Great Expectations

“Y DEAR MR PIP:—

“I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he is
going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel
Tuesday morning at nine o’clock, when if not agreeable please leave
word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We talk of
you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are saying and
doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty, excuse it for the
love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from

“Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,
“BIDDY.”

“P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you
will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see
him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is
a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last
little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again what
larks.”

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its
appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings
I looked forward to Joe’s coming.

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with
considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of
incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly
would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was that he was coming
to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall
in Bentley Drummle’s way. I had little objection to his being seen by
Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the
sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in
contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are
usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive those
wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms were vastly
different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the honour of
occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a neighbouring
upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a
boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have
been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of
the refuse of my washerwoman’s family), and had clothed him with a blue
coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots
already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to
eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he haunted my
existence.

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday
morning in the hall, (it was two feet square, as charged for
floorcloth,) and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he
thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being
so interested and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked sense of
suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming to see him, he
wouldn’t have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and
I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room and
breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance. Unfortunately
the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact
that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, like some
weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the Avenger
pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard Joe on the
staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming
upstairs,—his state boots being always too big for him,—and by the time
it took him to read the names on the other floors in the course of his
ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his
finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards
distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a
faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the compromising name of the
avenging boy—announced “Mr. Gargery!” I thought he never would have
done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the
mat, but at last he came in.

“Joe, how are you, Joe?”

“Pip, how AIR you, Pip?”

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put down
on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them
straight up and down, as if I had been the last-patented Pump.

“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest
with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property,
and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.

“Which you have that growed,” said Joe, “and that swelled, and that
gentle-folked;” Joe considered a little before he discovered this word;
“as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country.”

“And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”

“Thank God,” said Joe, “I’m ekerval to most. And your sister, she’s no
worse than she were. And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready. And all
friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. ’Ceptin Wopsle; he’s had a
drop.”

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and
round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

“Had a drop, Joe?”

“Why yes,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church and went
into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways brought him to
London along with me. And his wish were,” said Joe, getting the
bird’s-nest under his left arm for the moment, and groping in it for an
egg with his right; “if no offence, as I would ’and you that.”

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play-bill of a
small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, in that
very week, of “the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown,
whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National
Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic
circles.”

“Were you at his performance, Joe?” I inquired.

“I were,” said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.

“Was there a great sensation?”

“Why,” said Joe, “yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
Partickler when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself, sir,
whether it were calc’lated to keep a man up to his work with a good
hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with
“Amen!” A man may have had a misfortun’ and been in the Church,” said
Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling tone, “but that
is no reason why you should put him out at such a time. Which I
meantersay, if the ghost of a man’s own father cannot be allowed to
claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning ’at
is unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black feathers
brings it off, try to keep it on how you may.”

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe’s own countenance informed me that Herbert
had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his
hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest.

“Your servant, Sir,” said Joe, “which I hope as you and Pip”—here his
eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table, and so
plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman one of the
family, that I frowned it down and confused him more—“I meantersay, you
two gentlemen,—which I hope as you get your elths in this close spot?
For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,”
said Joe, confidentially, “and I believe its character do stand it; but
I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case that I wished him
to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him.”

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our
dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call me
“sir,” Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the
room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat,—as if it were
only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could find a
resting place,—and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the
chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.

“Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?” asked Herbert, who always
presided of a morning.

“Thankee, Sir,” said Joe, stiff from head to foot, “I’ll take whichever
is most agreeable to yourself.”

“What do you say to coffee?”

“Thankee, Sir,” returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
“since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run
contrairy to your own opinions. But don’t you never find it a little
’eating?”

“Say tea then,” said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his
chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it
were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off again
soon.

“When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?”

“Were it yesterday afternoon?” said Joe, after coughing behind his
hand, as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he came.
“No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday afternoon” (with
an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict impartiality).

“Have you seen anything of London yet?”

“Why, yes, Sir,” said Joe, “me and Wopsle went off straight to look at
the Blacking Ware’us. But we didn’t find that it come up to its
likeness in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay,” added
Joe, in an explanatory manner, “as it is there drawd too
architectooralooral.”

I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily
expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a perfect
Chorus, but for his attention being providentially attracted by his
hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant
attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by
wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the
greatest skill; now, rushing at it and catching it neatly as it
dropped; now, merely stopping it midway, beating it up, and humouring
it in various parts of the room and against a good deal of the pattern
of the paper on the wall, before he felt it safe to close with it;
finally splashing it into the slop-basin, where I took the liberty of
laying hands upon it.

[Illustration]

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing to
reflect upon,—insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape himself
to that extent, before he could consider himself full dressed? Why
should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his
holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of
meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth; had
his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such
remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more
than he ate, and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it; that I was
heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was
all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have
been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with
him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

“Us two being now alone, sir,”—began Joe.

“Joe,” I interrupted, pettishly, “how can you call me, sir?”

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his collars
were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.

“Us two being now alone,” resumed Joe, “and me having the intentions
and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now
conclude—leastways begin—to mention what have led to my having had the
present honour. For was it not,” said Joe, with his old air of lucid
exposition, “that my only wish were to be useful to you, I should not
have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company and abode of
gentlemen.”

I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remonstrance
against this tone.

“Well, sir,” pursued Joe, “this is how it were. I were at the Bargemen
t’other night, Pip;”—whenever he subsided into affection, he called me
Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he called me sir; “when
there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Which that same
identical,” said Joe, going down a new track, “do comb my ’air the
wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and down town as it were
him which ever had your infant companionation and were looked upon as a
playfellow by yourself.”

“Nonsense. It was you, Joe.”

“Which I fully believed it were, Pip,” said Joe, slightly tossing his
head, “though it signify little now, sir. Well, Pip; this same
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at the
Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the
workingman, sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word were,
‘Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.’”

“Miss Havisham, Joe?”

“‘She wish,’ were Pumblechook’s word, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat and
rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“Yes, Joe? Go on, please.”

“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off,
“having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”

“Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?”

“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if
he were making his will, “Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her
expression air then as follering: ‘Mr. Gargery. You air in
correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I were able
to say ‘I am.’ (When I married your sister, sir, I said ‘I will;’ and
when I answered your friend, Pip, I said ‘I am.’) ‘Would you tell him,
then,’ said she, ‘that which Estella has come home and would be glad to
see him.’”

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause of
its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known his
errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her fur to write the
message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, ‘I know he will be very
glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday time, you want to see
him, go!’ I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising from his chair,
“and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a
greater height.”

“But you are not going now, Joe?”

“Yes I am,” said Joe.

“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”

“No I am not,” said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the “Sir” melted out of that manly heart as he
gave me his hand.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded
together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a
whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions
among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any
fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be
together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and
beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but
that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these
clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the
kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if
you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even
my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you
should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge
window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old
burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve
beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless
you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity in
him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he
spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven. He touched
me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover
myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the
neighbouring streets; but he was gone.