I am not without my expectations, that in the present visit I may prove to be more than welcome. I have served as a Dragoon in my day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I don’t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?’
Bleak House, p. 953 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal-pits and ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke, become the features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper, looking about him, and always looking for something he has come to find.
Bleak House, p. 951 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am on unaltered terms with her, and I recall – having the full power to do it if I were so disposed, as you see – no act I have done for her advantage and hapiness.’
Bleak House, p. 895 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Sir Leicester lying in his bed can speak little, though with difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest, and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain; for his old enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he seem to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be moved out nearer to the window, when he heard it was such inclement weather; and his head to be so adjusted, that he could see the driving snow and sleet. He watches as it falls, throughout the whole wintry day.
Bleak House, p. 888 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘A spicy boudoir this,’ says Mr Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. ‘Must have cost a slight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!’
Bleak House, p. 861 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Two things are especially observable, as Mr Bucket proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in Mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her, as if a close net, or a pall, were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure.
Bleak House, p. 835 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
... There is Mr Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence – no doubt – of Mr Snagsby’s suborning and tampering. ...
Bleak House, p. 827 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Volumnia gives Mr Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she lives; that her nerves are unstrung for ever; and that she has not the least expectation of smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a cocked-hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of her melancholy condition.
Bleak House, p. 809 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her, that influence even crowded places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky, with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds rich in corn-field, windmill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger’s wilderness of London there is some rest. Its steeples and towers, and its one great dome, grow more ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness, in the pale effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. In these fields of Mr Tulkinghorn’s inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
Bleak House, p. 749 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– A nice word, and passage, I think, for Mr Dickens's birthday!
As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man, standing at the trooper’s elbow, and looking up, with an oddly twisted figure and countenance, into the trooper’s face. After a few more puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the little man winks up at the trooper.
Bleak House, p. 723 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind, or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise, there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tome goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.
Bleak House, p. 710 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
A slatternly full-blown girl, who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes, like an over-ripe berry, answered our knock by opening the door a very little way, and stopping up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr Jarndyce (indeed Ada and I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs.
Bleak House, p. 672 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a thing. The debilitated cousin holds that it’s – sort of thing that’s sure tapn slongs votes – giv’n – Mob.
Bleak House, p. 647 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the Government has been of a most determined and most implacable description.’
‘W-r-retches’ says Volumnia.
‘Even,’ proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumadjacent cousins on sofas and ottomans, ‘even in many – in fact in most – of those places in which the Government has carried it against a faction ―!’
(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy the same position toward the Coodleites.)
‘—Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be constrained to inform you that the Party has not triumphed without being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,’ says Sir Leicester, eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation, ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds!’
Bleak House, p. 644 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– This one's not in a lot of dictionaries (none at the wordswarm site). OED defines it as '(a.) Lying immediately around.'
Mrs Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish appearance, did as her son requested; and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket-handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both hands.
Bleak House, p. 615 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
He vociferates this so loudly, that Mr Bagnet, laying his hands on the shoulders of his comrade, before the latter can recover from his amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door; which is instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr Bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window, like a sentry, and looks in, every time he passes; apparently revolving something in his mind.
Bleak House, p. 549 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘Now George,’ says Mrs Bagnet, briskly, ‘here we are, Lignum and myself;’ she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy; ‘just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he’ll sign it like a man.’
Bleak House, p. 540 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last Coroner’s Inquest at the Sol’s Arms, reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol’s parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery.
Bleak House, p. 520 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Tony shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. Can’t imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed no doubt. How can I know, without seeing them, when he don’t know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is, and what that is; but his whole stock, from beginning to end, may easily be the waste paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It’s a monomania with him, to think he is possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me.’
Bleak House, p. 515 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
It is a close, night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra business. ...
Bleak House, p. 506 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
But the house was in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney Wold at the same time; seldom rejoicing when it rejoices, or mourning when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies; the house in town shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter as hothouse flowers can make it; soft and hushed, so that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the stillness in the rooms; it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir Leicester’s in rainbow-coloured wool. ...
Bleak House, p. 458 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the family gout; and is once more, in a literal no less than a figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds, and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended, and eke into Sir Leicester’s bones. The blazing fires of faggot and coal – Dedlock timber and ante-diluvian forest – that blaze upon the broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains, fail to supply the fires’ deficiencies, and to satisfy Sir Leicester’s need. Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the listening earth, that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to town for a few weeks.
Bleak House, p. 446 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
This reply is cut short by Mr Tulkinghorn’s arrival. There is no change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually not uncensorious and contemptuous, perhaps. The peerage may have warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr Tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were known.
Bleak House, p. 433 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsey so very often, that it was no easy matter to get her out of the Court. When this was at last done, and, addressing Mr George, as ‘General,’ she gave him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was so discomposed, and begged me so respectfully ‘not to desert him,’ that I could not make up my mind to do it; especially as Miss Flite was always tractable with me, and as she too said, ‘Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of course.’
Bleak House, p. 400 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very hopeful pupil – a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep voice, and an inanimate dissatisfied mamma – whose case was certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her shoes, and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search of Mr Turveydrop; whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as a model of Deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment – the only comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his leisure, in the intervals of a light collation; and his dressing-case, brushes and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.
Bleak House, p. 376 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Mr George laughs; and with a glance at Mr Smallweed, and a parting salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.
Bleak House, p. 349 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission, and so disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to gormandise, which ‘in you girls,’she observes, is disgusting. Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the general subject of girls, but for a knock at the door.
Bleak House, p. 339 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Some time elapses, in the present instance, before the old gentleman is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse; and even then he mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth but the trivets. As thus:
‘If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money – you brimstone chatterer! – but just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a year – you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean! – he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care – I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself! – and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood, after you and Judy were born. – You are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You’re a head of swine!’
Bleak House, p. 338 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
– Old man Smallweed talks to his grandson, Bart, intermittently hurling insults at his crazy old wife, who's verbal communication consists entirely of random single-line outbursts, usually containing some reference to money, and directed toward the trivets, apparently. We pick this scene up as the old man is recovering from whipping a cushion at the old lady, which he does regularly, and which always knocks the old lady down and crumples her in her chair, and knocks him down and crumples him in his chair, so that they both have to be helped (shaken up) by someone into a normal seated position. Hysterical!
‘What work are you about now?’ says Judy, making an ancient snap at her, like a very sharp old beldame.
‘I’m cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,’ replies Charley.
‘Mind you do it thoroughly, and don’t loiter. Shirking won’t do for me. Make haste! Go along!’ cries Judy, with a stamp upon the ground. ‘You girls are more trouble than you’re worth, by half.’
Bleak House, p. 336 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–Chapter 21, The Smallweed Family, is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Dickens has a lot of fun with this ridiculous and nasty old family, particularly the old man and woman. Some of that fun will be featured in the excerpt containing tomorrow's word.
Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, who was afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, seeing in him and his youthful choice, the softened shadow of that chastening passage of his own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so long imprisoned in his solitary ark might fly for rest and company, fell upon his neck, entreating them to be his children.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 407 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–This is the last word from the Christmas books for now. Tomorrow we'll resume with words from Bleak House.
A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger brothers, who, in preparing the family breakfast table, had fallen to skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf, and were buffeting one another with great heartiness; the smallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, hovering outside the knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. Into the midst of this fray, Mr and Mrs Tetterby both precipitated themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only ground on which they could now agree; and having, with no visible remains of their late soft-heartedness, laid about them without any lenity, and done much execution, resumed their former relative positions.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 391 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!’ cried Redlaw, in distraction. ‘Come back, and haunt me day and night, but take this gift away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful power of giving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed. As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never will go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, save this creature’s who is proof against me, -- hear me!’
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 383 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 374 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those of his injured son were worked on, Mr Tetterby concluded by embracing him, and immediately breaking away to catch one of the real delinquents. A reasonably good start occurring, he succeeded, after a short but smart run, and some rather severe cross-country work under and over the beadsteads, and in and out among the intricacies of the chairs, in capturing his infant, whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This example had a powerful, and apparently mesmeric influence on him of the boots, who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. Nor was it lost upon the two young architects, who retired to bed, in an adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. The comrade of the Intercepted One also shrinking into his nest with similar discretion, Mr Tetterby, when he paused for breath, found himself unexpectedly in a scene of peace.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 351 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘You bad boy!’ said Mr Tetterby, ‘haven’t you any feeling for your poor father after the fatigues and anxieties of a hard winter’s day, since five o’clock in the morning, but must you wither his rest, and corrode his latest intelligence, with your wicious tricks? Isn’t it enough, sir, that your brother ‘Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and you rolling in the lap of luxury with a – with a baby, and everything you can wish for,’ said Mr Tetterby, heaping this up as a great climax of blessings, ‘but must you make a wilderness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?’ At each interrogation, Mr Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought better of it, and held his hand.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 350 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole existence of this particular young brother was offered up a daily sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have consisted of its never being quiet, in any one place, for five consecutive minutes, and never going to sleep when required. ‘Tetterby’s baby’ was as well known in the neighborhood as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little too late for everything that was attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of England; and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 349 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two faces – if the dread lineaments behind the chair might be called a face – both addressed towards it, as at first, and neither looking at the other. But, new, the haunted man turned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, as sudden in its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared on him.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 339 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘Yes, sir. Oh dear, yes!’ said Mr Swidger, still proceeding with his preparations, and checking them off as he made them. ‘That’s where it is, sir. That’s what I always say myself, sir. Such a many of us Swidgers!—Pepper. Why there’s my father, sir, superannuated keeper and custodian of this Institution, eigh-ty-seven year old. He’s a Swidger!—Spoon.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 330 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things were indistinct and big – but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads and ran before the weather. When those who were obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes – which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When windows of private houses closed up tight and warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in the busy and the quiet streets fast blackening otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering along the latter, looked down at the glowing fires in kitchens, and sharpened their sharp appetites by sniffing up the fragrance of whole miles of dinners.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 327 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man?
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, p. 325 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘But I ask you if you recollect,’ pursued his wife, ‘that evening of the ball? I only ask you that. If you do; and if your memory has not entirely failed you, Mr Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely in your dotage; I ask you to connect this time to that – to remember how I begged and prayed you, on my knees –‘
‘Upon your knees, my dear?’ said Mr Snitchey.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Snitchey, confidently, ‘and you know it – to beware of that man – to observe his eye – and now to tell me whether I was right, and whether at that moment he knew secrets which he didn’t choose to tell.’
The Battle of Life, p. 318 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–Happy New Year to the World! This is the last word that will be posted from The Battle of Life. Words from Dickens's fifth and last Christmas book, The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain (1848)will be posted starting tomorrow.
‘My love, my sister!’ said Marion, ‘recall your thoughts a moment; listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes forever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good, – learn the same lesson; and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won. And such a one am I! You understand me now?’
The Battle of Life, p. 316 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
– No, actually, I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all. This story is strange to me. The moral is weak, even wrong to me. Sorry Charles.
On the door-step, appeared a proper figure of a landlord, too; for, though he was a short man, he was round and broad, and stood with his hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confidence – too calm and virtuous to become a swagger – in the general resources of the Inn. The superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his neat well-ordered garden, had swilled as much as they could carry – perhaps, a trifle more – and may have been the worse for liquor; but the sweetbriar, roses, wall-flowers, the plants at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were in the beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting nothing.
The Battle of Life, p. 298 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of the winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmer of voices greeted his ear sweetly.
The Battle of Life, p. 296 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
– As pointed out by a learned friend, this is not the most accepted use of rime. Although there is some controversy, apparently (See Webster's vs. OED definitions), the more common and first sense of the word is that which you can infer from the title The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, (Homer).
It was an old custom among them, indeed, to do so, and to pair off, in like manner, at dinners and suppers; for they were excellent friends, and on a footing of easy familiarity. Perhaps the false Craggs and the wicked Snitchey were a recognized fiction with the two wives, as Doe and Roe, incessantly running up and down bailiwicks, were with the two husbands; or, perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken upon themselves, these two shared in the business, rather than be left out of it altogether. But certain it is, that each wife went as gravely and steadily to work in her vocation as her husband did in his, and would have considered it almost impossible for the Firm to maintain a successful and respectable existence, without her laudable exertions.
The Battle of Life, p. 294 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Now the music struck up, and the dance commenced. The bright fire crackled and sparkled, rose and fell, as though it joined the dance itself, in right good fellowship. Sometimes, it roared as if it would make music too. Sometimes it flashed and beamed as if it were the eye of the old room: it winked too, sometimes, like a knowing patriarch, upon the youthful whispers in corners. Sometimes, it sported with the holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation leaped and bounded, like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney.
The Battle of Life, p. 291 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,’ said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; ‘but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement – if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that – and has repented it perhaps. Perhaps – it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light – she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.’
The Battle of Life, p. 274 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
How he laboured under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn’t append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor’s coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him, and he couldn’t leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the whole table with her two elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her head upon her left arm as preliminary to the formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue. Also, how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life.
The Battle of Life, p. 265 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in favour of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.
The Battle of Life, p. 261 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he did not stand seized and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.
The Battle of Life, p. 255 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
– I had no idea that this word had another and quite different meaning than that in which it is commonly used in Chemistry in referring to certain bits of molecules.
I wouldn’t have missed Dot, doing the honours in her wedding gown, my benison on her bright face! for any money. No! nor the good Carrier, so jovial and so ruddy, at the bottom of the table. Nor the brown, fresh sailor-fellow, and his handsome wife. Nor any one among them. To have missed the dinner would have been to miss as jolly and as stout a meal as man need eat; and to have missed the overflowing cups in which they drank The Wedding-Day, would have been the greatest miss of all.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 238 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
– This is the last word that will be posted from The Cricket on the hearth. Words from Dickens's fourth Christmas book, The Battle of Life (1846)will be posted starting tomorrow.
There was a gun, hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved a pace or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger’s room. He knew the gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a wild beast, seized him, and dilated in his mind until it grew into a monstrous demon in complete possession of him, casting out all milder thoughts and setting up its undivided empire.
That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, but artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive him on. Turning water into blood, love into hate, gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but, staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger and cried ‘Kill him! In his bed!’ He reversed the gun to beat the stock upon the door; he already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God’s sake, by the window ―
When, suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to Chirp!
No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for the same Cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment, was again before him; her pleasant voice – O what a voice it was, for making household music at the fireside of an honest man! – thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and action. He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat down again beside the fire, and found relief in tears.
The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and stood in Fairy shape before him.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 215 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother – a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed to be a most transcendent figure; and who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of labouring under an impression that she might have been, if something had happened which never did happen, and seemed to have never been particularly likely to come to pass – but it’s all the same – was very genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young salmon on top of the Great Pyramid.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 202 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you could see a great deal! It’s astonishing how much you may see, in a thicker fog than that, if you will only take the trouble to look for it. Why, even to sit watching for the Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation: to make no mention of the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came starting out of the mist, and glided into it again. The hedges were tangled and bare, and waved a multitude of blighted garlands in the wind; but there was no discouragement in this. It was agreeable to contemplate; for it made the fireside warmer in possession, and the summer greener in expectancy. The river looked chilly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace – which was a great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that must be admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when the frost set fairly in, and then there would be skating, and sliding; and the heavy old barges, frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke their rusty iron chimney pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 201 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb’s face, and his absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about him. But, trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member or Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a very great doubt whether they would have been as harmless.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 191 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Mrs Perrybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent – in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature, was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them homes; and so on.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 174 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn’t allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn’t hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs Perrybingle’s fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in – down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs Perrybingle, before she got it up again.
The Cricket on the Hearth, p. 166 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
She dressed the child next morning with unusual care – ah, vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes! – and once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried till night and never broke her fast. She tried in vain.
She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and question them, and say to this one, ‘Come next week’; to make a football of another wretch, and pass him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no delay. Here too, she failed.
She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that was quite enough.
The Chimes, p. 154 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–Dickens borrows from actual incidents in this scene from the future, shown by the spirit to Toby, of his daughters desperate plight. This is the last word that will be posted from Dickens's second Christmas book, The Chimes (1844). Words from his third, The Cricket on the hearth (1845)will be posted starting tomorrow.
As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round. Some few of the late company who had gambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of the rest. The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally retired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent.
The Chimes, p. 126 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘What man can do, I do,’ pursued Sir Joseph. ‘I do my duty as the Poor Man’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that class requires. That is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with – with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude – which is undoubtedly the case – I am their Friend and Father still. It is so Ordained. It is in the nature of things.
The Chimes, p. 111 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Still the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very air spin. Put ‘em down, Put ‘em down! Good old Times, Good old Times! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures! Put ‘em down, Put ‘em down! If they said anything they said this, until the brain of Toby reeled.
He pressed his bewildered head between his hands, as if to keep it from splitting asunder. A well-timed action, as it happened; for finding the letter in one of them, and being by that means reminded of his charge, he fell, mechanically, into his usual trot, and trotted off.
The Chimes, p. 105 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘And as for you, you dull dog,’ said the Alderman, turning with even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young smith, ‘what are you thinking of being married for? What do you want to be married for, you silly fellow? If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should be ashamed of being milksop enough to pin myself to a woman’s apron-strings! Why, she’ll be an old woman before you’re a middle-aged man! And a pretty figure you’ll cut then, with a draggle-tailed wife and a crowd of squalling children crying after you wherever you go!’
The Chimes, p. 105 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street – in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window for a porter – his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting opposite to him, with her arms folded: and only busy in watching his progress with a smile of happiness.
The Chimes, p. 97 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Toby was not a casuist – that he knew of, at least – and I don’t mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his rough acquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof, he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal review or great field-day in his thoughts. But what I mean to say, and do say is, that as the functions of Toby’s body, his digestive organs, for example, did of their own cunning, and by a great many operations of which he was altogether ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have astonished him very much, arrive at a certain end; so his mental faculties, without his privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in motion, with a thousand others, when they worked to bring about his liking of the Bells.
The Chimes, p. 91 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation, an its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slip-shod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
A Christmas Carol, p. 66 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–Bet you can guess which Ghost took Scrooge to this place. This is the last word that made the list from Dickens's first Christmas book, A Christmas Carol (1843). The next few words will be from his second Christmas book, The Chimes (1844).
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Chratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
‘A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’ Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
A Christmas Carol, p. 51 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–A long passage today, for this classic scene, I couldn't resist. Apparently Christmas puddings of this kind are still an important part of holiday feasts in England. I've never had one, but they don't sound very good.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll’s frying pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the parlour and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
A Christmas Carol, p. 40 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and tore it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.
A Christmas Carol, p. 39 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it!
‘These are but shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘They have no consciousness of us.’
The jocund travelers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon Merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?
‘The school is not quite deserted,’ said the Ghost. ‘A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.’
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
A Christmas Carol, p. 30 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.
‘I don’t,’ said Scrooge.
‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.
‘Why do you doubt your senses?’
‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disturbance of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
A Christmas Carol, p. 21 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
A Christmas Carol, p. 9 in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World Classics, 2008, paperback)
–The first word from the Christmas Books.
Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where they find Krook still sleeping like one o’clock; that is to say, breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast, and quite insensible to any external sounds, or even gentle shaking. On the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin bottle and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor, that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
Bleak House, p. 327 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–This is the last word posting from Bleak House until after the Holidays. There will be no word tomorrow (Thanksgiving). Words from the Christmas Books begin on Friday, and will continue through twelfth night.
As it is Mr Guppy’s perplexing way, with boastful misery to tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the human mind; both Mr Jobling and Mr Smallweed decline the pitfall, but remaining silent.
Bleak House, p. 324 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
...Three pint-pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns, bearing what is apparently a model of the tower of Babel, but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye, and winks upon her.
Bleak House, p. 319 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–Mr Jobling, Mr Smallweed and Mr Guppy are having dinner. The full descriptions of the immense order and of Mr Jobling’s ravenous appetite, are hysterical. half-and-half here, by the way, is not what you might think, but half-ale and half-porter.
During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on the slip of paper, ‘return immediately.’ This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box; and then putting on the tall hat, at the angle of inclination at which Mr Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.
Bleak House, p. 318 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square Lincoln’s Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr Guppy becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below, and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn, and a suppressed voice cries, ‘Hip! Gup-py!’
Bleak House, p. 317 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘He won’t move on,’ says the constable, calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, ‘although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He’s as obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He WON’T move on.’
Bleak House, p. 308 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
...Mr Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn warnings: ‘Beware of the Bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence Boythorn.’ ‘The blunderbuss is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn.’ ‘Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and night. Lawrence Boythorn.’ ‘Take notice. That any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass on this property, will be punished with the utmost severity of private chastisement, and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn.’
Bleak House, p. 289 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–Mr Lawrence Boythorn’s warnings to Sir Leicester Deadlock and his tribe regarding the disputed ground.
‘Well!’ said Mr Boythorn, ‘I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in better keeping. I am looked upon, about here, as a second Ajax defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderate congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Deadlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don’t. For he is, by Heaven! the most self-satisfied and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!’
Bleak House, p. 286 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–Mr Lawrence Boythorn again – more of his thoughts on Sir Leicester Deadlock. Ha ha ha ha!
... We were to be ‘merely a family party,’ Mrs Badger’s note said; and we found no lady there but Mrs Badger herself. She was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanising a little.
Bleak House, p. 204 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and his retinue. These are the great actors for whom the stage is reserved.
Bleak House, p. 190 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
...The clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows, and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness, never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth, and seems to rend it.
Bleak House, p. 182 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr Krook’s, and bears off the body of our dear brother here departed, to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed; while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official backstairs – would to Heaven they had departed! – are very complacent and agreeable.
Bleak House, p. 180 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘I assure you, sir,’ says Mr Snagsby, after prefacing his reply with his cough of general propitiation, ‘that I no more know where he came from, than I know―’
‘Where he has gone to, perhaps,’ suggests the surgeon, to help him out.
Bleak House, p. 169 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
... It is even observed, that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality look down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction.
Bleak House, p. 157 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–This is not a particularly unusual word, but I chose to include it because I like the sound of it, and haven't heard or seen it used much lately.
... The portraits it displays in oil – and plenty of it too – of Mr Snagsby looking at Mrs Snagsby, and of Mrs Snagsby looking at Mr Snagsby, are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations.
Bleak House, p. 157 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
... The Law-stationer’s establishment is, in Guster’s eyes, a Temple of plenty and spendour. She believes the little drawing-room up-stairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers, and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom.
Bleak House, p. 157 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–I felt like a fool for not knowing the meaning of this word, though I'd heard it a thousand times. I'm not going to tell what I though it was.
... If he ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest, to air himself again in Cook’s Court, until admonished to return by the crowing of the sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it – if Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook’s Court, which no law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly, and no one is the worse or wiser.
Bleak House, p. 155 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–This word appears fairly often in Dickens’s writing, and usually in the sense in which it is used here (the first sense of the adj. form in the Oxford English Dictionary), which hasn’t as much to do with blood as a medical person might think (though other senses do).
Mr Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper – foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape, and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacks, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands – glass and leaden, penknives, scissors, bodkins, sand other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention; ever since he was out of his time, and went into partnership with Peffer.
Bleak House, p. 154 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–When I saw this word in this context I had no idea what it meant, and wondered how it could possibly be related to the oath ‘Odds bodkin.’ Apparently, the ‘bodkin’ in ‘Odds bodkin’ has nothing to do with the meaning of the word, but was used for its (in its earlier form, ‘bodikin’) alliteration with ‘body’, and the phrase is thus an euphemistic version of ‘God’s Body.’ More on the etymology of ‘Odds bodkin’ at www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/262450.html
‘...The fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine, until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man-traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine – resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and battery; I defend them, and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!’
Bleak House, p. 145 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–Mr Lawrence Boythorn on his land dispute with Sir Leicester Deadlock
‘... By my soul, the countenance of that fellow, when he was a boy; was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!’
Bleak House, p. 142 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–a little more of Mr Lawrence Boythorn
...The dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze, when the hall-door suddenly burst open, and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone:
‘We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate villain, ever to have had such a son. I would have that fellow shot without the least remorse!’
Bleak House, p. 141 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
–a little taste of the hysterically righteous Mr Lawrence Boythorn, as he arrives at Bleak House for a visit
‘... I love hard work, I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good, I am so accustomed and inured to hard work, that I don’t know what fatigue is.’
Bleak House, p. 127 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that they were weazen and shrivelled – though they were certainly that too – but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly miserable.
Bleak House, p. 125 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
...Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little farm-yard.
Bleak House, p. 115 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘... I can lie down on the grass – in fine weather – and float along an African river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence, and sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately, as if I were there. I don’t know that it’s of any direct use my doing so, but it’s all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven’s sake, having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking horse!’
Bleak House, p. 91 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog, when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bedgown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.
Bleak House, p. 63 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
... I was not so attentive an auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story: so we sat down among them, and told them in whispers Puss and Boots and I don’t know what else, until Mrs Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs; where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragoon, and overturned them into cribs.
Bleak House, p. 58 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘If you would like,’ said Mrs Jellyby, putting a number of papers towards us, ‘to look over some remarks on that head, and on the general subject (which have been extensively circulated), while I finish a letter I am now dictating – to my eldest daughter, who is my amanuensis —‘
The girl at the table left off biting her pen, and made a return to our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
‘— I shall then have finished for the present,’ proceeded Mrs Jellyby, with a sweet smile, ‘though my work is never done. Whence are you, Caddy?’
Bleak House, p. 54 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Mr Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles, and begins again lower down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the fire, and appears to have a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities, as ranging among the national bulwarks.
Bleak House, p. 26 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
... Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from Shropshire, and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at the close of the day’s business, and who can by no means be made to understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye on the Judge, ready to call out ‘My Lord!’ in a voice of sonorous complaint, on the instant of his rising. A few lawyers’ clerks and other who know the suitor by sight, linger, on the chance of his furnishing some fun, and enlivening the dismal weather a little.
Bleak House, p. 16 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Mrs John Rokesmith sat at needlework in her neat little room, beside a basket of neat little articles of clothing, which presented so much of the appearance of being in the dolls’ dressmaker’s way of business, that one might have suspected she was going to set up in opposition to Miss Wren. Whether the Complete British Family Housewife had imparted sage counsel anent them, did not appear, but probably not, as that cloudy oracle was nowhere visible. For certain, however, Mrs John Rokesmith stitched at them with so dexterous a hand, that she might have taken lessons of somebody. Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher, and perhaps love (from a pictorial point of view, with nothing on but a thimble), had been teaching this branch of needlework to Mrs John Rokesmith.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 724 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
–This is Dickens’ delicate Victorian way of telling us that Bella (Mrs John Rokesmith) is pregnant.
It was a longer cry than might have been expected. Howbeit, it wore itself out in a shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came forth, and washed her face, and made the tea. ‘You wouldn’t mind my cutting out something while we are at tea, would you?’ she asked her Jewish friend, with a coaxing air.
‘Cinderella, dear child,’ the old man expostulated, ‘will you never rest?’
‘Oh! It’s not work, cutting out a pattern isn’t,’ said Miss Jenny, with her busy little scissors already snipping at some paper. ‘The truth is, godmother, I want to fix it while I have it correct in my mind.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 714 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
... Stumblingly pursuing these two designs – they both meant rum, the only meaning of which he was capable – the degraded creature staggered into Covent Garden Market and there bivouacked, to have an attack of the trembles succeeded by an attack of the horrors, in a doorway.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 710 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Now, the bad child having been strictly charged by his parent to remain at home in her absence, of course went out; and, being in the very last stage of mental decrepitude, went out with two objects; firstly, to establish a claim he conceived himself to have upon any licensed victualler living, to be supplied with threepennyworth of rum for nothing; and secondly, to bestow some maudlin remorse on Mr Eugene Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 710 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Where are you going to seek your fortune?’ asked Miss Wren.
The old man smiled, but looked about him with a look of having lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls’ dressmaker.
‘Verily, Jenny,’ said he. ‘the question is to the purpose, and more easily asked than answered. But as I have experience of the ready goodwill and good help of those who have given occupation to Lizzie, I think I will seek them out for myself.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 709 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘I should be glad to countermine him, respecting the handsome gal, your friend. He means something there. You may depend on it, Judah means something there. He has a motive, and of course his motive is a dark motive.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 700 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Yes, I had better sleep, I think,’ said Bradley, without changing his position.
‘I myself should recommend it governor,’ assented Riderhood. ‘Might you be anyways dry?’
‘Yes, I should like a drink,’ said Bradley; but without appearing to attend much.
Mr Riderhood got out his bottle, and fetched his jug-full of water. and administered a potation. Then, he shook the coverlet of his bed and spread it smooth, and Bradley stretched himself upon it in the clothes he wore.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 686 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘The true point is,’ pursued Lavinia, ‘that Bella has behaved in a most unsisterly way to me, and might have seriously compromised me with George and with George’s family, by making off and getting married in this very low and disreputable manner – with some pew-opener or other, I suppose, for a bridesmaid – when she ought to have confided in me, and ought to have said, “if, Lavvy, you consider it due to your engagement with George, that you should countenance the occasion by being present, then Lavvy, I beg you to be present, keeping my secret from Ma and Pa.” As of course I should have done.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 659 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘It’s very surprising. But I suppose, my dear,’ hinted the cherub, as he folded the letter after a disconcerting silence, ‘that we must make the best of it? Would you object to my pointing out, my dear, that Mr John Rokesmith is not (so far as I am acquainted with him), strictly speaking, a Mendicant.’
‘Indeed?’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with an awful air of politeness. ‘Truly so? I was not aware that Mr John Rokesmith was a gentleman of landed property. But I am much relieved to hear it.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 658 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Here the Archbishop of Greenwich coughed a stately cough to attract the attention of three of his ministers present, and staring at them, seemed to say: ‘I call upon you by your fealty to believe this.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 655 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Were they expected at Greenwich? Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith was on the pier looking out, about a couple of hours before the coaly (but to him gold-dusty) little steamboat got her steam up in London. Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith seemed perfectly satisfied when he descried them on board. Probably. At least, Bella no sooner stepped ashore than she took Mr John Rokesmith’s arm, without evincing surprise, and the two walked away together with an ethereal air of happiness which, as it were, wafted up from the earth and drew after them a gruff and glum old pensioner to see it out. Two wooden legs had this gruff and glum old pensioner, and, a minute before Bella stepped out of the boat, and drew that confiding little arm of hers through Rokesmith’s, he had had no object in life but tobacco, and not enough of that. Stranded was Gruff and Glum in a harbour of everlasting mud, when all in an instant bella floated him, and away he went.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 649 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Good-bye, dear Mr Lammle – I mean Alfred. You won’t think after to-day that I have deserted you and Sophronia because you have been brought low in the world, will you? Oh me! oh me! I have been crying my eyes out of my head, and Ma will be sure to ask me what’s the matter. Oh, take me down, somebody, please, please, please!’
Mr Boffin took her down, and saw her driven away, with her poor little red eyes and weak chin peering over the great apron of the custard-coloured phaeton, as if she had been ordered to expiate some childish misdemeanor by going to bed in the daylight, and were peeping over the counterpane in a miserable flutter of repentance and low spirits. Returning to the breakfast-room, he found Mrs Lammle still standing on her side of the table, and Mr Lammle on his.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 635 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Eugene, leaning back in his chair, is observing Mr Podsnap with an irreverant face, and may be about to offer a new suggestion, when the Analytical is beheld in collision with the Coachman; The Coachman manifesting a purpose of coming at the company with a silver salver, as though intent upon making a collection for his wife and family; the Analytical cutting him off at the sideboard. The superior stateliness, if not the superior generalship, of the Analytical prevails over a man who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman, yielding up his salver, retires defeated.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 612 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Lammle answers, stopping, and sketching out the pattern of the wall with the point of her parasol; ‘it depends. There may be an opening for him dawning now, or there may be none. We shall soon find out. If none, we are bankrupt, and must go abroad, I suppose.’
Mr Twemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it, remarks that there are pleasant lives abroad.
‘Yes,’ returns Mrs Lammle, still sketching on the wall; ‘but I doubt whether billiard-playing, card-playing, and so forth, for the means to live under suspicion at a dirty table-d’hôte, is one of them.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 609 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella’s declaration that she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella’s return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson’s courtship, or whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision with somebody on the present occasion, – anyhow she made a dash at her stately parent now, with the greatest impetuosity.
‘Ma, pray don’t sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner! If you see a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don’t, leave me alone.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 600 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘In short, dear Ma,’ said Bella, taking off the depreciated bonnet and shaking out her hair, ‘I have had a very serious difference with Mr Boffin on the subject of his treatment of a member of his household, and it’s a final difference, and there’s and end of all.’
‘And I am bound to tell you, my dear,’ added R.W., submissively, ‘that Bella has acted in a truly brave spirit, and with truly right feeling. And therefore I hope, my dear, you’ll not allow yourself to be greatly dissappointed.’
‘George!’ said Miss Lavvy, in a sepulchral, warning voice, founded on her mother’s; ‘George Sampson speak! What did I tell you about those Boffins?’
Mr Sampson perceiving his frail bark to be labouring among shoals and breakers, thought it safest not to refer back to any particular thing that he had been told, lest he should refer back to the wrong thing. With admirable seamanship he got his bark into deep water by murmuring ‘Yes indeed.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 597 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secretary out of the open street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with my affairs, and gets to know that I mean to settle a sum of money on this young lady. “Oho!” says Rokesmith;’ here Mr Boffin clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; ‘ “This will be a good haul; I’ll go in for this!” And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a-creeping on his hands and knees towards the money. Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young lady had had less spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There he stands.’ said Mr Boffin, addressing Rokesmith himself with ridiculous inconsistency. ‘Look at him!’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 579 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets. More than once or twice, more than twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head. Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit with intense satisfaction.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 573 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets. More than once or twice, more than twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head. Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit with intense satisfaction.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 573 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Now dear,’ said Bella, drawing her chair in a little nearer, and taking Lizzie’s arm as if they were going out for a walk, ‘I am commissioned with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I won’t if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.’
With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching secresy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its retractation, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any bearing, near or remote, on such request.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 515 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her beaut ― by her appearance and manner, she is attracted by yours.’
‘I certainly have not noticed it,’ returned Bella, again italicizing with the dimple, ‘and I should have given her credit for ―’
The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing ‘not for better taste,’ that Bella’s colour deepened over the little piece of coquetry she was checked in.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 511 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
…Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight. Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two by-road between herself and the market place; and had crept into a copse, like a hunted animal, to hide and recover breath.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 500 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole. ‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’ he considered, growing cooler as he got away. ‘That’s what would happen to him if he didn’t buy us up. We should get nothing by that.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 495 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
The wretched Mr Sampson’s position at this agreeable entertainment was truly pitiable. For not only was he exposed defenceless to the harangues of Mrs Wilfer, but he received the utmost contumely at the hands of Lavinia; who, partly to show Bella that she (Lavinia) could do what she liked with him, and partly to pay him off for still obviously admiring Bella’s beauty, led him the life of a dog.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 452 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
…‘And you,’ he added, turning to his daughter, as he filled the footless glass, ‘if it warn’t wasting good sherry wine on you, I’d chuck this at you, for Poll Parroting with this man. It’s along of Poll Parroting that such like him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by argueyment, and being nat’rally a honest man, and sweating away at the brow as an honest man ought.’ Here he filled the footless goblet again, and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down into the other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while Pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apostophized, rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse when proceeding to market to be sold.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 355 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
…Therefore a carriage was ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in the meantime Sloppy was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary’s room, with a complete realization of that fairy vision – meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding. In consequence of which his buttons became more importunate of public notice than before, with the exception of two or three about the region of the waistband, which modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 322 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Then what is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?’
‘My dear Mortimer, one would think the schoolmaster had left behind him a catechizing infection. You are ruffled by the want of another cigar. Take one of these, I entreat. …’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 293 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Even the craven Fledgeby felt that the time was now come when he must strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs Lammle and partly to the circumambient air, ‘I consider myself very fortunate in being reserved by ― .’
As he stopped dead, Mr Lammle, making that gingerous bush of his whiskers to look out of, offered him the word ‘Destiny.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 264 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
A certain leanness falls on houses not sufficiently imbued with life (as if they were nourished upon it), which was very noticeable here. The staircase, balustrades, and rails, had a spare look – and air of being denuded to the bone – which the panels of the walls and the jambs of the doors and windows also bore. The scanty moveables partook of it; save for the cleanliness of the place, the dust into which they were resolving would have lain thick on the floors; and those, both in color and in grain, were worn like old faces that had kept much alone.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 184 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
A gloomy house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been, through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man’s occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its existence, or soon perish. This old house had wasted more from desuetude than it would have wasted from use, twenty years for one.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 184 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.’
Our Mutual Friend, p. 167 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
And now, the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discreet automaton ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among the furniture. And herein the unconsciousness of the Ogre Grompus was pleasantly conspicuous; for, that complacent monster, believing that he was giving Miss Podsnap a treat, prolonged to the utmost stretch of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery meeting; while his victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly circled about, like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except once to steal a glance at Mrs Lammle, expressive of intense despair.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 141 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘If you were so dull a fortune-hunter that you deceived yourself, or if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over-willing to be deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?’ the lady demands, with great asperity.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 127 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
… He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant’s deputy), but also that he was one of the house’s retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 53 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
… The abyss to which he could find no bottom, and from which started forth the engrossing and ever-swelling difficulty of his life, was the insoluble question whether he was Veneering’s oldest friend, or his newest friend. To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless gentleman had devoted many anxious hours, both in his lodgings over the livery stable-yard, and in the cold gloom, favourable to meditation, of Saint James Square.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 18 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discretely lost no time in slipping out at the back of the truck. The moment he was landed, his late driver with a wave of the carrot, said ‘Supper Eddard!’ and he, the hind hoofs, the truck and Edward, all seemed to fly into the air together, in a kind of apotheosis.
Our Mutual Friend, p. 62 (Penguin Classics, 1997, paperback)
‘Whether you are what you seem to be at Pecksniff’s, or are something else and a mountebank, I don’t know and don’t care,’ said Jonas, looking downward with a smile, ‘but I don’t want you here.’
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 735 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
And to work he went again, more assiduously than ever, with the pens, and the ruler, and the india-rubber, and the pencil, and the black ink, and the red ink, that he might forget it.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 721 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
‘Why, what,’ said Mr Pecksniff, sitting down beside him in a chair which he drew up for the purpose, and tapping him playfully on the arm, ‘what is the matter with my strong-minded compatriot, if I may venture to take the liberty of calling him by that endearing expression? Shall I have to scold my coadjutor, or to reason with an intellect like this? I think not.’
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 628 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
There was something hidden here, which piqued Tom’s interest and troubled his tender heart. When, in a moment’s irresolution he looked at Charity, he could not but observe a struggle in her face between a sense of triumph and a sense of shame; nor could he but remark how, meeting even his eyes, which she cared so little for, she turned away her own, for all the splenetic defiance in her manner.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 547 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
‘To make a swingeing profit, have a lot of chaps to order about, and get into regular good society by one and the same means, and them so easy to one’s hand ain’t such a bad look-out,’ thought Jonas.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 427 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… When he had done so, he looked, without his spectacles, at the paper as it lay before him, and at the same time produced his pocket-book from somewhere about the middle of his spine. Large as it was, it was very full of documents, but he found a place for this one; and having clasped it carefully, passed it by a kind of solemn legerdemain into the same region as before.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 426 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
It is due to Mr Tigg to say that he had really risen with his opportunities; and peculating on a grander scale, had become a grander man, altogether.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 409 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices – open handedness – to be a notable vagabond.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 181 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
The bargain was not concluded as easily as might have been expected though, for Scadder was caustic and ill-humoured, and cast much unnecessary opposition in the way: at one time requesting them to think of it, and call again in a week or a fortnight; at another, predicting that they wouldn’t like it; at another, offering to retract and let them off, and muttering strong imprecations upon the folly of the General.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 343 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… The other ladies were not at all behind-hand in expressing similar sentiments; and the children, of whom some scores had now collected, hooted and defied Mr Pecksniff quite savagely. So when Mrs Gamp appeared, the unoffending gentleman was glad to hustle her with very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drove off overwhelmed with popular execration.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 302 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
Mr Pecksniff told him, and added, rather hastily – his calumniators would have said, with a view to any testamentary thoughts that might be flitting through old Martin’s mind – ‘Perhaps, my dears, you had better write them down. Your humble autographs are of no value in themselves, but affection may prize them.’
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 159 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… He reminds them, amidst thunders of encouragement, that they have heard of a somewhat similar establishment in Cannon-street; and that they have heard it praised. He wishes to draw no invidious comparisons; he would be the last man to do it; but when that Cannon-street establishment shall be able to produce such a combination of wit and beauty as has graced that board that day, and shall be able to serve up (all things considered) such a dinner as that of which they have just partaken, he will be happy to talk to it.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 150 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
… Was there nothing jarring and discordant even in his tone of courage, with his one note self for ever audible, however high the strain? Not in her ears. It had been better otherwise, perhaps, but so it was. She heard the same bold spirit which had flung away as dross all gain and profit for her sake, making light of peril and privation that she might be calm and happy; and she heard no more.
Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 237 (Penguin Classics, 2004, paperback)
‘One must pass the time in the madman’s absence. One must talk. One can’t drink strong wine all day long, or I would have another bottle. She’s handsome, sir. Though not exactly to my taste, still, by the Thunder and Lightning! handsome. I felicitate you on your admiration.'
Little Dorrit, p. 783 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. She tried not to show it, but she recoiled with dread from the state of mind that had burnt so fiercely and lasted so long. It presented itself to her with no sophistry upon it, in its own plain nature.
Little Dorrit, p. 825 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
On no fewer than four occasions, the police were called in to receive denunciations of Mr Magles as a Knight of Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a thief; all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steamboats and public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he was, with Mother under his arm.
Little Dorrit, p. 840 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
It did her, for the time, the good of having him to think of, and to succour. ‘Uncle, dear Uncle, spare yourself, spare me!’
Little Dorrit, p. 681 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, would have remembered the lightest thing he said or did that night, though she had had no subsequent reason to recall that night. She always remembered, that when he looked about him under the strong influence of the old association, he tried to keep it out of her mind, and perhaps out of his own too, but immediately expatiating on the great riches and great company that had encompassed him in his absence, and on the lofty position he and his family had to sustain. Nor did she fail to recall that there were two under-currents, side by side, pervading all his discourse and all his manner; one, showing her how well he had got on without her, and how independent he was of her; the other, in a fitful and unintelligible way almost complaining of her, as if it had been possible that she had neglected him while he was away.
Little Dorrit, p. 671 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
He remained in the seclusion of his own chamber next morning; but early in the afternoon, sent down his best compliments to Mrs General, by Mr Tinker, and begged she would accompany Miss Dorrit on an airing without him. His daughter was dressed for Mrs Merdle’s dinner before he appeared. He then presented himself, in a refulgent condition as to his attire, but looking indefinably shrunken and old. However, as he was plainly determined to be angry with her if she so much as asked him how he was, she only ventured to kiss his cheek, before accompanying him to Mrs Merdle’s with an anxious heart.
Little Dorrit, p. 675 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
He was sententious and didactic that night. If he had been simply loving, he would have done Little Dorrit more good; but she accepted him as he was – when had she not accepted him as he was! – and made the most and best of him. Mrs General at length retired. Her retirement for the night was always her frostiest ceremony; as if she felt it necessary that the human imagination should be chilled into stone, to prevent its following her. When she had gone through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a sort of genteel platoon-exercise, she withdrew. Little Dorrit then put her arm round her father’s neck, to bid him good night.
Little Dorrit, p. 637 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… His dismissal of himself from his description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened to find it. So modest he was about it, such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he was that it was established on irrefragable laws.
Little Dorrit, p. 541 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Her uncle was so far rescued from the shadow of old, that he wore clothes they gave him, and performed some ablutions as a sacrifice to the family credit, and went where he was taken, with a certain patient animal enjoyment, which seemed to express that the air and change did him good.
Little Dorrit, p. 481 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘He is a part of the same thing,’ returned Miss Fanny, ‘and of a piece with all the rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first instance. We never wanted him. I always shewed him, for one, that I could have dispensed with his company with the greatest pleasure. …’
Little Dorrit, p. 478 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
The bed chamber occupied by Mr and Mrs Flintwich was within a few paces of that to which Mrs Clennam had been so long confined. It was not on the same floor, for it was a room at the side of the house, which was approached by a steep descent of a few odd steps, diverging from the main staircase nearly opposite to Mrs Clennam’s doors. It could scarcely be said to be within call, the walls, doors, and panelling of the old place were so cumbrous; but it was within easy reach, in any undress, at any hour of the night, in any temperature.
Little Dorrit, p. 56 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner – which would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs – I’ll dine,’ said Mr James Harthouse. ‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training.’
Hard Times, p. 222 (Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004, paperback)
‘… 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. But I have found nothing the matter with him. He may have some deep-seated recondite complaint. I can’t say. I only say, that at present I have not found it out.’
Little Dorrit, p. 272 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs Sparsit followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.
Hard Times, p. 206 (Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004, paperback)
… When they went away, she always put on the silk gown and the jet-black rows of curls represented in that portrait (her hair was reddish-grey in the kitchen), established herself in the breakfast-room, put her spectacles between two particular leaves of Doctor Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over the blind all day until they came back again. It was supposed that no persuasion could be invented which would induce Mrs Tickit to abandon her post at the blind, however long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance of Doctor Buchan: the lucubrations of which learned practitioner, Mr Meagles implicitly believed she had never yet consulted to the extent of one word in her life.
Little Dorrit, p. 215 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
… Maggy being broad awake, and in the act of distantly gloating over the fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, Clennam made the best diversion in his power by pouring her out a glass of wine, which she drank in a series of loud smacks; putting her hand upon her windpipe after every one, and saying, breathless, with her eyes in a very prominent state, ‘Oh ain’t it d’licious! Aint’ it hospitally!’ When she had finished the wine and these encomiums, he charged her to load her basket (she was never without her basket) with each eatable thing upon the table, and to take especial care to leave no scrap behind.
Little Dorrit, p. 188 (Penguin Classics, 2003, paperback)
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