Chapter 23

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not
sorry to see him. "For, I really am not," he added, with his son's
smile, "an alarming personage." He was a young-looking man, in spite
of his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed
quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being
unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught way, as
though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own
perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked with
me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious
contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, "Belinda,
I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" And she looked up from her book,
and said, "Yes." She then smiled upon me in an absent state of mind,
and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower water? As the
question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or
subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been thrown out, like
her previous approaches, in general conversational condescension.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that
Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental
deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his
deceased father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody's
determined opposition arising out of entirely personal motives - I
forget whose, if I ever knew - the Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's,
the Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybody's -
and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this
quite supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself
for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a
desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying
of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some
Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may,
he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one
who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be
guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge.

So successful a watch and ward had been established over the
young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly
ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her character
thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had
encountered Mr. Pocket: who was also in the first bloom of youth,
and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof
himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a
mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the
forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have
wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of the
judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or
withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon
them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his
wife was "a treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had invested the
Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was
supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still,
Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful
pity, because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the
object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never
got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which
was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with
comfort for my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the
doors of two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their
occupants, by name Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking
young man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistling. Startop,
younger in years and appearance, was reading and holding his head, as
if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a
charge of knowledge.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in
somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession
of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown
power to be the servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps,
in respect of saving trouble; but it had the appearance of being
expensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to
be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company
down stairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs.
Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best part of the
house to have boarded in, would have been the kitchen - always
supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for, before I had been
there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family were
personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers
slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst
into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an
extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own
business.

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket
had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had
distinguished himself; but that when he had had the happiness of
marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his
prospects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a
number of dull blades - of whom it was remarkable that their fathers,
when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but
always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone - he
had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after
gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with divers who had
lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished divers
others for special occasions, and had turned his acquirements to the
account of literary compilation and correction, and on such means,
added to some very moderate private resources, still maintained the
house I saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of that
highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed
everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to
circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the
honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation.
She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear
Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of
receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not extend to me, she
told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that time, I had known
her something less than five minutes); if they were all like Me, it
would be quite another thing.

"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early
disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that),
requires so much luxury and elegance--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was
going to cry.

"And she is of so aristocratic a disposition--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before.

" - that it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr.
Pocket's time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket."

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the
butcher's time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but
I said nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful
watch upon my company-manners.

It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket
and Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon,
glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle,
whose Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one
to a baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs.
Pocket reading in the garden, was all about titles, and that she knew
the exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into the book,
if he ever had come at all. Drummle didn't say much, but in his
limited way (he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow) he spoke as one
of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a sister. No
one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbour showed any
interest in this part of the conversation, and it appeared to me that
it was painful to Herbert; but it promised to last a long time, when
the page came in with the announcement of a domestic affliction. It
was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid the beef. To my
unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket
relieve his mind by going through a performance that struck me as
very extraordinary, but which made no impression on anybody else, and
with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the
carving-knife and fork - being engaged in carving, at the moment -
put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an
extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this,
and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he
was about.

Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to flatter me.
I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly
that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming
close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the
friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and
fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop
(who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I
rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made
admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs - a sagacious way of
improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two little
boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby's
next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in by
Flopson and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned
officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had enlisted
these: while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that ought to
have been, as if she rather thought she had had the pleasure of
inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to make of
them.

"Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby," said
Flopson. "Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the
table."

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its
head upon the table; which was announced to all present by a
prodigious concussion.

"Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum," said Flopson; "and Miss
Jane, come and dance to baby, do!"

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have
prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out
of her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off
crying, and laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket
(who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by the
hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch
doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the
nutcrackers to play with: at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket
to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely to
agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the
same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle
on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and
who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gamingtable.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into
a discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a
sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about the
baby on her lap: who did most appalling things with the nutcrackers.
At length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to be imperilled,
softly left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the
dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the
same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane:

"You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this
instant!"

"Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith
eyeth out."

"How dare you tell me so?" retorted Mrs. Pocket. "Go and sit
down in your chair this moment!"

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite
abashed: as if I myself had done something to rouse it.

"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the
table, "how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the
protection of baby."

"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I
am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of
interference."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate
desperation. "Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and
is nobody to save them?"

"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with
a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. "I hope I know
my poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed!"

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really
did lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this!" he
helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be nutcrackered
dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!" Then he let himself
down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this was going
on. A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby
made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me
to be the only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with
whom it had any decided acquaintance.

"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson?
Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby
darling, come with ma!"

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its
might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm,
exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company
in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of
mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the
window within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the
dinner-table, through Flopson's having some private engagement, and
their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the
mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified
in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of
his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some
minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding and
lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been billeted by
Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant, Missionary way he asked
them certain questions - as why little Joe had that hole in his
frill: who said, Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when she had time
- and how little Fanny came by that whitlow: who said, Pa, Millers
was going to poultice it when she didn't forget. Then, he melted
into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling apiece and told
them to go and play; and then as they went out, with one very strong
effort to lift himself up by the hair he dismissed the hopeless
subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and
Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them
both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which countryboys
are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style for
the Thames - not to say for other waters - I at once engaged to place
myself under the tuition of the winner of a prizewherry who plied at
our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies. This
practical authority confused me very much, by saying I had the arm of
a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly the compliment lost
him his pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think
we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable
domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a
housemaid came in, and said, "If you please, sir, I should wish to
speak to you."

"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was
roused again. "How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to
Flopson. Or speak to me - at some other time."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, "I should
wish to speak at once, and to speak to master."

Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best
of ourselves until he came back.

"This is a pretty thing, Belinda!" said Mr. Pocket, returning
with a countenance expressive of grief and despair. "Here's the cook
lying insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of
fresh butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!"

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said,
"This is that odious Sophia's doing!"

"What do you mean, Belinda?" demanded Mr. Pocket.

"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. "Did I not see her
with my own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room
just now and ask to speak to you?"

"But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda," returned Mr.
Pocket, "and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?"

"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for making
mischief?"

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?"
said Mrs. Pocket. "Besides, the cook has always been a very nice
respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came
to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a
Duchess."

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it
in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he
said, with a hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it
advisable to go to bed and leave him.