Chapter 34: A Shoal of Barnacles

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

Mr Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the
cottage, and the day was fixed for the wedding. There was to be a
convocation of Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very
high and very large family might shed as much lustre on the marriage
as so dim an event was capable of receiving.

To have got the whole Barnacle family together would have been
impossible for two reasons. Firstly, because no building could have
held all the members and connections of that illustrious house.
Secondly, because wherever there was a square yard of ground in
British occupation under the sun or moon, with a public post upon it,
sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could
plant a flag-staff upon any spot of earth, and take possession of it
in the British name, but to that spot of earth, so soon as the
discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle
and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were all over the world, in
every direction--despatch-boxing the compass.

But, while the so-potent art of Prospero himself would have
failed in summoning the Barnacles from every speck of ocean and dry
land on which there was nothing (except mischief) to be done and
anything to be pocketed, it was perfectly feasible to assemble a good
many Barnacles. This Mrs Gowan applied herself to do; calling on Mr
Meagles frequently with new additions to the list, and holding
conferences with that gentleman when he was not engaged (as he
generally was at this period) in examining and paying the debts of
his future son-in-law, in the apartment of scales and scoops.

One marriage guest there was, in reference to whose presence Mr
Meagles felt a nearer interest and concern than in the attendance of
the most elevated Barnacle expected; though he was far from
insensible of the honour of having such company. This guest was
Clennam. But Clennam had made a promise he held sacred, among the
trees that summer night, and, in the chivalry of his heart, regarded
it as binding him to many implied obligations. In forgetfulness of
himself, and delicate service to her on all occasions, he was never
to fail; to begin it, he answered Mr Meagles cheerfully, 'I shall
come, of course.'

His partner, Daniel Doyce, was something of a stumbling-block in
Mr Meagles's way, the worthy gentleman being not at all clear in his
own anxious mind but that the mingling of Daniel with official
Barnacleism might produce some explosive combination, even at a
marriage breakfast. The national offender, however, lightened him of
his uneasiness by coming down to Twickenham to represent that he
begged, with the freedom of an old friend, and as a favour to one,
that he might not be invited. 'For,' said he, 'as my business with
this set of gentlemen was to do a public duty and a public service,
and as their business with me was to prevent it by wearing my soul
out, I think we had better not eat and drink together with a show of
being of one mind.' Mr Meagles was much amused by his friend's
oddity; and patronised him with a more protecting air of allowance
than usual, when he rejoined: 'Well, well, Dan, you shall have your
own crotchety way.'

To Mr Henry Gowan, as the time approached, Clennam tried to
convey by all quiet and unpretending means, that he was frankly and
disinterestedly desirous of tendering him any friendship he would
accept. Mr Gowan treated him in return with his usual ease, and with
his usual show of confidence, which was no confidence at all.

'You see, Clennam,' he happened to remark in the course of
conversation one day, when they were walking near the Cottage within
a week of the marriage, 'I am a disappointed man. That you know
already.'

'Upon my word,' said Clennam, a little embarrassed, 'I scarcely
know how.'

'Why,' returned Gowan, 'I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a
family, or a connection, or whatever you like to call it, that might
have provided for me in any one of fifty ways, and that took it into
its head not to do it at all. So here I am, a poor devil of an
artist.'

Clennam was beginning, 'But on the other hand--' when Gowan took
him up.

'Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by
a beautiful and charming girl whom I love with all my heart.' ('Is
there much of it?' Clennam thought. And as he thought it, felt
ashamed of himself.)

'And of finding a father-in-law who is a capital fellow and a
liberal good old boy. Still, I had other prospects washed and combed
into my childish head when it was washed and combed for me, and I
took them to a public school when I washed and combed it for myself,
and I am here without them, and thus I am a disappointed man.'

Clennam thought (and as he thought it, again felt ashamed of
himself), was this notion of being disappointed in life, an assertion
of station which the bridegroom brought into the family as his
property, having already carried it detrimentally into his pursuit?
And was it a hopeful or a promising thing anywhere?

'Not bitterly disappointed, I think,' he said aloud. 'Hang it,
no; not bitterly,' laughed Gowan. 'My people are not worth
that--though they are charming fellows, and I have the greatest
affection for them. Besides, it's pleasant to show them that I can
do without them, and that they may all go to the Devil. And besides,
again, most men are disappointed in life, somehow or other, and
influenced by their disappointment. But it's a dear good world, and
I love it!'

'It lies fair before you now,' said Arthur.

'Fair as this summer river,' cried the other, with enthusiasm,
'and by Jove I glow with admiration of it, and with ardour to run a
race in it. It's the best of old worlds! And my calling! The best
of old callings, isn't it?'

'Full of interest and ambition, I conceive,' said Clennam.

'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the
imposition. I hope I may not break down in that; but there, my being
a disappointed man may show itself. I may not be able to face it out
gravely enough. Between you and me, I think there is some danger of
my being just enough soured not to be able to do that.'

'To do what?' asked Clennam.

'To keep it up. To help myself in my turn, as the man before me
helps himself in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the
pretence as to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted to
my art, and giving up many solitary days to it, and abandoning many
pleasures for it, and living in it, and all the rest of it--in short,
to pass the bottle of smoke according to rule.'

'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever
it is; and to think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it
the respect it deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your
vocation, Gowan, may really demand this suit and service. I confess
I should have thought that all Art did.'

'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other,
stopping to look at him, as if with irrepressible admiration. 'What
a capital fellow! You have never been disappointed. That's easy to
see.'

It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam
firmly resolved to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without
pausing, laid his hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly
went on:

'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I
would give any money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured
mist. But what I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows
do, we do to sell. If we didn't want to sell it for the most we can
get for it, we shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to be done; but
it's easily enough done. All the rest is hocus-pocus.

Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a
disappointed man. You hear the truth.'

Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or
another, it sank into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that he
began to fear Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and that
so far he had gained little or nothing from the dismissal of Nobody,
with all his inconsistencies, anxieties, and contradictions. He
found a contest still always going on in his breast between his
promise to keep Gowan in none but good aspects before the mind of Mr
Meagles, and his enforced observation of Gowan in aspects that had no
good in them. Nor could he quite support his own conscientious
nature against misgivings that he distorted and discoloured himself,
by reminding himself that he never sought those discoveries, and that
he would have avoided them with willingness and great relief. For he
never could forget what he had been; and he knew that he had once
disliked Gowan for no better reason than that he had come in his
way.

Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage
over, Gowan and his young wife gone, and himself left to fulfil his
promise, and discharge the generous function he had accepted. This
last week was, in truth, an uneasy interval for the whole house.
Before Pet, or before Gowan, Mr Meagles was radiant; but Clennam had
more than once found him alone, with his view of the scales and scoop
much blurred, and had often seen him look after the lovers, in the
garden or elsewhere when he was not seen by them, with the old
clouded face on which Gowan had fallen like a shadow. In the
arrangement of the house for the great occasion, many little
reminders of the old travels of the father and mother and daughter
had to be disturbed and passed from hand to hand; and sometimes, in
the midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had had together,
even Pet herself would yield to lamenting and weeping. Mrs Meagles,
the blithest and busiest of mothers, went about singing and cheering
everybody; but she, honest soul, had her flights into store rooms,
where she would cry until her eyes were red, and would then come out,
attributing that appearance to pickled onions and pepper, and singing
clearer than ever. Mrs Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded mind
in Buchan's Domestic Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits, and
from moving recollections of Minnie's infancy. When the latter was
powerful with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing that
she was not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she
solicited a sight of 'her child' in the kitchen; there, she would
bless her child's face, and bless her child's heart, and hug her
child, in a medley of tears and congratulations, chopping-boards,
rolling-pins, and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an old attached
servant, which is a very pretty tenderness indeed.

But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to
be, and it came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden
to the feast. There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution
Office, and Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs
Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter Days so long in
coming, and the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double-loaded
with accomplishments and ready to go off, and yet not going off with
the sharpness of flash and bang that might have been expected, but
rather hanging fire. There was Barnacle junior, also from the
Circumlocution Office, leaving the Tonnage of the country, which he
was somehow supposed to take under his protection, to look after
itself, and, sooth to say, not at all impairing the efficiency of its
protection by leaving it alone. There was the engaging Young
Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the family, also from
the Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping the occasion
along, and treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the official
forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do it. There
were three other Young Barnacles from three other offices, insipid to
all the senses, and terribly in want of seasoning, doing the marriage
as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or
Jerusalem.

But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus
Tite Barnacle himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very
smell of Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite
Barnacle, who had risen to official heights on the wings of one
indignant idea, and that was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told that
it behoves a Minister of this free country to set bounds to the
philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to
contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self- reliance, of
its people. That was, in other words, that this great statesman was
always yet to be told that it behoved the Pilot of the ship to do
anything but prosper in the private loaf and fish trade ashore, the
crew being able, by dint of hard pumping, to keep the ship above
water without him. On this sublime discovery in the great art How
not to do it, Lord Decimus had long sustained the highest glory of
the Barnacle family; and let any ill-advised member of either House
but try How to do it by bringing in a Bill to do it, that Bill was as
good as dead and buried when Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in
his place and solemnly said, soaring into indignant majesty as the
Circumlocution cheering soared around him, that he was yet to be
told, My Lords, that it behoved him as the Minister of this free
country, to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to
fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the
independent self- reliance, of its people. The discovery of this
Behoving Machine was the discovery of the political perpetual motion.
It never wore out, though it was always going round and round in all
the State Departments.

And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was
William Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor
Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recipe
for How not to do it; sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it
fresh out of him, with a 'First, I will beg you, sir, to inform the
House what Precedent we have for the course into which the honourable
gentleman would precipitate us;' sometimes asking the honourable
gentleman to favour him with his own version of the Precedent;
sometimes telling the honourable gentleman that he (William Barnacle)
would search for a Precedent; and oftentimes crushing the honourable
gentleman flat on the spot by telling him there was no Precedent.
But Precedent and Precipitate were, under all circumstances, the
well-matched pair of battle-horses of this able Circumlocutionist.
No matter that the unhappy honourable gentleman had been trying in
vain, for twenty-five years, to precipitate William Barnacle into
this--William Barnacle still put it to the House, and (at second-hand
or so) to the country, whether he was to be precipitated into this.
No matter that it was utterly irreconcilable with the nature of
things and course of events that the wretched honourable gentleman
could possibly produce a Precedent for this--William Barnacle would
nevertheless thank the honourable gentleman for that ironical cheer,
and would close with him upon that issue, and would tell him to his
teeth that there Was No Precedent for this. It might perhaps have
been objected that the William Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom or
the earth it bamboozled would never have been made, or, if made in a
rash mistake, would have remained blank mud. But Precedent and
Precipitate together frightened all objection out of most people.

And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had
leaped through twenty places in quick succession, and was always in
two or three at once, and who was the much-respected inventor of an
art which he practised with great success and admiration in all
Barnacle Governments. This was, when he was asked a Parliamentary
question on any one topic, to return an answer on any other. It had
done immense service, and brought him into high esteem with the
Circumlocution Office.

And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished
Parliamentary Barnacles, who had not as yet got anything snug, and
were going through their probation to prove their worthiness. These
Barnacles perched upon staircases and hid in passages, waiting their
orders to make houses or not to make houses; and they did all their
hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and barking, under directions from
the heads of the family; and they put dummy motions on the paper in
the way of other men's motions; and they stalled disagreeable
subjects off until late in the night and late in the session, and
then with virtuous patriotism cried out that it was too late; and
they went down into the country, whenever they were sent, and swore
that Lord Decimus had revived trade from a swoon, and commerce from a
fit, and had doubled the harvest of corn, quadrupled the harvest of
hay, and prevented no end of gold from flying out of the Bank. Also
these Barnacles were dealt, by the heads of the family, like so many
cards below the court-cards, to public meetings and dinners; where
they bore testimony to all sorts of services on the part of their
noble and honourable relatives, and buttered the Barnacles on all
sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar orders, at all sorts
of elections; and they turned out of their own seats, on the shortest
notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let in other men; and they
fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate
heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the public service. And
there was not a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, of places
that might fall vacant anywhere within half a century, from a lord of
the Treasury to a Chinese consul, and up again to a governor-general
of India, but as applicants for such places, the names of some or of
every one of these hungry and adhesive Barnacles were down.

It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles
that attended the marriage, for there were not two score in all, and
what is that subtracted from Legion! But the sprinkling was a swarm
in the Twickenham cottage, and filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by a
Barnacle) married the happy pair, and it behoved Lord Decimus Tite
Barnacle himself to conduct Mrs Meagles to breakfast.

The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might
have been. Mr Meagles, hove down by his good company while he highly
appreciated it, was not himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that did
not improve him. The fiction that it was not Mr Meagles who had
stood in the way, but that it was the Family greatness, and that the
Family greatness had made a concession, and there was now a soothing
unanimity, pervaded the affair, though it was never openly expressed.
Then the Barnacles felt that they for their parts would have done
with the Meagleses when the present patronising occasion was over;
and the Meagleses felt the same for their parts. Then Gowan
asserting his rights as a disappointed man who had his grudge against
the family, and who, perhaps, had allowed his mother to have them
there, as much in the hope it might give them some annoyance as with
any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and his poverty
ostentatiously before them, and told them he hoped in time to settle
a crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he begged such of
them as (more fortunate than himself) came in for any good thing, and
could buy a picture, to please to remember the poor painter. Then
Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal,
turned out to be the windiest creature here: proposing happiness to
the bride and bridegroom in a series of platitudes that would have
made the hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and
trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling
labyrinths of sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and
never so much as wanted to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could
not but feel that there was a person in company, who would have
disturbed his life-long sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full
official character, if such disturbance had been possible: while
Barnacle junior did, with indignation, communicate to two vapid
gentlemen, his relatives, that there was a feller here, look here,
who had come to our Department without an appointment and said he
wanted to know, you know; and that, look here, if he was to break out
now, as he might you know (for you never could tell what an
ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be up to next), and was to
say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment, you know, that
would be jolly; wouldn't it?

The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the
painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the
room with the two pictures (where the company were not), before going
with her to the threshold which she could never recross to be the old
Pet and the old delight, nothing could be more natural and simple
than the three were. Gowan himself was touched, and answered Mr
Meagles's 'O Gowan, take care of her, take care of her!' with an
earnest 'Don't be so broken-hearted, sir. By Heaven I will!'

And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last
look to Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the
carriage, and her husband waved his hand, and they were away for
Dover; though not until the faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown and
jet black curls, had rushed out from some hiding-place, and thrown
both her shoes after the carriage: an apparition which occasioned
great surprise to the distinguished company at the windows.

The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and
the chief Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand
just then to send a mail or two which was in danger of going straight
to its destination, beating about the seas like the Flying Dutchman,
and to arrange with complexity for the stoppage of a good deal of
important business otherwise in peril of being done), went their
several ways; with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles
that general assurance that what they had been doing there, they had
been doing at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they
always conveyed to Mr John Bull in their official condescension to
that most unfortunate creature.

A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the
father and mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one
remembrance to his aid, that really did him good.

'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look
back upon.'

'The past?' said Clennam.

'Yes--but I mean the company.'

It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now
it really did him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often
repeating the remark in the course of the evening. 'Such high
company!'