Chapter 3 — Chapter 3

Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from
him, as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.

‘Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour
ago, and then was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his
eyes, and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. 
She will never believe it of him, but he has cut away and left
her.’

‘Pray,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘why will she
never believe it of him?’

‘Because those two were one.  Because they were
never asunder.  Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote
upon her,’ said Childers, taking a step or two to look into
the empty trunk.  Both Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster
walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart than the
general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being
stiff in the knees.  This walk was common to all the male
members of Sleary’s company, and was understood to express,
that they were always on horseback.

‘Poor Sissy!  He had better have apprenticed
her,’ said Childers, giving his hair another shake, as he
looked up from the empty box.  ‘Now, he leaves her
without anything to take to.’

‘It is creditable to you, who have never been
apprenticed, to express that opinion,’ returned Mr.
Gradgrind, approvingly.

‘I never apprenticed?  I was apprenticed
when I was seven year old.’

I

‘Oh!  Indeed?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, rather
resentfully, as having been defrauded of his good opinion. 
‘I was not aware of its being the custom to apprentice
young persons to—’

‘Idleness,’ Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud
laugh.  ‘No, by the Lord Harry!  Nor
I!’

‘Her father always had it in his head,’ resumed
Childers, feigning unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s
existence, ‘that she was to be taught the deuce-and-all of
education.  How it got into his head, I can’t say; I
can only say that it never got out.  He has been picking up
a bit of reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for
her, there—and a bit of ciphering for her, somewhere
else—these seven years.’

Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his
pockets, stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal
of doubt and a little hope, at Mr. Gradgrind.  From the
first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of
the deserted girl.

‘When Sissy got into the school here,’ he pursued,
‘her father was as pleased as Punch.  I couldn’t
altogether make out why, myself, as we were not stationary here,
being but comers and goers anywhere.  I suppose, however, he
had this move in his mind—he was always
half-cracked—and then considered her provided for.  If
you should happen to have looked in to-night, for the purpose of
telling him that you were going to do her any little
service,’ said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and
repeating his look, ‘it would be very fortunate and
well-timed; very fortunate and well-timed.’

‘On the contrary,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. 
‘I came to tell him that her connections made her not an
object for the school, and that she must not attend any
more.  Still, if her father really has left her, without any
connivance on her part—Bounderby, let me have a word with
you.’

Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his
equestrian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood
stroking his face, and softly whistling.  While thus
engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr. Bounderby’s voice
as ‘No.  I say no.  I advise you
not.  I say by no means.’  While, from Mr.
Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, ‘But
even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been
the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. 
Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.’

I

Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company
gradually gathered together from the upper regions, where they
were quartered, and, from standing about, talking in low voices
to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated
themselves and him into the room.  There were two or three
handsome young women among them, with their two or three
husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine
little children, who did the fairy business when required. 
The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing
the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole;
the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those
fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for
the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand
upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride
upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. 
All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and
the tight-rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds;
none of them were at all particular in respect of showing their
legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in
hand into every town they came to.  They all assumed to be
mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their
private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic
arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company
would have produced but a poor letter on any subject.  Yet
there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these
people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and
an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving
often of as much respect, and always of as much generous
construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in
the world.

Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already
mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it
can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of
bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was never
sober and never drunk.

‘Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with
asthma, and whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the
letter s, ‘Your thervant!  Thith ith a bad piethe of
bithnith, thith ith.  You’ve heard of my Clown and
hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?’

He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered
‘Yes.’

‘Well, Thquire,’ he returned, taking off his hat,
and rubbing the lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he
kept inside for the purpose.  ‘Ith it your intenthion
to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?’

‘I shall have something to propose to her when she comes
back,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.

‘Glad to hear it, Thquire.  Not that I want to get
rid of the child, any more than I want to thtand in her
way.  I’m willing to take her prentith, though at her
age ith late.  My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and
not eathy heard by them ath don’t know me; but if
you’d been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled
and heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I have
been, your voithe wouldn’t have lathted out,
Thquire, no more than mine.’

your

‘I dare say not,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.

‘What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait?  Thall
it be Therry?  Give it a name, Thquire!’ said Mr.
Sleary, with hospitable ease.

‘Nothing for me, I thank you,’ said Mr.
Gradgrind.

‘Don’t thay nothing, Thquire.  What doth your
friend thay?  If you haven’t took your feed yet, have
a glath of bitterth.’

Here his daughter Josephine—a pretty fair-haired girl of
eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had
made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her,
expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the
two piebald ponies—cried, ‘Father, hush! she has come
back!’  Then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as
she had run out of it.  And when she saw them all assembled,
and saw their looks, and saw no father there, she broke into a
most deplorable cry, and took refuge on the bosom of the most
accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the family-way), who
knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep over her.

‘Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,’
said Sleary.

‘O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you
gone?  You are gone to try to do me some good, I know! 
You are gone away for my sake, I am sure!  And how miserable
and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you
come back!’  It was so pathetic to hear her saying
many things of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her
arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop his departing
shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr.
Bounderby (growing impatient) took the case in hand.

‘Now, good people all,’ said he, ‘this is
wanton waste of time.  Let the girl understand the
fact.  Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been
run away from, myself.  Here, what’s your name! 
Your father has absconded—deserted you—and you
mustn’t expect to see him again as long as you
live.’

They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in
that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of
being impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, they
took it in extraordinary dudgeon.  The men muttered
‘Shame!’ and the women ‘Brute!’ and
Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to
Mr. Bounderby.

‘I tell you what, Thquire.  To thpeak plain to you,
my opinion ith that you had better cut it thort, and drop
it.  They’re a very good natur’d people, my
people, but they’re accuthtomed to be quick in their
movementh; and if you don’t act upon my advithe, I’m
damned if I don’t believe they’ll pith you out
o’ winder.’

Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr.
Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposition
of the subject.

‘It is of no moment,’ said he, ‘whether this
person is to be expected back at any time, or the contrary. 
He is gone away, and there is no present expectation of his
return.  That, I believe, is agreed on all hands.’

‘Thath agreed, Thquire.  Thick to
that!’  From Sleary.

‘Well then.  I, who came here to inform the father
of the poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the
school any more, in consequence of there being practical
objections, into which I need not enter, to the reception there
of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in these
altered circumstances to make a proposal.  I am willing to
take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for
you.  The only condition (over and above your good
behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at once, whether to
accompany me or remain here.  Also, that if you accompany me
now, it is understood that you communicate no more with any of
your friends who are here present.  These observations
comprise the whole of the case.’

‘At the thame time,’ said Sleary, ‘I mutht
put in my word, Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may
be equally theen.  If you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht,
you know the natur of the work and you know your
companionth.  Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you’re a
lying at prethent, would be a mother to you, and Joth’phine
would be a thithter to you.  I don’t pretend to be of
the angel breed myself, and I don’t thay but what, when you
mith’d your tip, you’d find me cut up rough, and
thwear an oath or two at you.  But what I thay, Thquire,
ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a horthe a
injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that I
don’t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of life,
with a rider.  I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and
I have thed my thay.’

The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind,
who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then
remarked:

‘The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the
way of influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable
to have a sound practical education, and that even your father
himself (from what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to have
known and felt that much.’

The last words had a visible effect upon her.  She
stopped in her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma
Gordon, and turned her face full upon her patron.  The whole
company perceived the force of the change, and drew a long breath
together, that plainly said, ‘she will go!’

‘Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,’ Mr.
Gradgrind cautioned her; ‘I say no more.  Be sure you
know your own mind!’

‘When father comes back,’ cried the girl, bursting
into tears again after a minute’s silence, ‘how will
he ever find me if I go away!’

‘You may be quite at ease,’ said Mr. Gradgrind,
calmly; he worked out the whole matter like a sum: ‘you may
be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score.  In such a case, your
father, I apprehend, must find out Mr.—’

‘Thleary.  Thath my name, Thquire.  Not
athamed of it.  Known all over England, and alwayth paythe
ith way.’

‘Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know
where you went.  I should have no power of keeping you
against his wish, and he would have no difficulty, at any time,
in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown.  I am well
known.’

‘Well known,’ assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his
loose eye.  ‘You’re one of the thort, Thquire,
that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the houthe. 
But never mind that at prethent.’

There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing
with her hands before her face, ‘Oh, give me my clothes,
give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my
heart!’

The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes
together—it was soon done, for they were not many—and
to pack them in a basket which had often travelled with
them.  Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still
sobbing, and covering her eyes.  Mr. Gradgrind and his
friend Bounderby stood near the door, ready to take her
away.  Mr. Sleary stood in the middle of the room, with the
male members of the company about him, exactly as he would have
stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter
Josephine’s performance.  He wanted nothing but his
whip.

The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her,
and smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on.  Then they
pressed about her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes,
kissing and embracing her: and brought the children to take leave
of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women
altogether.

‘Now, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.  ‘If
you are quite determined, come!’

But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the
company yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for
they all assumed the professional attitude when they found
themselves near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss—Master
Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature there was an
original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to have
harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew.  Mr.
Sleary was reserved until the last.  Opening his arms wide
he took her by both her hands, and would have sprung her up and
down, after the riding-master manner of congratulating young
ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act; but there was no
rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him crying.

‘Good-bye, my dear!’ said Sleary. 
‘You’ll make your fortun, I hope, and none of our
poor folkth will ever trouble you, I’ll pound it.  I
with your father hadn’t taken hith dog with him; ith a
ill-conwenienth to have the dog out of the billth.  But on
thecond thoughth, he wouldn’t have performed without hith
mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!’

With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye,
surveyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his
head, and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse.

‘There the ith, Thquire,’ he said, sweeping her
with a professional glance as if she were being adjusted in her
seat, ‘and the’ll do you juthtithe.  Good-bye,
Thethilia!’

‘Good-bye, Cecilia!’  ‘Good-bye,
Sissy!’  ‘God bless you, dear!’  In a
variety of voices from all the room.

But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine
oils in her bosom, and he now interposed with ‘Leave the
bottle, my dear; ith large to carry; it will be of no uthe to you
now.  Give it to me!’

‘No, no!’ she said, in another burst of
tears.  ‘Oh, no!  Pray let me keep it for father
till he comes back!  He will want it when he comes
back.  He had never thought of going away, when he sent me
for it.  I must keep it for him, if you please!’

‘Tho be it, my dear.  (You thee how it ith,
Thquire!)  Farewell, Thethilia!  My latht wordth to you
ith thith, Thtick to the termth of your engagement, be obedient
to the Thquire, and forget uth.  But if, when you’re
grown up and married and well off, you come upon any
horthe-riding ever, don’t be hard upon it, don’t be
croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might
do wurth.  People mutht be amuthed, Thquire,
thomehow,’ continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever,
by so much talking; ‘they can’t be alwayth a working,
nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning.  Make the
betht of uth; not the wurtht.  I’ve got my living out
of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but I conthider that I
lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to you,
Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!’

The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs
and the fixed eye of Philosophy—and its rolling eye,
too—soon lost the three figures and the basket in the
darkness of the street.

Mr. Bounderby being a bachelor, an
elderly lady presided over his establishment, in consideration of
a certain annual stipend.  Mrs. Sparsit was this
lady’s name; and she was a prominent figure in attendance
on Mr. Bounderby’s car, as it rolled along in triumph with
the Bully of humility inside.

For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was
highly connected.  She had a great aunt living in these very
times called Lady Scadgers.  Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom
she was the relict, had been by the mother’s side what Mrs.
Sparsit still called ‘a Powler.’  Strangers of
limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed
not to know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain
whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a
profession of faith.  The better class of minds, however,
did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient
stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it
was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves—which
they had rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh,
blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the Insolvent
Debtors’ Court.

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother’s side a
Powler, married this lady, being by the father’s side a
Scadgers.  Lady Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with
an inordinate appetite for butcher’s meat, and a mysterious
leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years)
contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age,
and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on
two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth
mentioning.  He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but
owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over
immediately afterwards.  Thus, when he died, at twenty-four
(the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did
not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after
the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances.  That bereaved
lady, fifteen years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud
with her only relative, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her
ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a
salary.  And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the
Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had
captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby’s tea as he took
his breakfast.

If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive
Princess whom he took about as a feature in his
state-processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with
her than he habitually did.  Just as it belonged to his
boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to
it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit’s.  In the measure that he
would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single
favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit’s
juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered
waggon-loads of early roses all over that lady’s
path.  ‘And yet, sir,’ he would say, ‘how
does it turn out after all?  Why here she is at a hundred a
year (I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term
handsome), keeping the house of Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown!’

Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third
parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with
considerable briskness.  It was one of the most exasperating
attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises
but stimulated other men to sing them.  There was a moral
infection of clap-trap in him.  Strangers, modest enough
elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in
quite a rampant way, of Bounderby.  They made him out to be
the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas
Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An Englishman’s house is his
castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put
together.  And as often (and it was very often) as an orator
of this kind brought into his peroration,

‘Princes and lords may flourish or may
fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made,’

—it was, for certain, more or less understood among the
company that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you are
unusually slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning.’

‘Why, ma’am,’ he returned, ‘I am
thinking about Tom Gradgrind’s whim;’ Tom Gradgrind,
for a bluff independent manner of speaking—as if somebody
were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say
Thomas, and he wouldn’t; ‘Tom Gradgrind’s whim,
ma’am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl.’

‘The girl is now waiting to know,’ said Mrs.
Sparsit, ‘whether she is to go straight to the school, or
up to the Lodge.’

‘She must wait, ma’am,’ answered Bounderby,
‘till I know myself.  We shall have Tom Gradgrind down
here presently, I suppose.  If he should wish her to remain
here a day or two longer, of course she can,
ma’am.’

‘Of course she can if you wish it, Mr.
Bounderby.’

‘I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last
night, in order that he might sleep on it before he decided to
let her have any association with Louisa.’

‘Indeed, Mr. Bounderby?  Very thoughtful of
you!’  Mrs. Sparsit’s Coriolanian nose underwent
a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her black eyebrows
contracted as she took a sip of tea.

‘It’s tolerably clear to me,’ said
Bounderby, ‘that the little puss can get small good out of
such companionship.’

me

‘Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr.
Bounderby?’

‘Yes, ma’am, I’m speaking of
Louisa.’

‘Your observation being limited to “little
puss,”’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and there being two
little girls in question, I did not know which might be indicated
by that expression.’

‘Louisa,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. 
‘Louisa, Louisa.’

‘You are quite another father to Louisa,
sir.’  Mrs. Sparsit took a little more tea; and, as
she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming cup,
rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the
infernal gods.