Dombey and Son
have had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and
hoped he had enjoyed himself since.
The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar.
The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated
beau with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was
giving away the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry
the fire was smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid
attorney’s clerk, “making a search,” was running his forefinger down
the parchment pages of an immense register (one of a long series of
similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a
ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming
the literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company,
read the reference to Mrs Dombey’s tomb in full, before he could stop
himself.
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with
an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church,
summoned them to the font—a rigid marble basin which seemed to have
been playing a churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact
pedestal, and to have been just that moment caught on the top of it.
Here they waited some little time while the marriage party enrolled
themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener—partly in
consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage party might
not forget her—went about the building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was
an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as
he poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions
of gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the
clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously
afraid of the baby, appeared like the principal character in a
ghost-story, “a tall figure all in white;” at sight of whom Paul rent
the air with his cries, and never left off again till he was taken out
black in the face.
Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he
was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, now
fainter, now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an
irrepressible sense of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of
the two ladies, that Mrs Chick was constantly deploying into the centre
aisle, to send out messages by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her
Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally read responses
from that service.
During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassive
and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold,
that the young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time
that he unbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in
delivering (very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation,
relative to the future examination of the child by the sponsors,
happened to rest his eye on Mr Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have
been seen to express by a majestic look, that he would like to catch
him at it.
It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his own
dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose
of the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a
little more. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conducted
her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it
would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at
dinner, but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The
register signed, and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was
very bad again) remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton
(who was accidentally on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at
the weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage again, and drove
home in the same bleak fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set
forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead
dinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss
Tox produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and
spoon in a case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and,
on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
“Mr John,” said Mr Dombey, “will you take the bottom of the table, if
you please? What have you got there, Mr John?”
“I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,” replied Mr Chick, rubbing
his numbed hands hard together. “What have you got there, Sir?”
“This,” returned Mr Dombey, “is some cold preparation of calf’s head, I
think. I see cold fowls—ham—patties—salad—lobster. Miss Tox will do me
the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.”
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that
it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty
in turning into a “Hem!” The veal had come from such an airy pantry,
that the first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr
Chick’s extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have
been hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen
gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no
effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to
looking as warm as she could.
“Well, Sir,” said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long
silence, and filling a glass of sherry; “I shall drink this, if you’ll
allow me, Sir, to little Paul.”
“Bless him!” murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
“Dear little Dombey!” murmured Mrs Chick.
“Mr John,” said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, “my son would feel and
express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciate
the favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust,
equal to any responsibility that the obliging disposition of his
relations and friends, in private, or the onerous nature of our
position, in public, may impose upon him.”
The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick
relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having
listened to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual,
and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant
across the table, and said to Mrs Chick softly:
“Louisa!”
“My dear,” said Mrs Chick.
“Onerous nature of our position in public may—I have forgotten the
exact term.”
“Expose him to,” said Mrs Chick.
“Pardon me, my dear,” returned Miss Tox, “I think not. It was more
rounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends in
private, or onerous nature of position in public—may—impose upon him!”
“Impose upon him, to be sure,” said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and
added, casting up her eyes, “eloquence indeed!”
Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of
Richards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being
asleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a
glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words:
Miss Tox previously settling her head on one side, and making other
little arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
“During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate
of this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little
service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect
that object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs—”
“Chick,” interposed the gentleman of that name.
“Oh, hush if you please!” said Miss Tox.
“I was about to say to you, Richards,” resumed Mr Dombey, with an
appalling glance at Mr John, “that I was further assisted in my
decision, by the recollection of a conversation I held with your
husband in this room, on the occasion of your being hired, when he
disclosed to me the melancholy fact that your family, himself at the
head, were sunk and steeped in ignorance.”
Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
“I am far from being friendly,” pursued Mr Dombey, “to what is called
by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is
necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to
know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I
approve of schools. Having the power of nominating a child on the
foundation of an ancient establishment, called (from a worshipful
company) the Charitable Grinders; where not only is a wholesome
education bestowed upon the scholars, but where a dress and badge is
likewise provided for them; I have (first communicating, through Mrs
Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest son to an existing
vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the habit. The
number of her son, I believe,” said Mr Dombey, turning to his sister
and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one hundred
and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.”
“One hundred and forty-seven,” said Mrs Chick “The dress, Richards, is
a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange
coloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather
small-clothes. One might wear the articles one’s self,” said Mrs Chick,
with enthusiasm, “and be grateful.”
“There, Richards!” said Miss Tox. “Now, indeed, you may be proud. The
Charitable Grinders!”
“I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir,” returned Richards faintly,
“and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.” At the
same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very
small legs encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick,
swam before Richards’s eyes, and made them water.
“I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,” said Miss
Tox.
“It makes one almost hope, it really does,” said Mrs Chick, who prided
herself on taking trustful views of human nature, “that there may yet
be some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.”
Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring her
thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from the
disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son in his
precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door and was
heartily relieved to escape by it.
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with
her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as
ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the
table, but on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in
Saul. The party seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually
resolving itself into a congealed and solid state, like the collation
round which it was assembled. At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox,
and Miss Tox returned the look, and they both rose and said it was
really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this announcement with perfect
equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and presently departed
under the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had turned their backs
upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary state, put his
hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and whistled
“With a hey ho chevy!” all through; conveying into his face as he did
so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick
dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her
own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the
day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help