DOMBEY & SON (Illustrated). Charles Dickens
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as I have, I am grateful for.’
Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron, who felt that this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a quarter. After a moment’s silence he went on to say:
‘Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of calling, to consult you in reference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do so for some time past; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that his health might be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings on that subject, Mrs Pipchin?’
‘Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,’ returned Mrs Pipchin. ‘Very beneficial, indeed.’
‘I purpose,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘his remaining at Brighton.’
Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire.
‘But,’ pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, ‘but possibly that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of life here. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My son is getting on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.’
There was something melancholy in the triumphant air with which Mr Dombey said this. It showed how long Paul’s childish life had been to him, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage of his existence. Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so haughty and so cold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment.
‘Six years old!’ said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth—perhaps to hide an irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surface of his face and glance away, as finding no resting-place, than to play there for an instant. ‘Dear me, six will be changed to sixteen, before we have time to look about us.’
‘Ten years,’ croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty glistening of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head, ‘is a long time.’
‘It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; ‘at all events, Mrs Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that in his studies he is behind many children of his age—or his youth,’ said Mr Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted was a shrewd twinkle of the frosty eye, ‘his youth is a more appropriate expression. Now, Mrs Pipchin, instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be before them; far before them. There is an eminence ready for him to mount upon. There is nothing of chance or doubt in the course before my son. His way in life was clear and prepared, and marked out before he existed. The education of such a young gentleman must not be delayed. It must not be left imperfect. It must be very steadily and seriously undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.’
‘Well, Sir,’ said Mrs Pipchin, ‘I can say nothing to the contrary.’
‘I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,’ returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, ‘that a person of your good sense could not, and would not.’
‘There is a great deal of nonsense—and worse—talked about young people not being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, and all the rest of it, Sir,’ said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hooked nose. ‘It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be thought of now. My opinion is “keep ‘em at it”.’
‘My good madam,’ returned Mr Dombey, ‘you have not acquired your reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor commendation—’ Mr Dombey’s loftiness when he affected to disparage his own importance, passed all bounds—‘can be of any service. I have been thinking of Doctor Blimber’s, Mrs Pipchin.’
‘My neighbour, Sir?’ said Mrs Pipchin. ‘I believe the Doctor’s is an excellent establishment. I’ve heard that it’s very strictly conducted, and there is nothing but learning going on from morning to night.’
‘And it’s very expensive,’ added Mr Dombey.
‘And it’s very expensive, Sir,’ returned Mrs Pipchin, catching at the fact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading merits.
‘I have had some communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,’ said Mr Dombey, hitching his chair anxiously a little nearer to the fire, ‘and he does not consider Paul at all too young for his purpose. He mentioned several instances of boys in Greek at about the same age. If I have any little uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs Pipchin, on the subject of this change, it is not on that head. My son not having known a mother has gradually concentrated much—too much—of his childish affection on his sister. Whether their separation—’ Mr Dombey said no more, but sat silent.
‘Hoity-toity!’ exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazeen skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. ‘If she don’t like it, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.’ The good lady apologised immediately afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but said (and truly) that that was the way she reasoned with ‘em.
Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking her head, and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and then said quietly, but correctively, ‘He, my good madam, he.’
Mrs Pipchin’s system would have applied very much the same mode of cure to any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard grey eye was sharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey might admit its efficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a sovereign remedy for the son, she argued the point; and contended that change, and new society, and the different form of life he would lead at Doctor Blimber’s, and the studies he would have to master, would very soon prove sufficient alienations. As this chimed in with Mr Dombey’s own hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin’s understanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at the same time, bewailed the loss of her dear little friend (which was not an overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it, and had not looked, in the beginning, for his remaining with her longer than three months), he formed an equally good opinion of Mrs Pipchin’s disinterestedness. It was plain that he had given the subject anxious consideration, for he had formed a plan, which he announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to the Doctor’s as a weekly boarder for the first half year, during which time Florence would remain at the Castle, that she might receive her brother there, on Saturdays. This would wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey said; possibly with a recollection of his not having been weaned by degrees on a former occasion.
Mr Dombey finished the interview by expressing his hope that Mrs Pipchin would still remain in office as general superintendent and overseer of his son, pending his studies at Brighton; and having kissed Paul, and shaken hands with Florence, and beheld Master Bitherstone in his collar of state, and made Miss Pankey cry by patting her on the head (in which region she was uncommonly tender, on account of a habit Mrs Pipchin had of sounding it with her knuckles, like a cask), he withdrew to his hotel and dinner: resolved that Paul, now that he was getting so old and well, should begin a vigorous course of education forthwith, to qualify him for the position in which he was to shine; and that Doctor Blimber should take him in hand immediately.
Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always ready, a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; and it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.
In fact, Doctor Blimber’s establishment was a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber’s cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.
This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste about the