Dombey and Son
temporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to
lose, for the moment, the use of his—”
Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey’s recent objection
to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who,
true to her office, hazarded “members.”
“Members!” repeated Mr Dombey.
“I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
Louisa, did he not?” said Miss Tox.
“Why, of course he did, my love,” retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. “How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear
Paul should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are
casualties common to many children at his time of life, and not to be
prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul,
and admit that, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of
care, and caution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been
bestowed upon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your
medical attendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call
Towlinson,” said Mrs Chick, “I believe he has no prejudice in our
favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear what accusation
Towlinson can make!”
“Surely you must know, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, “that I don’t
question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of
my house.”
“I am glad to hear it, Paul,” said Mrs Chick; “but really you are very
odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I
know. If your dear boy’s soul is too much for his body, Paul, you
should remember whose fault that is—who he takes after, I mean—and make
the best of it. He’s as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed
it in the streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long
ago as at his christening. He’s a very respectable man, with children
of his own. He ought to know.”
“Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.
“Yes, he did,” returned his sister. “Miss Tox and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr
Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I
believe him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can
confirm, if that is any consolation; but he recommended, today,
sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel convinced.”
“Sea-air,” repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
“There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,” said Mrs Chick. “My
George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about
his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite
agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned
upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not
to expatiate upon; but I really don’t see how that is to be helped, in
the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there
would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short
absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental
training of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance—”
“Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?” asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.
“Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, “is an elderly
lady—Miss Tox knows her whole history—who has for some time devoted all
the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and
treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her
husband broke his heart in—how did you say her husband broke his heart,
my dear? I forget the precise circumstances.
“In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,” replied Miss Tox.
“Not being a Pumper himself, of course,” said Mrs Chick, glancing at
her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation,
for Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; “but
having invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that
Mrs Pipchin’s management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard
it commended in private circles ever since I was—dear me—how high!” Mrs
Chick’s eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which
was about ten feet from the ground.
“Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,” observed Miss Tox,
with an ingenuous blush, “having been so pointedly referred to, that
the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is
well merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting
members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble
individual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believe
juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment.”
“Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment,
Miss Tox?” the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
“Why, I really don’t know,” rejoined that lady, “whether I am justified
in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I
express my meaning,” said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, “if I
designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select
description?”
“On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,” suggested Mrs Chick,
with a glance at her brother.
“Oh! Exclusion itself!” said Miss Tox.
There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin’s husband having broken his
heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of
Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been
recommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay
upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the
goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight
with him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with
their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they
might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as
shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the
Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doing
It.
“Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow’s inquiries, to send Paul
down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?” inquired Mr
Dombey, after some reflection.
“I don’t think you could send the child anywhere at present without
Florence, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, hesitating. “It’s quite
an infatuation with him. He’s very young, you know, and has his
fancies.”
Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
“Anybody else, Louisa?” he said, without looking up, and turning over
the leaves.
“Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,”
returned his sister. “Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin’s, you
could hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You
would go down yourself once a week at least, of course.”
“Of course,” said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.
This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face,
like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it
might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.
Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the
death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such
a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light
her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of
candles. She was generally spoken of as “a great manager” of children;
and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they
didn’t like, and nothing that they did—which was found to sweeten their
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was
tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of
the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of
human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at
Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and
sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where
the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing
nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were
constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public
places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of
cupping-glasses. In the winter time the air couldn’t be got out of the
Castle, and in the summer time it couldn’t be got in. There was such a
continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great
shell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night
and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which was
never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which
imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However
choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind
peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were
half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green
lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive
leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which
appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its
long green ends, reminded them of spiders—in which Mrs Pipchin’s
dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged
competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
Mrs Pipchin’s scale of charges being high, however, to all who could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable
acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old
“lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge
of the childish character.” On this reputation, and on the broken heart
of Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke
out a tolerable sufficient living since her husband’s demise. Within
three days after Mrs Chick’s first allusion to her, this excellent old
lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her
current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving
Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the
door, on their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to
the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs
Pipchin’s middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but
possessing a gaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils
on her nose, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he
had worn on parade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at
present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an
empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional purposes), for
having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.
“Well, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, “how do you think you shall like
me?”
“I don’t think I shall like you at all,” replied Paul. “I want to go
away. This isn’t my house.”
“No. It’s mine,” retorted Mrs Pipchin.
“It’s a very nasty one,” said Paul.
“There’s a worse place in it than this though,” said Mrs Pipchin,
“where we shut up our bad boys.”
“Has he ever been in it?” asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of