Chapter 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place: also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections

Dombey and Son

by Charles Dickens

Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at
some remote period of English History, into a fashionable
neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood in the
shade like a poor relation of the great street round the corner,
coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a
court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of
No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double
knocks. The name of this retirement, where grass grew between the
chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess's Place; and in Princess's
Place was Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as
many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a Sunday. The
Princess's Arms was also there, and much resorted to by splendid
footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the
Princess's Arms, but it had never come out within the memory of man;
and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there were
eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with a
pewter-pot.

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 vista of 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.'

At this other private house in Princess's Place, tenanted by a
retired butler who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let
Furnished, to a single gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured,
blue-faced Major, with his eyes starting out of his head, in whom
Miss Tox recognised, as she herself expressed it, 'something so truly
military;' and between whom and herself, an occasional interchange of
newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was effected
through the medium of a dark servant of the Major's who Miss Tox was
quite content to classify as a 'native,' without connecting him with
any geographical idea whatever.

Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the
entry and staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether,
from top to bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in
England, and the crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a
situation! There was very little daylight to be got there in the
winter: no sun at the best of times: air was out of the question, and
traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox said, think of the situation!
So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of his
head: who gloried in Princess's Place: and who delighted to turn the
conversation at his club, whenever he could, to something connected
with some of the great people in the great street round the corner,
that he might have the satisfaction of saying they were his
neighbours.

In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough
for Princess's Place - as with a very small fragment of society, it
is enough for many a little hanger-on of another sort - to be well
connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor,
mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the
corner trailed off into Princess's Place; and that which of High
Holborn would have become a choleric word, spoken of Princess's Place
became flat blasphemy.

The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having
been devised and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy
eye in the locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head
and a pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of the
parlour fireplace. The greater part of the furniture was of the
powdered-head and pig-tail period: comprising a plate-warmer, always
languishing and sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's
way; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's name
with a painted garland of sweet peas. In any part of the house,
visitors were usually cognizant of a prevailing mustiness; and in
warm weather Miss Tox had been seen apparently writing in sundry
chinks and crevices of the wainscoat with the the wrong end of a pen
dipped in spirits of turpentine.

Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite
literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his
journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of
jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and
complexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned,
he was mightily proud of awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and
tickled his vanity with the fiction that she was a splendid woman who
had her eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in
connexion with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old
Joey Bagstock, old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was
the perpetual theme: it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and
donjon-keep of light humour, to be on the most familiar terms with
his own name.

'Joey B., Sir,'the Major would say, with a flourish of his
walking-stick, 'is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the
Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old
Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wile even now, if he was on the
look-out; but he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe - he's tough, Sir,
tough, and de-vilish sly!' After such a declaration, wheezing sounds
would be heard; and the Major's blue would deepen into purple, while
his eyes strained and started convulsively.

Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however,
the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a
more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a
better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with
that latter organ than with the former. He had no idea of being
overlooked or slighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest
comprehension of being overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox.

And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him - gradually forgot
him. She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle
family. She continued to forget him up to the time of the
christening. She went on forgetting him with compound interest after
that. Something or somebody had superseded him as a source of
interest.

'Good morning, Ma'am,' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in
Princess's Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last
chapter.

'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.

'Joe Bagstock, Ma'am,' observed the Major, with his usual
gallantry, 'has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your
window, for a considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am.
His sun has been behind a cloud.'

Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.

'Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired
the Major.

'I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss
Tox. 'I have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted
to some very intimate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even
now. Good morning, Sir!'

As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage,
disappeared from Princess's Place, the Major stood looking after her
with a bluer face than ever: muttering and growling some not at all
complimentary remarks.

'Why, damme, Sir,' said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes
round and round Princess's Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant
air, 'six months ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked
on. What's the meaning of it?'

The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant
mantraps; that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was
digging pitfalls. 'But you won't catch Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major.
'He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is J.B. Tough, and de-vilish sly!' over
which reflection he chuckled for the rest of the day.

But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past,
it seemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and
thought nothing at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a
time, to look out at one of her little dark windows by accident, and
blushingly return the Major's greeting; but now, she never gave the
Major a chance, and cared nothing at all whether he looked over the
way or not. Other changes had come to pass too. The Major, standing
in the shade of his own apartment, could make out that an air of
greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new
cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little
canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards
and paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and tables; that a
plant or two had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss Tox
occasionally practised on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet
peas was always displayed ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen
and Bird Waltzes in a Music Book of Miss Tox's own copying.

Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with
uncommon care and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the
Major out of his difficulty; and be determined within himself that
she had come into a small legacy, and grown proud.

It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by
arriving at this decision, that the Major, sitting at his breakfast,
saw an apparition so tremendous and wonderful in Miss Tox's little
drawing-room, that he remained for some time rooted to his chair;
then, rushing into the next room, returned with a double-barrelled
opera-glass, through which he surveyed it intently for some
minutes.

'It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again,
'for fifty thousand pounds!'

The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle,
and stare to that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now
became, had been in former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day
after day, two, three, four times a week, this Baby reappeared. The
Major continued to stare and whistle. To all other intents and
purposes he was alone in Princess's Place. Miss Tox had ceased to
mind what he did. He might have been black as well as blue, and it
would have been of no consequence to her.

The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place
to fetch this baby and its nurse, and walked back with them, and
walked home with them again, and continually mounted guard over them;
and the perseverance with which she nursed it herself, and fed it,
and played with it, and froze its young blood with airs upon the
harpsichord, was extraordinary. At about this same period too, she
was seized with a passion for looking at a certain bracelet; also
with a passion for looking at the moon, of which she would take long
observations from her chamber window. But whatever she looked at;
sun, moon, stars, or bracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And
the Major whistled, and stared, and wondered, and dodged about his
room, and could make nothing of it.

'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth,
my dear,' said Mrs Chick, one day.

Miss Tox turned pale.

'He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs Chick.

Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul
in her arms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her
caresses.

'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was
to have made through you, does he at all resemble her?'

'Not at all,' returned Louisa

'She was - she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.

'Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting,' said Mrs Chick, after
some judicial consideration. 'Certainly interesting. She had not that
air of commanding superiority which one would somehow expect, almost
as a matter of course, to find in my brother's wife; nor had she that
strength and vigour of mind which such a man requires.'

Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.

'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she
meant! - oh, dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'

'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your
own Papa!'

If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what
a multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and
could have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion
and disorder, round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul;
he might have stared indeed. Then would he have recognised, among the
crowd, some few ambitious motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; then
would he perhaps have understood the nature of that lady's faltering
investment in the Dombey Firm.

If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen,
gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams
that other people had of him, they might have scared him, with good
reason. But he slumbered on, alike unconscious of the kind intentions
of Miss Tox, the wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of his
sister, and the stern visions of his father; and innocent that any
spot of earth contained a Dombey or a Son.