Chapter 8: The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning
themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily
being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and
likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and
Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink
of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into
sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious
devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As
an ingenious man, he had necessarily to encounter every
discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been
able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but
that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to do
it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of How
not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the wise system,
by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of warning
every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of
harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by making his
remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of
confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though
invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found
great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too;
for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles
abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very
reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a
great amount of earnestness, there might, in an exceeding short space
of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post.

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties
attached to it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam
cheering him with a hearty co-operation, was a moral support to him,
besides doing good service in his business relation. The concern
prospered, and the partners were fast friends. But Daniel could not
forget the old design of so many years. It was not in reason to be
expected that he should; if he could have lightly forgotten it, he
could never have conceived it, or had the patience and perseverance
to work it out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes observed him
of an evening looking over the models and drawings, and consoling
himself by muttering with a sigh as he put them away again, that the
thing was as true as it ever was.

To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much
disappointment, would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as
among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the
passing interest in the subject which had been by chance awakened at
the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this feeling.
He asked his partner to explain the invention to him; 'having a
lenient consideration,' he stipulated, 'for my being no workman,
Doyce.'

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough
workman if you had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for
understanding such things as I have met with.'

'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you
say that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has
improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I
don't particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and
clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as another, provided
he had the qualification I have named.'

'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were
exchanging compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the
advantage of as plain an explanation as can be given.'

'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it
so.'

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a
character, of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with
the direct force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind.
His manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that
it was not easy to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous
in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that
he must be a visionary man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of
his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient stoppages at
particular points, their careful returns to other points whence
little channels of explanation had to be traced up, and his steady
manner of making everything good and everything sound at each
important stage, before taking his hearer on a line's-breadth
further. His dismissal of himself from his description, was hardly
less remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or
invented that combination; but showed the whole thing as if the
Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened to find it; so
modest he was about it, such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled
with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he was that
it was established on irrefragable laws.

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings,
Clennam was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued
it, and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and
the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--
instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve
long years--the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to
let it go without one effort more. At length he said:

'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be
sunk with Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over
again?'

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen
made of it after a dozen years.'

'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of
myself, when I am one of so large a company.'

'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his
work- roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no.
Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one
day. I can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I have put it
by. It's all at an end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your
efforts and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine
are. I am younger than you: I have only once set foot in that
precious office, and I am fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them.
You shall do exactly as you have been doing since we have been
together. I will add (as I easily can) to what I have been doing,
the attempt to get public justice done to you; and, unless I have
some success to report, you shall hear no more of it.'

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again
urged that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he
should gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and
should yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless
labour of striving to make way with the Circumlocution Office.

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar
with his presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its
janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office;
the principal difference being that the object of the latter class of
public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution
object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick
to the Great Department; and so the work of form- filling,
corresponding, minuting, memorandum-making, signing, counter-signing,
counter-counter-signing, referring backwards and forwards, and
referring sideways, crosswise, and zig-zag, recommenced.

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not
previously mentioned in the present record. When that admirable
Department got into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of
Parliament whom the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring
under diabolic possession, attacked on the merits of no individual
case, but as an Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the
noble or right honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House,
would smite that member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of
the quantity of business (for the prevention of business) done by the
Circumlocution Office. Then would that noble or right honourable
Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few figures, to which,
with the permission of the House, he would entreat its attention.
Then would the inferior Barnacles exclaim, obeying orders,'Hear,
Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then would the noble or right honourable
Barnacle perceive, sir, from this little document, which he thought
might carry conviction even to the perversest mind (Derisive laughter
and cheering from the Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of
the last financial half- year, this much-maligned Department (Cheers)
had written and received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), had
written twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two
thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement cheering).
Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and
himself a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make a
curious calculation of the amount of stationery consumed in it during
the same period. It formed a part of this same short document; and
he derived from it the remarkable fact that the sheets of foolscap
paper it had devoted to the public service would pave the footways on
both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly a
quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and
laughter); while of tape--red tape--it had used enough to stretch, in
graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office.
Then, amidst a burst of official exultation, would the noble or right
honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the mutilated fragments of the
Member on the field. No one, after that exemplary demolition of him,
would have the hardihood to hint that the more the Circumlocution
Office did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it
could confer on an unhappy public would be to do nothing.

With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this
additional task--such a task had many and many a serviceable man died
of before his day--Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety.
Regular visits to his mother's dull sick room, and visits scarcely
less regular to Mr Meagles at Twickenham, were its only changes
during many months.

He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared
to miss her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent
only through experience, what a large place in his life was left
blank when her familiar little figure went out of it. He felt, too,
that he must relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the
family character sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were
divided by a broad ground of separation. The old interest he had had
in her, and her old trusting reliance on him, were tinged with
melancholy in his mind: so soon had change stolen over them, and so
soon had they glided into the past with other secret tendernesses.

When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not
the less sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than
distance. It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the
place assigned him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in
her grateful remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with
the jail and the rest of its belongings.

Through all these meditations which every day of his life
crowded about her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She
was his innocent friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit.
This very change of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit,
begun on the night when the roses floated away, of considering
himself as a much older man than his years really made him. He
regarded her from a point of view which in its remoteness, tender as
it was, he little thought would have been unspeakable agony to her.
He speculated about her future destiny, and about the husband she
might have, with an affection for her which would have drained her
heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.

Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of
looking on himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as
he had combated in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so
long ago either, reckoning by months and seasons), were finally
departed. His relations with her father and mother were like those
on which a widower son-in-law might have stood. If the twin sister
who was dead had lived to pass away in the bloom of womanhood, and he
had been her husband, the nature of his intercourse with Mr and Mrs
Meagles would probably have been just what it was. This
imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression within him,
that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.

He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her
letters how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but
inseparable from that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on Mr
Meagles's face. Mr Meagles had never been quite so radiant since the
marriage as before. He had never quite recovered the separation from
Pet. He was the same good-humoured, open creature; but as if his
face, from being much turned towards the pictures of his two children
which could show him only one look, unconsciously adopted a
characteristic from them, it always had now, through all its changes
of expression, a look of loss in it.

One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager
Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended to
be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She
descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and Mrs
Meagles with a call.

'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she,
encouraging her humble connections. 'And when did you last hear from
or about my poor fellow?'

My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him
politely kept alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence
that he had fallen a victim to the Meagles' wiles.

'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news
of her than I have?'

Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by
mere beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of
worldly advantages.

' I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on
the answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable comfort to know they
continue happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition,
and has been so used to roving about, and to being inconstant and
popular among all manner of people, that it's the greatest comfort in
life. I suppose they're as poor as mice, Papa Meagles?'

Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not,
ma'am. I hope they will manage their little income.'

'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the
arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a
yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of
the most business-like of human beings--for you know you are
business-like, and a great deal too much for us who are not--'

(Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to
be an artful schemer.)

'--How can you talk about their managing their little means? My
poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the sweet
pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles!
Don't!'

'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit,
then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.'

'My dear good man--I use no ceremony with you, because we are a
kind of relations;--positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan
cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for
the first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this
world none of us can have everything our own way.'

This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with
all good breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in
his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she
dwelt upon it; repeating 'Not everything. No, no; in this world we
must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.'

'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened
in colour, 'who does expect everything?'

'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to say--but
you put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?'

Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles
while she thought about it; a performance not tending to the cooling
of that gentleman's rather heated spirits.

'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that
my poor fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may
have been realised, or they may not have been realised--'

'Let us say, then, may not have been realised,' observed Mr
Meagles.

The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it
off with her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in
her former manner.

'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to
that sort of thing, and of course you knew it, and were prepared for
the consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the consequences,
and am not surprised. And you must not be surprised.

In fact, can't be surprised. Must have been prepared for
it.'

Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and
coughed.

'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving
notice that he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all
the expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor
Henry! But it can't be helped now; it's too late to help it now.
Only don't talk of anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a discovery;
because that would be too much.'

'Too much, ma'am?' said Mr Meagles, as seeking an
explanation.

'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior
place with an expressive action of her hand. 'Too much for my poor
fellow's mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast married,
and can't be unmarried. There, there! I know that! You needn't
tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it very well. What was it I said
just now? That it was a great comfort they continued happy. It is
to be hoped they will still continue happy. It is to be hoped Pretty
One will do everything she can to make my poor fellow happy, and keep
him contented. Papa and Mama Meagles, we had better say no more
about it. We never did look at this subject from the same side, and
we never shall. There, there! Now I am good.'

Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in
maintenance of her wonderfully mythical position, and in admonition
to Mr Meagles that he must not expect to bear his honours of alliance
too cheaply, Mrs Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If Mr Meagles
had submitted to a glance of entreaty from Mrs Meagles, and an
expressive gesture from Clennam, he would have left her in the
undisturbed enjoyment of this state of mind. But Pet was the darling
and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have championed her more
devotedly, or loved her better, than in the days when she was the
sunlight of his house, it would have been now, when, as its daily
grace and delight, she was lost to it.

'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man
all my life. If I was to try--no matter whether on myself, on
somebody else, or both--any genteel mystifications, I should probably
not succeed in them.'

'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but
with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly than
usual as the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to
restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no such
mystification played off upon me.' 'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs
Gowan, 'your good man is incomprehensible.'

Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her
into the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles
interposed to prevent that consummation.

'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a
fair match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan,
come! Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let
us try to be fair. Don't you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And
don't be one-sided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not
kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or
even that we hope Henry will make Pet happy,' (Mr Meagles himself did
not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they will
make each other happy.'

'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the
kind- hearted and comfortable.

'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I
can't quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words more.
Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I don't look
it.'

'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the
great green fan together, for emphasis.

'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a
little--I don't want to use a strong word--now shall I say hurt?'
asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a
conciliatory appeal in his tone.

'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly
indifferent to me.'

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not
responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references made
to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too late now,
and so forth.'

'Do you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not
surprised.'

'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would
have been at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so
tender a subject is surely not generous.' 'I am not responsible,'
said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you know.'

Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.

'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which
is yours and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its
pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!' 'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles
broke out, 'that's as much as to state--'

'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became
extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that
gentleman became at all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had
better speak for myself than trouble your kindness to speak for
me.

It's as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will
finish the sentence. It is as much as to state--not that I wish to
press it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish
is to make the best of existing circumstances--that from the first to
the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very late
period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.'

'Mother!' cried Mr Meagles. 'Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you
hear this!'

'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking
about as she fanned herself, 'and quite charmingly adapted in all
respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part
of it.'

Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold
himself in his chair with sufficient security to prevent his breaking
out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said: 'Ma'am, I am
very unwilling to revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions
and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate subject.'

'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head
with accusatory intelligence, 'they were well understood by me, I
assure you.'

'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that
time, I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such
distress to me that--' That Mr Meagles could really say no more about
it, in short, but passed his handkerchief before his Face.

'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly
looking over her fan. 'As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may
appeal to Mr Clennam, too. He knows whether I did or not.'

'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties,
'to take any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish
to preserve the best understanding and the clearest relations with Mr
Henry Gowan. I have very strong reasons indeed, for entertaining
that wish. Mrs Gowan attributed certain views of furthering the
marriage to my friend here, in conversation with me before it took
place; and I endeavoured to undeceive her. I represented that I knew
him (as I did and do) to be strenuously opposed to it, both in
opinion and action.'

'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands
towards Mr Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to
him that he had better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on.
'You see? Very good! Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she
rose; 'allow me to take the liberty of putting an end to this rather
formidable controversy. I will not say another word upon its merits.
I will only say that it is an additional proof of what one knows
from all experience; that this kind of thing never answers-- as my
poor fellow himself would say, that it never pays--in one word, that
it never does.'

Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?

'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get
on together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are
jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of
way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has
shaken them together in the same light. It never does.'

Mr Meagles was beginning, 'Permit me to say, ma'am--'

'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an
ascertained fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please,
go my way, leaving you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to
receive my poor fellow's pretty wife, and I shall always make a point
of being on the most affectionate terms with her. But as to these
terms, semi-family and semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi- boring,
they form a state of things quite amusing in its impracticability. I
assure you it never does.'

The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room
than to any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa
and Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the
Pill-Box which was at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court
Palace; and she got into that vehicle with distinguished serenity,
and was driven away.

Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often
recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial, she
had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry's
wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she
had come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid of them would
give her favourite pretence a better air, might save her some
occasional inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the pretty creature
being fast married, and her father devoted to her), was best known to
herself. Though this history has its opinion on that point too, and
decidedly in the affirmative.