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Here
are two pages from an 880-word novel I have embarked on reading:
“
‘These, young ladies,’ said Mrs. Pardiggle, with great volubility, after the
first salutations, ‘are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a
printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our
esteemed friend, Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert,
my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of
five-and-threepence to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten-and-a-
half), is the child who contributed two-and-ninepence to the Great National
Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one-and-sixpence-halfpenny;
Felix, fourth (seven) eightpence to the
Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled
himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy and is pledged never through life, to use
tobacco in any form.’
“We had never seen such dissatisfied
children. It was not merely that they were weazened and shrivelled --- though
they were certainly thattoo --- but they
looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the
Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The face of
each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, darkened in a
peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except,
however, the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly
miserable.
“ ‘You have been visiting, I
understand,’ said Mrs. Pardiggle, ‘at Mrs. Jellyby’s?’
We said, yes, we had passed one night
there.
“ ‘Mrs. Jellyby,’ pursued the lady,
always speaking in the same
demonstrative, loud, hard tone so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it
had a sort of spectacles on too --- and I may here take the opportunity of
remarking that her spectacles were made the less engaging by her eyes being
what Ada called ‘choking eyes,’ meaning very prominent: ‘Mrs. Jellyby is a
benefactor to society and deserves a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the
African project --- Egbert, one-and-six, being the entire allowance of nine
weeks; Oswald, one-and-a-penny-halfpenny, being the same; the rest, according
to their little means. Nevertheless I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her
treatment of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that
her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to which she is
devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not
my course with my young family. I
take them everywhere.’
"I was afterwards convinced (and so
was Ada) that from the ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a
sharp yell. He turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
“ ‘They attend Matins with me (very
prettily done), at half-past six o’clock in the morning all the year round,
including, of course, the depths of winter,’ said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, ‘and they
are with me during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a
Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on the local
Linen Box Committee, and many general Committees; and my canvassing alone is
very extensive --- perhaps no one’s more so. But they are my companions
everywhere; and by these means they acquire that knowledge of the poor, and
that capacity of doing charitable business in general, in short that taste for
the sort of thing --- which will render them in after life a service to their
neighbours, and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not
frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in subscriptions,
under my direction; and they have attended as many public meetings, and
listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions, as generally fall to
the lot of few grown people. Alfred (five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own
election joined the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who
manifested consciousness on that occasion, after a fervid address of two hours
from the chairman of the evening.’
“Alfred glowered at us as if he never
could, or would, forgive the injury of that night.
“ ‘You may have observed, Miss
Summerson,’ said Mrs. Pardiggle, ‘in some of the lists to which I have referred
in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my
young family are concluded with the name of O.A.Pardiggle, F.R.S.,one pound.
That is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my mite
first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according to their ages
and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings up the rear. Mr Pardiggle
is happy to throw in his limited donation, under my direction, and thus things
are made not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others.’ ”
* * *
Well,
I hope I may assume that most of my 22 readers will have spotted from the first
lines that the author in question is Charles Dickens, and that the book these
passages are extracted from is Bleak House,
widely acknowledged to be his greatest novel. I am always so amazed by
Dickens’s almost inhuman literary energy, the way he can pile memorable, indeed
unforgettable, characters one on top of the other as he proceeds with his
convoluted stories, that I suddenly thought most of you would enjoy this famous
passage about Mrs. Pardiggle and the Infant Bonds of Joy, scowling and
grimacing at her coattails, as I myself have enjoyed it. And what about poor Mr. Pardiggle, a template for the dominated husband, evidently having no say in the
upbringing of his young family, but confined to
making his charitable contributions “under my direction,” as Mrs.
Pardiggle says. It is many years since I first read Bleak House or any other of Dickens’s novels, for that matter, and I confess that in the age of Twitter and its limit of 240 printed characters, they may seem to drag from time to
time as he indulges himself in some long-winded description of a room and its
furnishings. But already in the first 100 pages of this book we have been
introduced to Mrs Jellyby’s young family by first meeting a child --- “one of the
dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw,” says Miss Summerson, with his head
stuck between two iron railings, crying loudly as a milkman and a beadle try
to drag him back by the legs, “under a
general impression that his skull was compressible by those means.” Mrs Jellyby, whose eyes had “a curious habit of
seeming to look a long way off as if they could see nothing nearer than Africa,”
was so occupied with sending off 200 circulars a week in support of the
Borrioboola-Gha tribe that she didn't have time even to realize that her own
children were living in indescribable filth.
I confess I often find myself muttering phrases that
come directly from Dickens as I go about my nowadays more or less solitary
life. Phrases like, “Barkis is willin’,” from a coachdriver in David Copperfield, or “It’s bein’ so
jolly as keeps me goin’,” from Mark Tapley,
a character whose relentless jolliness kept Martin Chuzzlewit afloat even when
things turned against him in America and he found the Florida land he had speculated
in was almost under water. Or “I will never desert Mr. Micawber," from, of
course, Mrs. Micawber, And then there is
Mr. Micawber’s classic advice to young
people, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. “
That’s a bit of folksy wisdom that I have always tried to live by.
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