Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate honour to the

  contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. The

  Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which

  foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the

  clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons. The

  deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked

  every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his

  accustomed regularity.

  So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only

  stick to reason; and when it came, there were married in the church

  of the florid wooden legs - that popular order of architecture -

  Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of

  Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone Lodge, M.P. for that borough.

  And when they were united in holy matrimony, they went home to

  breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.

  There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion,

  who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and

  how it was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in

  what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about it. The

  bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an

  intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the calculating boy;

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  and there was no nonsense about any of the company.

  After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following

  terms:

  'Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since

  you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths

  and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as

  you all know me, and know what I am, and what my extraction was,

  you won't expect a speech from a man who, when he sees a Post, says

  "that's a Post," and when he sees a Pump, says "that's a Pump," and

  is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either

  of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, my friend

  and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and

  you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a

  little independent when I look around this table to-day, and

  reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind's daughter

  when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless it

  was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I

  may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you

  don't, I can't help it. I do feel independent. Now I have

  mentioned, and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to

  Tom Gradgrind's daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long

  been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing-up, and I

  believe she is worthy of me. At the same time - not to deceive you

  - I believe I am worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our

  parts, for the good-will you have shown towards us; and the best

  wish I can give the unmarried part of the present company, is this:

  I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have found. And

  I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife has

  found.'

  Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip

  to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of

  seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too,

  required to be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for

  the railroad. The bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her

  journey, found Tom waiting for her - flushed, either with his

  feelings, or the vinous part of the breakfast.

  'What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!'

  whispered Tom.

  She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature

  that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the

  first time.

  'Old Bounderby's quite ready,' said Tom. 'Time's up. Good-bye! I

  shall be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my

  dear Loo! AN'T it uncommonly jolly now!'

  END OF THE FIRST BOOK

  BOOK THE SECOND - REAPING

  CHAPTER I - EFFECTS IN THE BANK

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in

  Coketown.

  Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a

  haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You

  only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have

  been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur

  of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way,

  now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the

  earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense

  formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed

  nothing but masses of darkness:- Coketown in the distance was

  suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.

  The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often,

  that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there

  never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of

  Coketown were made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to

  pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been

  flawed before. They were ruined, when they were required to send

  labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were

  appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such

  inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified

  in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly

  undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make

  quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby's gold spoon which was

  generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very

  popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a

  Coketowner felt he was ill-used - that is to say, whenever he was

  not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him

  accountable for the consequences of any of his acts - he was sure

  to come out with the awful menace, that he would 'sooner pitch his

  property into the Atlantic.' This had terrified the Home Secretary

  within an inch of his life, on several occasions.

  However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they

  never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the

  contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So

  there it was, in the haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.

  The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was

  so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over

  Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged

  from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps,

  and posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and

  contemplating coals. The whole town seemed to be frying in oil.

  There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steamengines

  shone with it, the dresses of t
he Hands were soiled with

  it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it.

  The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the

  simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly

  in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad

  elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and

  down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and

  dry, fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows

  on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the

  shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of insects, it

  could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the

  night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.

  Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the

  passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls

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  of the mills. Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little

  cooled the main streets and the shops; but the mills, and the

  courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. Down upon the river

  that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were at

  large - a rare sight there - rowed a crazy boat, which made a

  spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of

  an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however

  beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost,

  and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without

  engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself

  become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed

  between it and the things it looks upon to bless.

  Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the

  shadier side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at

  that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished

  with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over the public

  office. Her own private sitting-room was a story higher, at the

  window of which post of observation she was ready, every morning,

  to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came across the road, with the

  sympathizing recognition appropriate to a Victim. He had been

  married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never released him from

  her determined pity a moment.

  The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town.

  It was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green

  inside blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen

  door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size

  larger than Mr. Bounderby's house, as other houses were from a size

  to half-a-dozen sizes smaller; in all other particulars, it was

  strictly according to pattern.

  Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among

  the desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say

  also aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her

  needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she had a selflaudatory

  sense of correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude

  business aspect of the place. With this impression of her

  interesting character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit considered herself, in

  some sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople who, in their passing

  and repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon

  keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.

  What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did.

  Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged

  would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally,

  however, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her

  ideal catalogue thereof. For the rest, she knew that after officehours,

  she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over

  a locked-up iron room with three locks, against the door of which

  strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a

  truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was lady

  paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off

  from communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of

  the current day's work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens,

  fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that

  nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs.

  Sparsit tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of

  cutlasses and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the

  official chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never

  to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy - a

  row of fire-buckets - vessels calculated to be of no physical

  utility on any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral

  influence, almost equal to bullion, on most beholders.

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  A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit's

  empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a

  saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown,

  that she would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for

  the sake of her money. It was generally considered, indeed, that

  she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but

  she had kept her life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned

  tenacity that occasioned much offence and disappointment.

  Mrs. Sparsit's tea was just set for her on a pert little table,

  with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after

  office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long

  board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter

  placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of

  homage.

  'Thank you, Bitzer,' said Mrs. Sparsit.

  'Thank you, ma'am,' returned the light porter. He was a very light

  porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a

  horse, for girl number twenty.

  'All is shut up, Bitzer?' said Mrs. Sparsit.

  'All is shut up, ma'am.'

  'And what,' said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, 'is the news of

  the day? Anything?'

  'Well, ma'am, I can't say that I have heard anything particular.

  Our people are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news,

  unfortunately.'

  'What are the restless wretches doing now?' asked Mrs. Sparsit.

  'Merely going on in the old way, ma'am. Uniting, and leaguing, and

  engaging to stand by one another.'

  'It is much to be regretted,' said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose

  more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her

  severity, 'that the united masters allow of any such classcombinations.'

  'Yes, ma'am,' said Bitzer.

  'Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces

  against employing any man who is united with any other man,' said

  Mrs. Sparsit.

  'They have done that, ma'am,' returned Bitzer; 'but it rather fell

  through, ma'am.'

  'I do not pretend to understand these things,' said Mrs. Sparsit,

  with dignity, 'my lot having been signally cast
in a widely

  different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite

  out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these

  people must be conquered, and that it's high time it was done, once

  for all.'

  'Yes, ma'am,' returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great

  respect for Mrs. Sparsit's oracular authority. 'You couldn't put

  it clearer, I am sure, ma'am.'

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat

  with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen

  that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of

  arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went

  on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into the

  street.

  'Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?' asked Mrs. Sparsit.

  'Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.' He now and

  then slided into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an involuntary

  acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit's personal dignity and claims to

  reverence.

  'The clerks,' said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an

  imperceptible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten,

  'are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?'

  'Yes, ma'am, pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception.'

  He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the

  establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at

  Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an

  extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe

  to rise in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he

  had no affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result

  of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause

  that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young

  man of the steadiest principle she had ever known. Having

  satisfied himself, on his father's death, that his mother had a

  right of settlement in Coketown, this excellent young economist had

  asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the

  principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse

  ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound

  of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all gifts

  have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and

  secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity