Chapter 4 — <br/><br/><br/> Chapter 4<br/>

Mr and Mrs Quilp resided on Tower Hill; and in her bower on Tower Hill
Mrs Quilp was left to pine the absence of her lord, when he quitted her on
the business which he had already seen to transact.

Mr Quilp could scarcely be said to be of any particular trade or calling,
though his pursuits were diversified and his occupations numerous. He
collected the rents of whole colonies of filthy streets and alleys by the
waterside, advanced money to the seamen and petty officers of merchant
vessels, had a share in the ventures of divers mates of East Indiamen,
smoked his smuggled cigars under the very nose of the Custom House, and
made appointments on ‘Change with men in glazed hats and round jackets
pretty well every day. On the Surrey side of the river was a small
rat-infested dreary yard called ‘Quilp’s Wharf,’ in which were a little
wooden counting-house burrowing all awry in the dust as if it had fallen
from the clouds and ploughed into the ground; a few fragments of rusty
anchors; several large iron rings; some piles of rotten wood; and two or
three heaps of old sheet copper, crumpled, cracked, and battered. On
Quilp’s Wharf, Daniel Quilp was a ship-breaker, yet to judge from these
appearances he must either have been a ship-breaker on a very small scale,
or have broken his ships up very small indeed. Neither did the place
present any extraordinary aspect of life or activity, as its only human
occupant was an amphibious boy in a canvas suit, whose sole change of
occupation was from sitting on the head of a pile and throwing stones into
the mud when the tide was out, to standing with his hands in his pockets
gazing listlessly on the motion and on the bustle of the river at
high-water.