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_ NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby?
Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend,
as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual
relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So
near was Mr. Bounderby - or, if the reader should prefer it, so far
off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not.
A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made
out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to
make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead,
swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face
that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A
man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a
balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently
vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming,
through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old
ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of
humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr.
Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had
the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody.
He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off;
and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that
condition from being constantly blown about by his windy
boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the
hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered
some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its
being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it
was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because
the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp
mortar; partly because he thus took up a commanding position, from
which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.
'I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such
a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a
pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a
ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.'
Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls,
of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking
physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom
of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of
fact tumbling on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
'No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,' said Mr. Bounderby.
'Enough to give a baby cold,' Mrs. Gradgrind considered.
'Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of
everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,'
returned Mr. Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, I was one of the most
miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was
always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you
wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.'
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate
thing her imbecility could think of doing.
'How I fought through it, I don't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was
determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later
life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow,
and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.'
Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother -
'My mother? Bolted, ma'am!' said Bounderby.
Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
'My mother left me to my grandmother,' said Bounderby; 'and,
according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the
wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a
little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take 'em off and sell
'em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in
her bed and drink her four-teen glasses of liquor before
breakfast!'
Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of
vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed
transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind
it.
'She kept a chandler's shop,' pursued Bounderby, 'and kept me in an
egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon
as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I
became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me
about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and
starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything
else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that
very well.'
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great
social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest,
was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the
boast.
'I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I
was to do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though
nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond,
labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown. Those are the antecedents, and the
culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown learnt his letters from
the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to
tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of
St. Giles's Church, London, under the direction of a drunken
cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant.
Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and
your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole
kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells
you plainly, all right, all correct - he hadn't such advantages -
but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people - the education
that made him won't do for everybody, he knows well - such and such
his education was, however, and you may force him to swallow
boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of
his life.'
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical
friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the
room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also,
and gave Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, 'Behold your
Bounderby!'
'Well!' blustered Mr. Bounderby, 'what's the matter? What is young
Thomas in the dumps about?'
He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
'We were peeping at the circus,' muttered Louisa, haughtily,
without lifting up her eyes, 'and father caught us.'
'And, Mrs. Gradgrind,' said her husband in a lofty manner, 'I
should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.'
'Dear me,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. 'How can you, Louisa and
Thomas! I wonder at you. I declare you're enough to make one
regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say
I wish I hadn't. Then what would you have done, I should like to
know?'
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent
remarks. He frowned impatiently.
'As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't
go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you,
instead of circuses!' said Mrs. Gradgrind. 'You know, as well as I
do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in
cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly
want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if
that's what you want. With my head in its present state, I
couldn't remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to
attend to.'
'That's the reason!' pouted Louisa.
'Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can't be nothing of
the sort,' said Mrs. Gradgrind. 'Go and be somethingological
directly.' Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and
usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general
injunction to choose their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully
defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial
position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was
most satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had
'no nonsense' about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it
is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any
human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot,
ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and
Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again
without collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once
more died away, and nobody minded her.
'Bounderby,' said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside,
'you are always so interested in my young people - particularly in
Louisa - that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much
vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as
you know) to the education of the reason of my family. The reason
is (as you know) the only faculty to which education should be
addressed. 'And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from this
unexpected circumstance of to-day, though in itself a trifling one,
as if something had crept into Thomas's and Louisa's minds which is
- or rather, which is not - I don't know that I can express myself
better than by saying - which has never been intended to be
developed, and in which their reason has no part.'
'There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel
of vagabonds,' returned Bounderby. 'When I was a vagabond myself,
nobody looked with any interest at me; I know that.'
'Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with
his eyes on the fire, 'in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?'
'I'll tell you in what. In idle imagination.'
'I hope not,' said the eminently practical; 'I confess, however,
that the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.'
'In idle imagination, Gradgrind,' repeated Bounderby. 'A very bad
thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa.
I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but
that she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever
expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn't a refined
bringing up.'
'Whether,' said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets,
and his cavernous eyes on the fire, 'whether any instructor or
servant can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can
have been reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions,
any idle story-book can have got into the house? Because, in minds
that have been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle
upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible.'
'Stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing,
as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the
room with explosive humility. 'You have one of those strollers'
children in the school.'
'Cecilia Jupe, by name,' said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a
stricken look at his friend.
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby again. 'How did she come
there?'
'Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only
just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted,
as not regularly belonging to our town, and - yes, you are right,
Bounderby, you are right.'
'Now, stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, once more. 'Louisa saw her
when she came?'
'Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to
me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind's
presence.'
'Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,' said Bounderby, 'what passed?'
'Oh, my poor health!' returned Mrs. Gradgrind. 'The girl wanted to
come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the
school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to
come, and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it
possible to contradict them when such was the fact!'
'Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!' said Mr. Bounderby. 'Turn this
girl to the right about, and there's an end of it.'
'I am much of your opinion.'
'Do it at once,' said Bounderby, 'has always been my motto from a
child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my
grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!'
'Are you walking?' asked his friend. 'I have the father's address.
Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?'
'Not the least in the world,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'as long as you
do it at once!'
So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat - he always threw it on, as
expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making
himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat - and with his
hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. 'I never wear
gloves,' it was his custom to say. 'I didn't climb up the ladder
in them. - Shouldn't be so high up, if I had.'
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr.
Gradgrind went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the
children's study and looked into that serene floor-clothed
apartment, which, notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets
and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much
of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa
languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at
anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the
fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at
lecture in custody; and little Jane, after manufacturing a good
deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with slate-pencil and tears,
had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
'It's all right now, Louisa: it's all right, young Thomas,' said
Mr. Bounderby; 'you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's
being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss,
isn't it?'
'You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,' returned Louisa, when she had
coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously
raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
'Always my pet; ain't you, Louisa?' said Mr. Bounderby. 'Good-bye,
Louisa!'
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek
he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red.
She was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
'What are you about, Loo?' her brother sulkily remonstrated.
'You'll rub a hole in your face.'
'You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I
wouldn't cry!' _
Read next: BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING: CHAPTER V - THE KEYNOTE
Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING: CHAPTER III - A LOOPHOLE
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