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Hard Times
BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING
CHAPTER I - THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but
Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root
out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals
upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This
is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the
principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!'
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and
the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by
underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead,
which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious
cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis
was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible,
dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair,
which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to
keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like
the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room
for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage,
square coat, square legs, square shoulders, - nay, his very neckcloth,
trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like
a stubborn fact, as it was, - all helped the emphasis.
'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!'
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present,
all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of
little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have
imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the
brim.
CHAPTER II - MURDERING THE INNOCENTS
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and
calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two
are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing
for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas -
Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the
multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and
measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes
to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.
You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of
George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph
Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the
head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself,
whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in
general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words 'boys and
girls,' for 'sir,' Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to
the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of
facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before
mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts,
and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one
discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a
grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were
to be stormed away.
'Girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his
square forefinger, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'
'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and
curtseying.
'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself
Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'
'It's father as calls me Sissy, sir,' returned the young girl in a
trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
'Then he has no business to do it,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Tell him he
mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?'
'He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.'
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with
his hand.
'We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell us
about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?'
'If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break
horses in the ring, sir.'
'You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe
your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind, for
the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty
possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of
animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer,
perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which,
darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed
room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of
the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a
narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny
side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being
at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance,
caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and
dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous
colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed
and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him
what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have
been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them
into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves,
expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere
continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin
was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as
though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'
'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders,
four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in
marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be
shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more)
Bitzer.
'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what a horse
is.'
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have
blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after
rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so
catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked
like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled
forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and
drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other
people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a
system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be
heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all
England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for
coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving
himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject
whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange,
counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the
ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out
of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of
time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the
great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon
earth.
'Very well,' said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his
arms. 'That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you
paper a room with representations of horses?'
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, 'Yes, sir!'
Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that Yes was
wrong, cried out in chorus, 'No, sir!' - as the custom is, in these
examinations.
'Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?'
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing,
ventured the answer, Because he wouldn't paper a room at all, but
would paint it.
'You must paper it,' said the gentleman, rather warmly.
'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it or
not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?'
'I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and a
dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of
horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms
in reality - in fact? Do you?'
'Yes, sir!' from one half. 'No, sir!' from the other.
'Of course no,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the
wrong half. 'Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't
see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in
fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.' Thomas
Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
'This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,' said the
gentleman. 'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to
carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of
flowers upon it?'
There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was
always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very
strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy
Jupe.
'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength
of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
'So you would carpet your room - or your husband's room, if you were a
grown woman, and had a husband - with representations of flowers,
would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'
'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.
'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have
people walking over them with heavy boots?'
'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if you
please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and
pleasant, and I would fancy - '
'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite
elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never
to fancy.'
'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to
do anything of that kind.'
'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!'
repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the
gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact,
composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a
people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word
Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to
have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction
in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed
to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds
and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be
permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery.
You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not
have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the
gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in
primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of
proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact.
This is taste.'
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked
as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world
afforded.
'Now, if Mr. M'Choakumchild,' said the gentleman, 'will proceed to
give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your
request, to observe his mode of procedure.'
Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. 'Mr. M'Choakumchild, we only wait for
you.'
So, Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one
hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the
same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many
pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces,
and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography,
etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and
general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra,
land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models,
were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his
stony way into Her Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council's Schedule
B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and
physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about
all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the
histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and
mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the
countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty
points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M'Choakumchild. If he
had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have
taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the
Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one
after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild.
When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full
by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the
robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort
him!
CHAPTER III - A LOOPHOLE
MR. GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of
considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to
be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model - just as the
young Gradgrinds were all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They
had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little
hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to
run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an
association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black
board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact
forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing
castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking
childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the
hair.
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the
moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever
learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder
what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the
subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the
Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like a
locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a
cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed
the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or
with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never
heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a
graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.
To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr.
Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the
wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now
looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical
figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a
mile or two of a great town - called Coketown in the present faithful
guide-book.
A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was.
Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising
fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico
darkening the principal windows, as its master's heavy brows
overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved
house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that side; a
total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing;
four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden and
an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account- book.
Gas and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all of the primest
quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire-proof from top to bottom;
mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their brushes and
brooms; everything that heart could desire.
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets
in various departments of science too. They had a little
conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a
little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and
labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might
have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard
instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle legend of
Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If the
greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it for
good gracious goodness' sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds
grasped it!
Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He
was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably
have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a
definition) as 'an eminently practical' father. He had a particular
pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to have
a special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in
Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner
was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical
friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend.
He knew it to be his due, but his due was acceptable.
He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town,
which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when
his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and banging
band attached to the horse-riding establishment, which had there set
up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating
from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was
'Sleary's Horse-riding' which claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself,
a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an
ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the money.
Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of
printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments with
her graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other pleasing
but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be believed,
Signor Jupe was that afternoon to 'elucidate the diverting
accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs.' He
was also to exhibit 'his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five
hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus
forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before
attempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited such
rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.'
The same Signor Jupe was to 'enliven the varied performances at
frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.'
Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character
of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the highly novel and
laughable hippo- comedietta of The Tailor's Journey to Brentford.'
Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but
passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the
noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of
Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by the back of the
booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were
congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at
the hidden glories of the place.
This brought him to a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,' said
he, 'attracting the young rabble from a model school.'
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the
young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for
any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost
incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own
metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a
deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the
ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean
flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his
family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and
said:
'Louisa!! Thomas!!'
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father
with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at
him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr. Gradgrind,
leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'
'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.
'What it was like?'
'Yes, father.'
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in
the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face,
there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to
burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which
brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to
cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had
something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face
groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day
would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he
looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he
thought in his eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.
'Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to
believe that you, with your education and resources, should have
brought your sister to a scene like this.'
'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to come.'
'I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It makes
Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.'
She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
'You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open;
Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and
you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and you,
here!' cried Mr. Gradgrind. 'In this degraded position! I am amazed.'
'I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.
'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.
'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'
'Say not another word,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'You are childish. I
will hear no more.' He did not speak again until they had walked some
half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: 'What would
your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good
opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?' At the mention of this name,
his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and
searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at
her, she had again cast down her eyes!
'What,' he repeated presently, 'would Mr. Bounderby say?' All the way
to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents
home, he repeated at intervals 'What would Mr. Bounderby say?' - as if
Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.
CHAPTER IV - MR. BOUNDERBY
NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby?
Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend, as
a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual
relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So
near was Mr. Bounderby - or, if the reader should prefer it, so far
off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A
big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of
a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much
of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in
his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to
hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading
appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to
start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made
man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy
speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old
poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr.
Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had
the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He
had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and
that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition
from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug,
warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some
observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his
birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool
spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of
Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly
because he thus took up a commanding position, from which to subdue
Mrs. Gradgrind.
'I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such a
thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a
pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch
was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.'
Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of
surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic
without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming
to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling
on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
'No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,' said Mr. Bounderby.
'Enough to give a baby cold,' Mrs. Gradgrind considered.
'Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything
else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,' returned Mr.
Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, I was one of the most miserable little
wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and
groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched
me with a pair of tongs.'
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate
thing her imbecility could think of doing.
'How I fought through it, I don't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was
determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later
life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow,
and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.'
Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother -
'My mother? Bolted, ma'am!' said Bounderby.
Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
'My mother left me to my grandmother,' said Bounderby; 'and, according
to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and
the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes
by any chance, she would take 'em off and sell 'em for drink. Why, I
have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her
four-teen glasses of liquor before breakfast!'
Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality,
looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency
of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
'She kept a chandler's shop,' pursued Bounderby, 'and kept me in an
egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as
I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a
young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and
starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me.
They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a
nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.'
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great
social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest,
was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.
'I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was
to do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody
threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer,
porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown. Those are the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown learnt his letters from the outsides of the
shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a
dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of St. Giles's Church,
London, under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted
thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown,
of your district schools and your model schools, and your training
schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct - he
hadn't such advantages - but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted
people - the education that made him won't do for everybody, he knows
well - such and such his education was, however, and you may force him
to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the
facts of his life.'
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend,
still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room. His
eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave
Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, 'Behold your Bounderby!'
'Well!' blustered Mr. Bounderby, 'what's the matter? What is young
Thomas in the dumps about?'
He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
'We were peeping at the circus,' muttered Louisa, haughtily, without
lifting up her eyes, 'and father caught us.'
'And, Mrs. Gradgrind,' said her husband in a lofty manner, 'I should
as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.'
'Dear me,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. 'How can you, Louisa and Thomas!
I wonder at you. I declare you're enough to make one regret ever
having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I
hadn't. Then what would you have done, I should like to know?'
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent
remarks. He frowned impatiently.
'As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't go
and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you,
instead of circuses!' said Mrs. Gradgrind. 'You know, as well as I
do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets,
or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know
of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that's what you
want. With my head in its present state, I couldn't remember the mere
names of half the facts you have got to attend to.'
'That's the reason!' pouted Louisa.
'Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can't be nothing of the
sort,' said Mrs. Gradgrind. 'Go and be somethingological directly.'
Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed
her children to their studies with this general injunction to choose
their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully
defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial
position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most
satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had 'no
nonsense' about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is
probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human
being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr.
Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without
collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died
away, and nobody minded her.
'Bounderby,' said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, 'you
are always so interested in my young people - particularly in Louisa -
that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this
discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the
education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the
only faculty to which education should be addressed. 'And yet,
Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of
to-day, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept
into Thomas's and Louisa's minds which is - or rather, which is not -
I don't know that I can express myself better than by saying - which
has never been intended to be developed, and in which their reason has
no part.'
'There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of
vagabonds,' returned Bounderby. 'When I was a vagabond myself, nobody
looked with any interest at me; I know that.'
'Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with
his eyes on the fire, 'in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?'
'I'll tell you in what. In idle imagination.'
'I hope not,' said the eminently practical; 'I confess, however, that
the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.'
'In idle imagination, Gradgrind,' repeated Bounderby. 'A very bad
thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I
should ask Mrs. Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but that
she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects
refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn't a refined bringing
up.'
'Whether,' said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets,
and his cavernous eyes on the fire, 'whether any instructor or servant
can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been
reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle
story-book can have got into the house? Because, in minds that have
been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards,
this is so curious, so incomprehensible.'
'Stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as
before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with
explosive humility. 'You have one of those strollers' children in the
school.'
'Cecilia Jupe, by name,' said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a
stricken look at his friend.
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby again. 'How did she come there?'
'Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only
just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as
not regularly belonging to our town, and - yes, you are right,
Bounderby, you are right.'
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, once more. 'Louisa saw her when
she came?'
'Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to
me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind's
presence.'
'Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,' said Bounderby, 'what passed?'
'Oh, my poor health!' returned Mrs. Gradgrind. 'The girl wanted to
come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the
school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come,
and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it possible
to contradict them when such was the fact!'
'Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!' said Mr. Bounderby. 'Turn this girl
to the right about, and there's an end of it.'
'I am much of your opinion.'
'Do it at once,' said Bounderby, 'has always been my motto from a
child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my
grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!'
'Are you walking?' asked his friend. 'I have the father's address.
Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?'
'Not the least in the world,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'as long as you do
it at once!'
So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat - he always threw it on, as
expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making
himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat - and with his
hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. 'I never wear
gloves,' it was his custom to say. 'I didn't climb up the ladder in
them. - Shouldn't be so high up, if I had.'
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind
went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children's
study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which,
notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of
learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of
a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the
window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas
stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two
younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane,
after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with
slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
'It's all right now, Louisa: it's all right, young Thomas,' said Mr.
Bounderby; 'you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's being all
over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't it?'
'You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,' returned Louisa, when she had
coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously
raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
'Always my pet; ain't you, Louisa?' said Mr. Bounderby. 'Good-bye,
Louisa!'
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he
had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was
still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
'What are you about, Loo?' her brother sulkily remonstrated. 'You'll
rub a hole in your face.'
'You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I
wouldn't cry!'