Chapter 1

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name
Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or
more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be
called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of
his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the
blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any
likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days
of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were
unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters
on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark
man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the
inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish
conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little
stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were
arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the
memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a
living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted
for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on
their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never
taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the
river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad
impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained
on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found
out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the
churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also
Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that
Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children
of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat
wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds
and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and
that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant
savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that
the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to
cry, was Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up
from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still,
you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.
A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied
round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in
mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles,
and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled;
and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

"O! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray
don't do it, sir."

"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"

"Pip, sir."

"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"

"Pip. Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the
place!"

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among
the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside
down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece
of bread. When the church came to itself - for he was so sudden and
strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the
steeple under my feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I was
seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread
ravenously.

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat
cheeks you ha' got."

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized
for my years, and not strong.

"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening
shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter
to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon
it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"

"There, sir!" said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his
shoulder.

"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my
mother."

"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger
your mother?"

"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."

"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with -
supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind
about?"

"My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, the
blacksmith, sir."

"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came
closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as
far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down
into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're
to be let to live. You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to
give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me
wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted
me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me
again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him
with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep
upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend
more."

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church
jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms, in
an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these
fearful terms:

"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them
wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder.
You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person
sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my
words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart
and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't
alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in
comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears
the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to
himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It
is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.
A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may
draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and
safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him
and tear him open. I am a-keeping that young man from harming of you
at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to
hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what
broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery,
early in the morning.

"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you
remember that young man, and you get home!"

"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.

"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet
flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms
- clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped
towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among
the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he
looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead
people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist
upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man
whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for
me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the
best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and
saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in
both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great
stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places
when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I
stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal
line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a
row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the
edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things
in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these
was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an unhooped cask
upon a pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a
gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate.
The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate
come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.
It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the
cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they
thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and
could see no signs of him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran
home without stopping.