Hard Times
her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but
sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he
acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.
‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the
stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant
likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever
contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this
numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may
observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this
place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’
Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was
quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful
clues and directions in aid.
‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker
well?’
‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards
him, I have known him ten years.’
‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had
that—honour.’
‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘_Is_ she?’
‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over
Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the
family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have
much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives
her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning
desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and
stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You
have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and
thirty?’
Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she
was married.’
‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching
himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’
It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity
of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a
minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I
assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the
father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged
to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse
my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’
He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw
him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of
all the town.
‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter,
when he came to take away.
‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’
‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’
‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table,
‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’
‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against
the players.’
Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or
whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She
sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat
there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it,
when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward,
upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of
the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs.
Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much
of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the
rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street
cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by,
the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced
that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself
from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time
creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.
‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom
she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the
sweetbread.
CHAPTER II
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE
THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the
Graces. They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits
more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out
everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?
Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were
attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen;
they pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in
imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they
served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political
economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was
seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.
Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school,
there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn
of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the
occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors)
view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever
known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by
the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on
the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded
thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole
system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow,
and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the
honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of
humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any
serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and brought the railway off
with Cheers and Laughter.
Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than
himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore;
and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad,
and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored
there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored
everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said
one day, ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and
they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.’ Jem, rather
taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as
ready to ‘go in’ for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in.
He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it
about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, ‘If you want to bring in,
for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech,
look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.’ After a few dashes in the
public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages
approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to
become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had
last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his
hand; superscribed, ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown.
Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’
Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James Harthouse’s
card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he
found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so
disconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to ‘go in’ for something
else.
‘My name, sir,’ said his visitor, ‘is Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown.’
Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so)
to have a pleasure he had long expected.
‘Coketown, sir,’ said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, ‘is not the
kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow
me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you
something about it before we go any further.’
Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bounderby. ‘I don’t promise it. First
of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the
healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the
lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from
you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster
than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great
Britain and Ireland.’
By way of ‘going in’ to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, ‘Mr.
Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of
thinking. On conviction.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bounderby. ‘Now, you have heard a lot of
talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll
state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and
it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best-paid work there is.
More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid
down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’
‘Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.’
‘Lastly,’ said Bounderby, ‘as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this
town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life.
That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.
Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and
venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.’
Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and
refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.
‘Why, you see,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, ‘it suits my disposition to have a
full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I
make his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr.
Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall
respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s
letter of introduction. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive
yourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit
of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.’
If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bounderby, it would
have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.
‘So now,’ said Bounderby, ‘we may shake hands on equal terms. I say,
equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of
the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as
proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my
independence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself,
and I hope you’re pretty well.’
The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for
the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby received the answer with
favour.
‘Perhaps you know,’ said he, ‘or perhaps you don’t know, I married Tom
Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up
town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s
daughter.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, ‘you anticipate my dearest wishes.’
They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted the
new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red