Chapter III - A Loophole

Hard Times

by Charles Dickens

Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the school, in a state of
considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to
be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model - just as
the young Gradgrinds were all models.

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every
one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed,
like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had
been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which
they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a
large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on
it.

Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre
Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing
castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking
childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by
the hair.

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up
in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind
had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how
I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on
the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected
the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like
a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated
a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who
tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the
malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it
had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to
a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several
stomachs.

To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr.
Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the
wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now
looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical
figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a
mile or two of a great town - called Coketown in the present faithful
guide-book.

A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge
was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that
uncompromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a
heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master's heavy
brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and
proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that
side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other
wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and
garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical
account- book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all
of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire-proof from top
to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their
brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.

Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had
cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a little
conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a
little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and
labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might
have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously
hard instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle legend
of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If
the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it
for good gracious goodness' sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds
grasped it!

Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind.
He was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would
probably have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe,
upon a definition) as 'an eminently practical' father. He had a
particular pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was
considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever the
public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such
meeting, some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding
to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the
eminently practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due
was acceptable.

He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the
town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled,
when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and
banging band attached to the horse-riding establishment, which had
there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A
flag, floating from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind
that it was 'Sleary's Horse-riding' which claimed their suffrages.
Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow,
in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the
money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow
strips of printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the
entertainments with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act.
Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must
be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to 'elucidate
the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog
Merrylegs.' He was also to exhibit 'his astounding feat of throwing
seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his
head, thus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never
before attempted in this or any other country, and which having
elicited such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot
be withdrawn.' The same Signor Jupe was to 'enliven the varied
performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips
and retorts.' Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his
favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the
highly novel and laughable hippo- comedietta of The Tailor's Journey
to Brentford.'

Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course,
but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing
the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House
of Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by the back of
the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were
congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at
the hidden glories of the place.

This brought him to a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,'
said he, 'attracting the young rabble from a model school.'

A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and
the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look
for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon
almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but
his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a
hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself
on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean
flower-act!

Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his
family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and
said:

'Louisa!! Thomas!!'

Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her
father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not
look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.

'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr.
Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'

'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.

'What it was like?'

'Yes, father.'

There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and
particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the
dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest
upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life
in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the
brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager,
doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to
the changes on a blind face groping its way.

She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant
day would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so
as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed
(he thought in his eminently practical way) but for her
bringing-up.

'Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult
to believe that you, with your education and resources, should have
brought your sister to a scene like this.'

'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to
come.'

'I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It
makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.'

She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her
cheek.

'You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is
open; Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts;
Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness;
Thomas and you, here!' cried Mr. Gradgrind. 'In this degraded
position! I am amazed.'

'I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,' said
Louisa.

'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.

'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'

'Say not another word,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'You are
childish. I will hear no more.' He did not speak again until they
had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out
with: 'What would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no
value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?' At the
mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable
for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for
before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!

'What,' he repeated presently, 'would Mr. Bounderby say?' All
the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two
delinquents home, he repeated at intervals 'What would Mr. Bounderby
say?' - as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.