Chapter 7: Mostly, Prunes and Prism

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

Mrs General, always on her coach-box keeping the proprieties well
together, took pains to form a surface on her very dear young friend,
and Mrs General's very dear young friend tried hard to receive it.
Hard as she had tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she
had never tried harder than she did now, to be varnished by Mrs
General. It made her anxious and ill at ease to be operated upon by
that smoothing hand, it is true; but she submitted herself to the
family want in its greatness as she had submitted herself to the
family want in its littleness, and yielded to her own inclinations in
this thing no more than she had yielded to her hunger itself, in the
days when she had saved her dinner that her father might have his
supper.

One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more
sustaining to her, and made her more grateful than to a less devoted
and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles and
sacrifices, might appear quite reasonable; and, indeed, it may often
be observed in life, that spirits like Little Dorrit do not appear to
reason half as carefully as the folks who get the better of them.
The continued kindness of her sister was this comfort to Little
Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the kindness took the form of
tolerant patronage; she was used to that. It was nothing to her that
it kept her in a tributary position, and showed her in attendance on
the flaming car in which Miss Fanny sat on an elevated seat, exacting
homage; she sought no better place. Always admiring Fanny's beauty,
and grace, and readiness, and not now asking herself how much of her
disposition to be strongly attached to Fanny was due to her own
heart, and how much to Fanny's, she gave her all the sisterly
fondness her great heart contained.

The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General
infused into the family life, combined with the perpetual plunges
made by Fanny into society, left but a very small residue of any
natural deposit at the bottom of the mixture. This rendered
confidences with Fanny doubly precious to Little Dorrit, and
heightened the relief they afforded her.

'Amy,' said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a
day so tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn out, though Fanny
would have taken another dip into society with the greatest pleasure
in life, 'I am going to put something into your little head. You
won't guess what it is, I suspect.'

'I don't think that's likely, dear,' said Little Dorrit.

'Come, I'll give you a clue, child,' said Fanny. 'Mrs
General.'

Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been
wearily in the ascendant all day--everything having been surface and
varnish and show without substance--Little Dorrit looked as if she
had hoped that Mrs General was safely tucked up in bed for some
hours.

'Now, can you guess, Amy?' said Fanny.

'No, dear. Unless I have done anything,' said Little Dorrit,
rather alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to crack varnish and
ruffle surface.

Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up
her favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her
armoury of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the
heart of Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with
it, laughing all the time.

'Oh, our Amy, our Amy!' said Fanny. 'What a timid little goose
our Amy is! But this is nothing to laugh at. On the contrary, I am
very cross, my dear.'

'As it is not with me, Fanny, I don't mind,' returned her
sister, smiling.

'Ah! But I do mind,' said Fanny, 'and so will you, Pet, when I
enlighten you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is
monstrously polite to Mrs General?'

'Everybody is polite to Mrs General,' said Little Dorrit.
'Because--'

'Because she freezes them into it?' interrupted Fanny. 'I don't
mean that; quite different from that. Come! Has it never struck
you, Amy, that Pa is monstrously polite to Mrs General.'

Amy, murmuring 'No,' looked quite confounded. 'No; I dare say
not. But he is,' said Fanny. 'He is, Amy. And remember my words.
Mrs General has designs on Pa!'

'Dear Fanny, do you think it possible that Mrs General has
designs on any one?'

'Do I think it possible?' retorted Fanny. 'My love, I know it.
I tell you she has designs on Pa. And more than that, I tell you Pa
considers her such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and
such an acquisition to our family, that he is ready to get himself
into a state of perfect infatuation with her at any moment. And that
opens a pretty picture of things, I hope? Think of me with Mrs
General for a Mama!'

Little Dorrit did not reply, 'Think of me with Mrs General for a
Mama;' but she looked anxious, and seriously inquired what had led
Fanny to these conclusions.

'Lord, my darling,' said Fanny, tartly. 'You might as well ask
me how I know when a man is struck with myself! But, of course I do
know. It happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this in
much the same way, I suppose. At all events, I know it.'

'You never heard Papa say anything?'

'Say anything?' repeated Fanny. 'My dearest, darling child,
what necessity has he had, yet awhile, to say anything?'

'And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?' 'My
goodness me, Amy,' returned Fanny, 'is she the sort of woman to say
anything? Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to
do at present but to hold herself upright, keep her aggravating
gloves on, and go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the ace
of trumps in her hand at whist, she wouldn't say anything, child. It
would come out when she played it.'

'At least, you may be mistaken, Fanny. Now, may you not?'

'O yes, I may be,' said Fanny, 'but I am not. However, I am
glad you can contemplate such an escape, my dear, and I am glad that
you can take this for the present with sufficient coolness to think
of such a chance. It makes me hope that you may be able to bear the
connection. I should not be able to bear it, and I should not
try.

I'd marry young Sparkler first.'

'O, you would never marry him, Fanny, under any
circumstances.'

'Upon my word, my dear,' rejoined that young lady with exceeding
indifference, 'I wouldn't positively answer even for that. There's
no knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many
opportunities, afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in her
own style. Which I most decidedly should not be slow to avail myself
of, Amy.'

No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed
gave the two subjects of Mrs General and Mr Sparkler great prominence
in Little Dorrit's mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of
both.

Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such
perfection that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no
observation was to be made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was undeniably
very polite to her and had a high opinion of her; but Fanny,
impetuous at most times, might easily be wrong for all that.

Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the different footing that
any one could see what was going on there, and Little Dorrit saw it
and pondered on it with many doubts and wonderings.

The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the
caprice and cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she would prefer him
to such distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy;
next day, or next hour, she would overlook him so completely, and
drop him into such an abyss of obscurity, that he would groan under a
weak pretence of coughing. The constancy of his attendance never
touched Fanny: though he was so inseparable from Edward, that, when
that gentleman wished for a change of society, he was under the
irksome necessity of gliding out like a conspirator in disguised
boats and by secret doors and back ways; though he was so solicitous
to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called every other day to inquire,
as if Mr Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent fever; though he was
so constantly being paddled up and down before the principal windows,
that he might have been supposed to have made a wager for a large
stake to be paddled a thousand miles in a thousand hours; though
whenever the gondola of his mistress left the gate, the gondola of Mr
Sparkler shot out from some watery ambush and gave chase, as if she
were a fair smuggler and he a custom-house officer. It was probably
owing to this fortification of the natural strength of his
constitution with so much exposure to the air, and the salt sea, that
Mr Sparkler did not pine outwardly; but, whatever the cause, he was
so far from having any prospect of moving his mistress by a
languishing state of health, that he grew bluffer every day, and that
peculiarity in his appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy than a
young man, became developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy
puffiness.

Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him
with affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his
idea of commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity.
Blandois highly extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might
be agreeable to Blandois to communicate to his friend the great
opportunity reserved for him. Blandois accepted the commission with
his own free elegance of manner, and swore he would discharge it
before he was an hour older. On his imparting the news to Gowan,
that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the Devil with great liberality some
round dozen of times (for he resented patronage almost as much as he
resented the want of it), and was inclined to quarrel with his friend
for bringing him the message.

'It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,' said he,
'but may I die if I see what you have to do with this.'

'Death of my life,' replied Blandois, 'nor I neither, except
that I thought I was serving my friend.'

'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' said Gowan,
frowning.

'Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head
painted for the sign of some public-house, and to get it done by a
sign- painter. Who am I, and who is he?'

'Professore,' returned the ambassador, 'and who is Blandois?'

Without appearing at all interested in the latter question,
Gowan angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the
subject by saying in his off-hand manner and with a slighting laugh,
'Well, Blandois, when shall we go to this Maecenas of yours?

We journeymen must take jobs when we can get them. When shall
we go and look after this job?' 'When you will,' said the injured
Blandois, 'as you please. What have I to do with it? What is it to
me?'

'I can tell you what it is to me,' said Gowan. 'Bread and
cheese. One must eat! So come along, my Blandois.'

Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of
Mr Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling
there. 'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you
have to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on
better than I do.'

Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. 'Sir,' said Gowan,
laughing, after receiving it gracefully enough, 'I am new to the
trade, and not expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at
you in various lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and
consider when I shall be sufficiently disengaged to devote myself
with the necessary enthusiasm to the fine picture I mean to make of
you. I assure you,' and he laughed again, 'I feel quite a traitor in
the camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble fellows, my brother
artists, by not doing the hocus-pocus better. But I have not been
brought up to it, and it's too late to learn it. Now, the fact is, I
am a very bad painter, but not much worse than the generality. If
you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I am as poor as
a poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be very much
obliged to you, if you'll throw them away upon me. I'll do the best
I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why even then,
you may probably have a bad picture with a small name to it, instead
of a bad picture with a large name to it.'

This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited
Mr Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that the gentleman, highly
connected, and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to
him. He expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan's
hands, and trusted that he would have the pleasure, in their
characters of private gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance.

'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society
since I joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful
fellows on the face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the
old fine gunpowder now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air
and my present calling. You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he
laughed again in the easiest way, 'that I am lapsing into the
freemasonry of the craft--for it's not so; upon my life I can't help
betraying it wherever I go, though, by Jupiter, I love and honour the
craft with all my might--if I propose a stipulation as to time and
place?'

Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no--hum--suspicion of that kind on Mr
Gowan's frankness.

'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you
are going to Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me
begin to do you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there-- not
here. We shall all be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and
though there's not a poorer man with whole elbows in Venice, than
myself, I have not quite got all the Amateur out of me
yet--comprising the trade again, you see!--and can't fall on to
order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.' These remarks
were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit than their
predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of Mr and
Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual
ground in the new family.

His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny
understood, with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan's good looks
had cost her husband very dear; that there had been a great
disturbance about her in the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager
Mrs Gowan, nearly heart-broken, had resolutely set her face against
the marriage until overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs General
likewise clearly understood that the attachment had occasioned much
family grief and dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles no mention was
made; except that it was natural enough that a person of that sort
should wish to raise his daughter out of his own obscurity, and that
no one could blame him for trying his best to do so.

Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily
accepted belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate
observation. She could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs
Gowan the touch of a shadow under which she lived, and she even had
an instinctive knowledge that there was not the least truth in it.
But it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her
association with Mrs Gowan by making the Prunes and Prism school
excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and Little
Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that college, was obliged to submit
herself humbly to its ordinances.

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already
established between the two, which would have carried them over
greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted
intercourse. As though accidents were determined to be favourable to
it, they had a new assurance of congeniality in the aversion which
each perceived that the other felt towards Blandois of Paris; an
aversion amounting to the repugnance and horror of a natural
antipathy towards an odious creature of the reptile kind.

And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this
active one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same
manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it,
which they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others.
The difference was too minute in its expression to be perceived by
others, but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes,
a mere turn of his smooth white hand, a mere hair's- breadth of
addition to the fall of his nose and the rise of the moustache in the
most frequent movement of his face, conveyed to both of them,
equally, a swagger personal to themselves. It was as if he had said,
'I have a secret power in this quarter. I know what I know.'

This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and
never by each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a day
when he came to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting Venice.
Mrs Gowan was herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon
the two together; the rest of the family being out. The two had not
been together five minutes, and the peculiar manner seemed to convey
to them, 'You were going to talk about me. Ha! Behold me here to
prevent it!'

'Gowan is coming here?' said Blandois, with a smile.

Mrs Gowan replied he was not coming.

'Not coming!' said Blandois. 'Permit your devoted servant, when
you leave here, to escort you home.'

'Thank you: I am not going home.'

'Not going home!' said Blandois. 'Then I am forlorn.'

That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and
leave them together. He sat entertaining them with his finest
compliments, and his choicest conversation; but he conveyed to them,
all the time, 'No, no, no, dear ladies. Behold me here expressly to
prevent it!'

He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a
diabolical persistency in him, that at length, Mrs Gowan rose to
depart. On his offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the
staircase, she retained Little Dorrit's hand in hers, with a cautious
pressure, and said, 'No, thank you. But, if you will please to see
if my boatman is there, I shall be obliged to you.'

It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so,
hat in hand, Mrs Gowan whispered:

'He killed the dog.'

'Does Mr Gowan know it?' Little Dorrit whispered.

'No one knows it. Don't look towards me; look towards him. He
will turn his face in a moment. No one knows it, but I am sure he
did. You are?'

'I--I think so,' Little Dorrit answered.

'Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so
generous and open himself. But you and I feel sure that we think of
him as he deserves. He argued with Henry that the dog had been
already poisoned when he changed so, and sprang at him. Henry
believes it, but we do not. I see he is listening, but can't
hear.

Good-bye, my love! Good-bye!'

The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois
stopped, turned his head, and looked at them from the bottom of the
staircase. Assuredly he did look then, though he looked his
politest, as if any real philanthropist could have desired no better
employment than to lash a great stone to his neck, and drop him into
the water flowing beyond the dark arched gateway in which he stood.
No such benefactor to mankind being on the spot, he handed Mrs Gowan
to her boat, and stood there until it had shot out of the narrow
view; when he handed himself into his own boat and followed.

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as
she retraced her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too
easily into her father's house. But so many and such varieties of
people did the same, through Mr Dorrit's participation in his elder
daughter's society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case. A
perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches
and importance, had seized the House of Dorrit.

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this
same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort
of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much
as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness,
relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at
home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of
couriers and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought
into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-
galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They were
usually going away again to-morrow or next week, and rarely knew
their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or went
where they said they would go: in all this again, very like the
prison debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and
disparaged a place while they pretended to like it: which was exactly
the Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went away by
people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that again was
the Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words and phrases,
as much belonging to tourists as the College and the Snuggery
belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely
the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners
used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners
used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching
way of life: still, always like the people in the Marshalsea.

The period of the family's stay at Venice came, in its course,
to an end, and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a
repetition of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more
haggard as they went on, and bringing them at length to where the
very air was diseased, they passed to their destination. A fine
residence had been taken for them on the Corso, and there they took
up their abode, in a city where everything seemed to be trying to
stand still for ever on the ruins of something else--except the
water, which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its
glorious multitude of fountains.

Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the
Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the
upper hand. Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the Vatican
on somebody else's cork legs, and straining every visible object
through somebody else's sieve. Nobody said what anything was, but
everybody said what the Mrs Generals, Mr Eustace, or somebody else
said it was. The whole body of travellers seemed to be a collection
of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, and delivered
over to Mr Eustace and his attendants, to have the entrails of their
intellects arranged according to the taste of that sacred priesthood.
Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs and palaces and
senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient days, hosts of
tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were carefully feeling their way,
incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism in the endeavour to set their
lips according to the received form. Mrs General was in her pure
element. Nobody had an opinion. There was a formation of surface
going on around her on an amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of
courage or honest free speech in it.

Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on
Little Dorrit's notice very shortly after their arrival. They
received an early visit from Mrs Merdle, who led that extensive
department of life in the Eternal City that winter; and the skilful
manner in which she and Fanny fenced with one another on the
occasion, almost made her quiet sister wink, like the glittering of
small-swords.

'So delighted,' said Mrs Merdle, 'to resume an acquaintance so
inauspiciously begun at Martigny.'

'At Martigny, of course,' said Fanny. 'Charmed, I am sure!'

'I understand,' said Mrs Merdle, 'from my son Edmund Sparkler,
that he has already improved that chance occasion. He has returned
quite transported with Venice.'

'Indeed?' returned the careless Fanny. 'Was he there long?'

'I might refer that question to Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle,
turning the bosom towards that gentleman; 'Edmund having been so much
indebted to him for rendering his stay agreeable.'

'Oh, pray don't speak of it,' returned Fanny. 'I believe Papa
had the pleasure of inviting Mr Sparkler twice or thrice,--but it was
nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house,
that if he had that pleasure, it was less than nothing.'

'Except, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'except--ha--as it afforded
me unusual gratification to--hum--show by any means, however slight
and worthless, the--ha, hum--high estimation in which, in--ha--
common with the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and
princely a character as Mr Merdle's.'

The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner.
'Mr Merdle,' observed Fanny, as a means of dismissing Mr Sparkler
into the background, 'is quite a theme of Papa's, you must know, Mrs
Merdle.'

'I have been--ha--disappointed, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to
understand from Mr Sparkler that there is no great--hum-- probability
of Mr Merdle's coming abroad.'

'Why, indeed,' said Mrs Merdle, 'he is so much engaged and in
such request, that I fear not. He has not been able to get abroad
for years. You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually
abroad for a long time.'

'Oh dear yes,' drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. 'An
immense number of years.'

'So I should have inferred,' said Mrs Merdle.

'Exactly,' said Fanny.

'I trust, however,' resumed Mr Dorrit, 'that if I have not the--
hum--great advantage of becoming known to Mr Merdle on this side of
the Alps or Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to
England. It is an honour I particularly desire and shall
particularly esteem.' 'Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle, who had been
looking admiringly at Fanny through her eye-glass, 'will esteem it, I
am sure, no less.'

Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though
no longer alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism.
But as her father when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs
Merdle's, harped at their own family breakfast-table on his wish to
know Mr Merdle, with the contingent view of benefiting by the advice
of that wonderful man in the disposal of his fortune, she began to
think it had a real meaning, and to entertain a curiosity on her own
part to see the shining light of the time.