Hard Times, Page 2

  Sparsit, spying on Louisa, "erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming." Sparsit's vision, exerted on behalf of Bounderby and the villainous forces of the novel, is the most copious imaginative effort in the book; it is effected for bad reasons, but it has considerable power. And note that at the bottom of the stairs is a dark pit of shame and ruin--the muddle, in all senses of its polite and demotic meanings. Louisa seems about to fall, and into the filth, which Sparsit's metaphor attaches to illicit sexuality. Like Stephen, in love with a woman not his wife, Louisa, in a liaison with a man not her husband, will also fall; Stephen fell physically as well as economically and, some would say, morally; Louisa marches down and down those stairs.

  Sparsit, peering from behind the shrubbery, later sees Louisa stealing away. In Sparsit's mind "[s]he elopes! She falls from the lowermost stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf." Sparsit is soaked by a rainfall as she follows Louisa, and "[g]utters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed, and streets were under water." The flood is not only rainwater, but from drains--sewage belches forth from them, and impurity drowns the virtue of the middle class: muddle.

  Dickens was also ambivalent about Bounderby's own powerful act of imagination in lying about the cruelties and neglect of his parents who had in fact raised him lovingly. He has pensioned his widowed mother, she says, to "keep down in my own part, and make no boasts about him, and not trouble him"; Bounderby has written a different life for himself, involving his triumph over adversities that never existed. This "writer" echoes the life of his creator. Dickens' profligate parents often cadged money from his publishers and otherwise embarrassed Dickens, who, as he rose in reputation and wealth, paid for their cottage but forbade them entry into his life. While he admired his father's courage in old age, he claimed to never have forgotten how his mother eagerly sought to keep him, as a small boy of eleven or twelve, living alone in a seedy room in a rough neighborhood while he earned money for the family by working among unsavory characters in a blacking factory on The Strand. He seems never to have recovered from the exclusion from his family during those difficult several months, nor to ever have forgiven his mother, whom he in turn one day banished.

  Dickens was a man of great courage who took on his nation and his times. He also challenged a shadow of himself, thrown onto the pages of his novel, as he wrote the humiliation of Josiah Bounderby, a "writer" who imagined a new life for himself, and who lied it into existence while he wrote his mother out of it. Dickens, then, confronted his harsh, hard times, and he confronted any writer's cruelest opponent: himself.

  --Frederick Busch

  Inscribed

  TO

  THOMAS CARLYLE

  List of Characters

  BITZER, a well-crammed pupil in Mr. Gradgrind's model school

  STEPHEN BLACKPOOL, an honest, hard-working power-loom weaver in Mr. Bounderby's factory

  MR. JOSIAH BOUNDERBY, a boastful and wealthy manufacturer

  MR. E. W. B. CHILDERS, a member of Sleary's Circus Troupe

  MR. THOMAS GRADGRIND, a retired wholesale hardware merchant

  THOMAS GRADGRIND, his youngest son; a selfish, ill-natured whelp

  MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, a friend of Mr. Gradgrind's

  SIGNOR JUPE, a clown in Sleary's Circus Troupe

  MR. MCCHOAKUMCHILD, a teacher in Mr. Gradgrind's model school

  SLACKBRIDGE, a trades-union agitator

  MR. SLEARY, a stout, flabby man; the proprietor of a circus

  MRS. BLACKPOOL, the wife of Stephen Blackpool; a dissolute, drunken woman

  EMMA GORDON, a member of Sleary's Circus Troupe

  MRS. GRADGRIND, the feeble-minded wife of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind

  JANE GRADGRIND, younger daughter of the preceding

  LOUISA GRADGRIND, the eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind; afterwards the wife of Mr. Josiah Bounderby

  CECILIA JUPE ("Sissy"), the daughter of Signor Jupe, a circus clown

  MRS. PEGLER, a mysterious old woman, withered, but tall and shapely

  RACHAEL, a factory hand; a friend of Stephen Blackpool's

  LADY SCADGERS, a fat old woman; great-aunt to Mrs. Sparsit

  JOSEPHINE SLEARY, a fair-haired young woman; the daughter of Mr. Sleary, the circus proprietor

  MRS. SPARSIT, an elderly lady; Mr. Bounderby's housekeeper

  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 suppositions, 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." r />
  "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 whitewashed 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 selfsame 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----"

  "Aye, aye, aye! 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 see," 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. McChoakumchild," said the gentleman, "will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I sh
all be happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure."

  Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. "Mr. McChoakumchild, we only wait for you."

  So Mr. McChoakumchild 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 watersheds 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, McChoakumchild. 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 McChoakumchild: When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brimful 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!