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 accountbook.
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.
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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 hippocomedietta
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
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Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
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.'
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Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
'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,
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Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
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.
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, a
nd 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
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Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
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