Dombey and Son
cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some
desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and
a lot of cobwebs, and in one of ’em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up
blue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.”
“Nothing else?” said the Uncle.
“No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
there!) and a coal-scuttle.”
“No bankers’ books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth
rolling in from day to day?” said old Sol, looking wistfully at his
nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and laying
an unctuous emphasis upon the words.
“Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose,” returned his nephew carelessly;
“but all that sort of thing’s in Mr Carker’s room, or Mr Morfin’s, or
Mr Dombey’s.”
“Has Mr Dombey been there today?” inquired the Uncle.
“Oh yes! In and out all day.”
“He didn’t take any notice of you, I suppose?”.
“Yes he did. He walked up to my seat,—I wish he wasn’t so solemn and
stiff, Uncle,—and said, ‘Oh! you are the son of Mr Gills the Ships’
Instrument-maker.’ ‘Nephew, Sir,’ I said. ‘I said nephew, boy,’ said
he. But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.”
“You’re mistaken I daresay. It’s no matter.”
“No, it’s no matter, but he needn’t have been so sharp, I thought.
There was no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told me that you
had spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in the
House accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and
punctual, and then he went away. I thought he didn’t seem to like me
much.”
“You mean, I suppose,” observed the Instrument-maker, “that you didn’t
seem to like him much?”
“Well, Uncle,” returned the boy, laughing. “Perhaps so; I never thought
of that.”
Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his dinner, and glanced
from time to time at the boy’s bright face. When dinner was done, and
the cloth was cleared away (the entertainment had been brought from a
neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went down below
into a little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy
staircase, dutifully held the light. After a moment’s groping here and
there, he presently returned with a very ancient-looking bottle,
covered with dust and dirt.
“Why, Uncle Sol!” said the boy, “what are you about? that’s the
wonderful Madeira!—there’s only one more bottle!”
Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he was
about; and having drawn the cork in solemn silence, filled two glasses
and set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.
“You shall drink the other bottle, Wally,” he said, “when you come to
good fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when the
start in life you have made today shall have brought you, as I pray
Heaven it may!—to a smooth part of the course you have to run, my
child. My love to you!”
Some of the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into his
throat; for he spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked his
glass against his nephew’s. But having once got the wine to his lips,
he tossed it off like a man, and smacked them afterwards.
“Dear Uncle,” said the boy, affecting to make light of it, while the
tears stood in his eyes, “for the honour you have done me, et cetera,
et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with three times
three and one cheer more. Hurrah! and you’ll return thanks, Uncle, when
we drink the last bottle together; won’t you?”
They clinked their glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his
wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as
critical an air as he could possibly assume.
His Uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes
at last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied his
thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time.
“You see, Walter,” he said, “in truth this business is merely a habit
with me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live if I
relinquished it: but there’s nothing doing, nothing doing. When that
uniform was worn,” pointing out towards the little Midshipman, “then
indeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition,
competition—new invention, new invention—alteration, alteration—the
world’s gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where
my customers are.”
“Never mind ’em, Uncle!”
“Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for
instance—and that’s ten days,” said Solomon, “I don’t remember more
than one person that has come into the shop.”
“Two, Uncle, don’t you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign—”
“That’s the one,” said Solomon.
“Why Uncle! don’t you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way
to Mile-End Turnpike?”
“Oh! it’s true,” said Solomon, “I forgot her. Two persons.”
“To be sure, they didn’t buy anything,” cried the boy.
“No. They didn’t buy anything,” said Solomon, quietly.
“Nor want anything,” cried the boy.
“No. If they had, they’d gone to another shop,” said Solomon, in the
same tone.
“But there were two of ’em, Uncle,” cried the boy, as if that were a
great triumph. “You said only one.”
“Well, Wally,” resumed the old man, after a short pause: “not being
like the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe’s Island, we can’t live on
a man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the
way to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past
me. I don’t blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not
the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is
not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of
my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an
old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it.
I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even
the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me.”
Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.
“Therefore, Wally—therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early
in the busy world, and on the world’s track. I am only the ghost of
this business—its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its
ghost will be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I
have thought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only
fragment of the old connexion that stands by me, through long habit.
Some people suppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake they were
right. But whatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you, you
in such a House as Dombey’s are in the road to use well and make the
most of. Be diligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady
independence, and be happy!”
“I’ll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed I
will,” said the boy, earnestly.
“I know it,” said Solomon. “I am sure of it,” and he applied himself to
a second glass of the old Madeira, with increased relish. “As to the
Sea,” he pursued, “that’s well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won’t
do in fact: it won’t do at all. It’s natural enough that you should
think about it, associating it with all these familiar things; but it
won’t do, it won’t do.”
Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he
talked of the sea, though; and looked on the seafaring objects about
him with inexpressible complacency.
“Think of this wine for instance,” said old Sol, “which has been to the
East Indies and back, I’m not able to say how often, and has been once
round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and
rolling seas:”
“The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,” said the boy.
“To be sure,” said Solomon,—“that this wine has passed through. Think
what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling
and howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:”
“What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each other who shall lie
out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls
and pitches, like mad!” cried his nephew.
“Exactly so,” said Solomon: “has gone on, over the old cask that held
this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the—”
“In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty minutes past
twelve when the captain’s watch stopped in his pocket; he lying dead
against the main-mast—on the fourteenth of February, seventeen
forty-nine!” cried Walter, with great animation.
“Ay, to be sure!” cried old Sol, “quite right! Then, there were five
hundred casks of such wine aboard; and all hands (except the first
mate, first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going
to work to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing ‘Rule
Britannia’, when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful
scream in chorus.”
“But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast of
Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourth of
March, “seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the
horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to and
fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set up
such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of
devils, some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in
despair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.”
“And when,” said old Sol, “when the Polyphemus—”
“Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons,
Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,” cried Walter.
“The same,” said Sol; “when she took fire, four days’ sail with a fair
wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night—”
“There were two brothers on board,” interposed his nephew, speaking
very fast and loud, “and there not being room for both of them in the
only boat that wasn’t swamped, neither of them would consent to go,
until the elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And
then the younger, rising in the boat, cried out, ‘Dear Edward, think of
your promised wife at home. I’m only a boy. No one waits at home for
me. Leap down into my place!’ and flung himself in the sea!”
The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen from
his seat in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remind
old Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist had
hitherto shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he
had evidently intended but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough,
and said, “Well! suppose we change the subject.”
The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attraction
towards the marvellous and adventurous—of which he was, in some sort, a
distant relation, by his trade—had greatly encouraged the same
attraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put
before the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual
unaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is
invariable. It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a
story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which
did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.
But an addition to the little party now made its appearance, in the
shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a
hand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a
thick stick in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with
knobs. He wore a loose black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such
a very large coarse shirt collar, that it looked like a small sail. He
was evidently the person for whom the spare wine-glass was intended,
and evidently knew it; for having taken off his rough outer coat, and