'I shall never cease to congratulate myself,' said Mrs Chick,' on having
said, when I little thought what was in store for us,--really as if I
was inspired by something,--that I forgave poor dear Fanny everything.
Whatever happens, that must always be a comfort to me!'

Mrs Chick made this impressive observation in the drawing-room, after
having descended thither from the inspection of the mantua-makers
upstairs, who were busy on the family mourning. She delivered it for the
behoof of Mr Chick, who was a stout bald gentleman, with a very large
face, and his hands continually in his pockets, and who had a tendency
in his nature to whistle and hum tunes, which, sensible of the indecorum
of such sounds in a house of grief, he was at some pains to repress at
present.

'Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo,' said Mr Chick, 'or you'll be laid
up with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I forgot!
We're here one day and gone the next!'

Mrs Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then proceeded
with the thread of her discourse.

'I am sure,' she said, 'I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be a
warning to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and to
make efforts in time where they're required of us. There's a moral in
everything, if we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own
faults if we lose sight of this one.'

Mr Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with
the singularly inappropriate air of 'A cobbler there was;' and checking
himself, in some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own
faults if we didn't improve such melancholy occasions as the present.

'Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr C.,' retorted his
helpmate, after a short pause, 'than by the introduction, either of
the college hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of
rump-te-iddity, bow-wow-wow!'--which Mr Chick had indeed indulged in,
under his breath, and which Mrs Chick repeated in a tone of withering
scorn.

'Merely habit, my dear,' pleaded Mr Chick.

'Nonsense! Habit!' returned his wife. 'If you're a rational being, don't
make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you
call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough
of it, I daresay.'

It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with
some degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn't venture to dispute the
position.

'Bow-wow-wow!' repeated Mrs Chick with an emphasis of blighting
contempt on the last syllable. 'More like a professional singer with the
hydrophobia, than a man in your station of life!'

'How's the Baby, Loo?' asked Mr Chick: to change the subject.

'What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs Chick.

'The poor bereaved little baby,' said Mr Chick. 'I don't know of any
other, my dear.'

'You don't know of any other,' retorted Mrs Chick. 'More shame for you, I
was going to say.'

Mr Chick looked astonished.

'I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room downstairs, one
mass of babies, no one in their senses would believe.'

'One mass of babies!' repeated Mr Chick, staring with an alarmed
expression about him.

'It would have occurred to most men,' said Mrs Chick, 'that poor dear
Fanny being no more,--those words of mine will always be a balm and
comfort to me,' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes necessary to
provide a Nurse.'

'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru!--such is life, I mean. I hope you are
suited, my dear.'

'Indeed I am not,' said Mrs Chick; 'nor likely to be, so far as I can
see, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved to
death. Paul is so very particular--naturally so, of course, having set
his whole heart on this one boy--and there are so many objections to
everybody that offers, that I don't see, myself, the least chance of an
arrangement. Meanwhile, of course, the child is--'

'Going to the Devil,' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure.'

Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going
there; and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion,
he added:

'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'

If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could
not have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some moments
in silent resignation, Mrs Chick said she trusted he hadn't said it in
aggravation, because that would do very little honour to his heart. She
trusted he hadn't said it seriously, because that would do very little
honour to his head. As in any case, he couldn't, however sanguine his
disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage on
human nature in general, we would beg to leave the discussion at that
point.

Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and peeped through
the blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding that his
destiny was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off.
But it was not always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in the
ascendant himself, and at those times punished Louisa roundly. In
their matrimonial bickerings they were, upon the whole, a well-matched,
fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple. It would have been, generally
speaking, very difficult to have betted on the winner. Often when Mr
Chick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start, turn the tables,
clatter them about the ears of Mrs Chick, and carry all before him.
Being liable himself to similar unlooked for checks from Mrs Chick,
their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty that
was very animating.

Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came running
into the room in a breathless condition.

'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?'

'You good soul, yes,' said Mrs Chick.

'Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and believe--but in
one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.'

Running downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the
party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.

It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or
business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as
a noun of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump
rosy-cheeked wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her
arms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led
a plump and apple-faced child in each hand; another plump and also
apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a plump and
apple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-faced
boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a husky
whisper, to 'kitch hold of his brother Johnny.'

'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'knowing your great anxiety, and
wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte's
Royal Married Females,' which you had forgot, and put the question, Was
there anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said there
was not. When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was
almost driven to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that one
of the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matron
of another who had gone to her own home, and who, she said, would in
all likelihood be most satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had
it corroborated by the matron--excellent references and unimpeachable
character--I got the address, my dear, and posted off again.'

'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa.

'Not at all,' returned Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. Arriving at the house
(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor),
I found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account
of them could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sight
of them all together, I brought them all away. This gentleman,' said
Miss Tox, pointing out the apple-faced man, 'is the father. Will you
have the goodness to come a little forward, Sir?'

The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
chuckling and grinning in a front row.

'This is his wife, of course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young
woman with the baby. 'How do you do, Polly?'

'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly.

By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry
as in condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for a
fortnight or so.

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her
children. Her name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?'

'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' returned Jemima.

'I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'I hope you'll keep
so. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with the
blister on his nose is the eldest. The blister, I believe,' said
Miss Tox, looking round upon the family, 'is not constitutional, but
accidental?'

The apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron.'

'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, 'did you--'

'Flat iron,' he repeated.

'Oh yes,' said Miss Tox. 'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little
creature, in his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite
right, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when we
arrived at the door that you were by trade a--'

'Stoker,' said the man.

'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.

'Stoker,' said the man. 'Steam ingine.'

'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and seeming
still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.

'And how do you like it, Sir?'

'Which, Mum?' said the man.

'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.'

'Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his
chest: 'and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is
ashes, Mum, not crustiness.'

Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find
a difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by
entering into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her
marriage certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out
unscathed from this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to her
brother's room, and as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of
it, carried the two rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being the
family name of the apple-faced family.

Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his wife,
absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his baby
son. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier
than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than
his own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life
and progress on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in the
outset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for
a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, he
viewed with so much bitterness the thought of being dependent for the
very first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a
hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for the time, all that
even his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every new
rejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The time had now
come, however, when he could no longer be divided between these two sets
of feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no flaw in the title of
Polly Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with many commendations
on the indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox.

'These children look healthy,' said Mr Dombey. 'But my God, to think of
their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'

'But what relationship is there!' Louisa began--

'Is there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to
participate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there,
did you say, Louisa!'

'Can there be, I mean--'

'Why none,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole world knows that, I
presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them away, Louisa!
Let me see this woman and her husband.'

Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned
with that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.

'My good woman,' said Mr Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, as
one piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, 'I understand you are
poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has
been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have no
objection to your adding to the comforts of your family by that means.
So far as I can tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I must
impose one or two conditions on you, before you enter my house in that
capacity. While you are here, I must stipulate that you are always known
as--say as Richards--an ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any
objection to be known as Richards? You had better consult your husband.'

'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does your
husband say to your being called Richards?'

As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw
his right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after
nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'that
perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be considered
in the wages.'

'Oh, of course,' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question of
wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I
wish you to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in
return for the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which,
I wish you to see as little of your family as possible. When those
duties cease to be required and rendered, and the stipend ceases to be
paid, there is an end of all relations between us. Do you understand
me?'

Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.

'You have children of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all in
this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child
need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the
kind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have
concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting:
and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will
cease, if you please, to remember the child.'

Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had
before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.'

'I hope you do, Richards,' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you know
it very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be
otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let
her have it when and how she pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word with
you, if you please!'

Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the
room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong,
loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes
sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its
natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a
square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A
thorough contrast in all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of those
close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like
new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as
by the stimulating action of golden showerbaths.

'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.

'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'

'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey.

'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'

'What is that?'

'To lose 'em, Sir.'

'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey.

'Why, not partick'ler, Sir.'

'Write?'

'With chalk, Sir?'

'With anything?'

'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it,'
said Toodle after some reflection.

'And yet,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?'

'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection

'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey.

'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me,
when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'

'Well,' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no
great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the
ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You
heard what I said to your wife just now?'

'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better
half. 'It's all right.'

'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'
pursued Mr Dombey.

'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightly
Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being--ask your
pardon--rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'

'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr Dombey, frustrated
in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the
husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my saying
anything to you.'

'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'

'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed.
'Where have you worked all your life?'

'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then.
I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full
play.'

As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little
Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was.

'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common
name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it
wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him
Biler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.'

'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with
marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'

'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his
mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine
was a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler,
don't you see!'

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of
information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his
child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly:
and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary
wretchedness.

It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him that
he felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly than he
had felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that event upon
him with new force, and communicated to it added weight and bitterness.
It was a rude shock to his sense of property in his child, that these
people--the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them--should be
necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt
disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them
so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped
blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often
said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a
witness, 'Poor little fellow!'

It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitied
himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by
constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostly
underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never
knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit--but poor little
fellow!

Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him--and it is an instance
of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his
thoughts were tending to one centre--that a great temptation was being
placed in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it be
possible for her to change them?

Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic
and unlikely--though possible, there was no denying--he could not help
pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his
condition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he was
grown old. Whether a man so situated would be able to pluck away the
result of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from the
impostor, and endow a stranger with it?

But it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a moment
afterwards he determined that it could, but that such women were
constantly observed, and had no opportunity given them for the
accomplishment of such a design, even when they were so wicked as to
entertain it. In another moment, he was remembering how few such cases
seemed to have ever happened. In another moment he was wondering whether
they ever happened and were not found out.

As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted away,
though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant in
his resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing
to do so. Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's
station as rather an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by
placing, in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, and
rendering their separation easy and natural. Thence he passed to the
contemplation of the future glories of Dombey and Son, and dismissed the
memory of his wife, for the time being, with a tributary sigh or two.

Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs Chick and
Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much
ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resigned
her own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were
then produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family; and Miss
Tox, busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the younger branches,
bred them up to their father's business with such surprising expedition,
that she made chokers of four of them in a quarter of a minute.

'You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as Toodle
appeared.

'Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing.'

'And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortable
home, ain't you, Sir?' said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him
stealthily.

'No, Mum,' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing of her back agin.'

Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs Chick, who had her matronly
apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the
little Dombey ('acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the
rescue.

'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima,
Richards,' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort--this is
a world of effort, you know, Richards--to be very happy indeed. You have
been already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'

'Ye--es, Ma'am,' sobbed Polly.

'And it'll fit beautifully. I know,' said Mrs Chick, 'for the same young
person has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'

'Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't know
you; will you, Sir?'

'I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and anywheres.'

Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.

'As to living, Richards, you know,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'why, the very
best of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little
dinner every day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as
readily provided as if you were a Lady.'

'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great
sympathy. 'And as to porter!--quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'

'Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a little
abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.'

'And pickles, perhaps,' suggested Miss Tox.

'With such exceptions,' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choice
entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love.'

'And then, of course, you know,' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is of
her own dear little child--and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for
being fond of it?'

'Oh no!' cried Mrs Chick, benignantly.

'Still,' resumed Miss Tox, 'she naturally must be interested in her
young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub
connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day
to day at one common fountain--is it not so, Louisa?'

'Most undoubtedly!' said Mrs Chick. 'You see, my love, she's already
quite contented and comfortable, and means to say goodbye to her sister
Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light
heart and a smile; don't she, my dear?'

'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!'

Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in
great distress, and coming to her spouse at last, could not make up her
mind to part from him, until he gently disengaged himself, at the close
of the following allegorical piece of consolation:

'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up your head
and fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry anyone
through life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly.
Do it now, or Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me and
J'mima will do your duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold up
your head and fight low, Polly, and you can't go wrong!'

Fortified by this golden secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid any
more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the
stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy
but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after
her--if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible--on his arms and
legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in
remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his
boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the
family.

A quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each
young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the
family were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the
hackney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under the
guardianship of Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges
and halfpence all the way along. Mr Toodle himself preferred to ride
behind among the spikes, as being the mode of conveyance to which he was
best accustomed.

With Mrs. Dombey dead, it is necessary to find a woman to nurse the baby. Miss Tox hears good things about a woman named Polly Toodle, whom she and Mrs. Chick bring to meet Mr. Dombey. Mr. Dombey tells her that while she is employed she will go by the name of Richards, and that she will not form any relationship with the baby. Mr. Dombey is suspicious of the motives of the Toodle family, who come from a working class background, but he agrees to hire Polly. Both she and her children are very distressed to be separated, but she will be well paid for her work of nursing little Paul


The funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed' to the entire
satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at
large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point,
and is prone to take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the
ceremonies, the various members of Mr Dombey's household subsided into
their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the
great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its
dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the
house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said
who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly
believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream,
they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning
was wearing rusty too.

On Richards, who was established upstairs in a state of honourable
captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey.
Mr Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark,
dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place and
Bryanstone Square. It was a corner house, with great wide areas
containing cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by
crooked-eyed doors leading to dustbins. It was a house of dismal state,
with a circular back to it, containing a whole suite of drawing-rooms
looking upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, with blackened
trunks and branches, rattled rather than rustled, their leaves were so
smoked-dried. The summer sun was never on the street, but in the morning
about breakfast-time, when it came with the water-carts and the old
clothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, and
the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along.
It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the bands of
music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a prey
to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a
porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose families
were dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and
the lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up
the street with gas.

It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over,
Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up--perhaps to preserve it
for the son with whom his plans were all associated--and the rooms to be
ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor.
Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs,
heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great
winding-sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being
papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts
of deaths and dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in
holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye.
Odours, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The
dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages.
Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner from
the neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn
before the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still
cleaving to the neighbourhood: and these, being always drawn by
some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let
immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr Dombey's
windows.

The apartments which Mr Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were
attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library,
which was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed
paper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the
smell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little
glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of the trees before
mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three
rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at his
breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as well
as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for
Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with
her young charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr Dombey at these
times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from
among the dark heavy furniture--the house had been inhabited for years
by his father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned and
grim--she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary state, as if
he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was not
to be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of a
few days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all
the mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glass
room, or sat hushing the baby there--which she very often did for hours
together, when the dusk was closing in, too--she would sometimes try to
pierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he
was doing. Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him, however, she
never dared to pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment
at a time. Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den
remained a very shade.

Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had
carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned upstairs
one day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she
never went out without Mrs Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually
accompanied by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing--or in other
words, to march them gravely up and down the pavement, like a walking
funeral); when, as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly
and quietly opened, and a dark-eyed little girl looked in.

'It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt,' thought
Richards, who had never seen the child before. 'Hope I see you well,
Miss.'

'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby.

'Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him.'

But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face,
and said:

'What have you done with my Mama?'

'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, 'what a sad question! I
done? Nothing, Miss.'

'What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly the
same look and manner.

'I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, who
naturally substituted for this child one of her own, inquiring for
herself in like circumstances. 'Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't be
afraid of me.'

'I am not afraid of you,' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want to
know what they have done with my Mama.'

Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking into her
eyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast and
hold it there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented both
her slender figure and her searching gaze from faltering.

'My darling,' said Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock in
remembrance of your Mama.'

'I can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to
her eyes, 'in any frock.'

'But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.'

'Where gone?' asked the child.

'Come and sit down by me,' said Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story.'

With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had
asked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand
until now, and sat down on a stool at the Nurse's feet, looking up into
her face.

'Once upon a time,' said Richards, 'there was a lady--a very good lady,
and her little daughter dearly loved her.'

'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated
the child.

'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and
died.'

The child shuddered.

'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on earth, and was buried in the
ground where the trees grow.'

'The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again.

'No! The warm ground,' returned Polly, seizing her advantage, 'where the
ugly little seeds turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn,
and I don't know what all besides. Where good people turn into bright
angels, and fly away to Heaven!'

The child, who had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking at
her intently.

'So; let me see,' said Polly, not a little flurried between this earnest
scrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and her
very slight confidence in her own powers. 'So, when this lady died,
wherever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and
she prayed to Him, this lady did,' said Polly, affecting herself beyond
measure; being heartily in earnest, 'to teach her little daughter to
be sure of that in her heart: and to know that she was happy there and
loved her still: and to hope and try--Oh, all her life--to meet her
there one day, never, never, never to part any more.'

'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her
round the neck.

'And the child's heart,' said Polly, drawing her to her breast: 'the
little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when
she heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a
poor mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it--didn't
feel so lonely--sobbed and cried upon her bosom--took kindly to the baby
lying in her lap--and--there, there, there!' said Polly, smoothing the
child's curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There, poor dear!'

'Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quick
voice at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of
fourteen, with a little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. 'When
it was 'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet
nurse.'

'She don't worry me,' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am very
fond of children.'

'Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs Richards, that don't matter, you
know,' returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and
biting that she seemed to make one's eyes water. 'I may be very fond of
pennywinkles, Mrs Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for
tea.'

'Well, it don't matter,' said Polly.

'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't it!' returned the sharp girl.
'Remembering, however, if you'll be so good, that Miss Floy's under my
charge, and Master Paul's under your'n.'

'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.

'Oh no, Mrs Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it,
we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master
Paul a temporary.' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting
out whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if
possible.

'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.

'Yes, Mrs Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been
in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face
against the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards is a wearing for your
Ma!' With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan
Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench--as if she
were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp
exercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.

'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly,
nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'and
will be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night.'

'Lork, Mrs Richards!' cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a
jerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'

'Won't she then?' asked Polly.

'Lork, Mrs Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody
else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never
was a favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs Richards, I
assure you.'

The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she
understood and felt what was said.

'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since--'

'No,' interrupted Susan Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardly
set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't
think he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in the
streets, or would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in
the streets to-morrow, Mrs Richards, as to me,' said Spitfire, with a
giggle, 'I doubt if he's aweer of my existence.'

'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
Florence.

'Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in
conversation, I can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company always
excepted too,' said Susan Nipper; 'wish you good morning, Mrs Richards,
now Miss Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a
naughty wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't!'

In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on
the part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of her
right shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend,
affectionately.

'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richards
wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'

'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'

'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see you
again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you,
Susan?'

Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although
a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about
a good deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some
endearing gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her
head, and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black
eyes.

'It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't refuse
you, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs Richards
likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs Richards,
but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks.'

Richards assented to the proposition.

'This house ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making,' said Miss
Nipper, 'that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and
your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but
that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole set.'

This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.

'So I'm agreeable, I'm sure,' said Susan Nipper, 'to live friendly, Mrs
Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be
planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious
Miss Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you
haven't, come along!'

With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a
charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.

The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to
care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to
mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore when
she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place
between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart
had been touched no less than the child's; and she felt, as the child
did, that there was something of confidence and interest between them
from that moment.

Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in
point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had
been good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life,
and was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the
butcher and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she
was a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better,
truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to
retain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than the
nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could have
brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that early day, which
would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.

But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of
improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising
some means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without
rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night.

She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked
about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her
great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey--whom she had seen at first leaning
on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle
room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open
folding doors--came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.

'Good evening, Richards.'

Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on
that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily
dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.

'How is Master Paul, Richards?'

'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'

'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny
face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half
careless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'

'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'

She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however,
that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again,
inquiringly.

'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of
things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and--upstairs is a little
dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'

'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr Dombey.
'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention it.'

'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty
Sir, thank you.'

'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.

'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless--'

'Yes?'

'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful,
Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking
courage.

'I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,' said Mr
Dombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your family
as possible.'

'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'

'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk
if you please.'

With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object,
and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of
her purpose.

Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came
down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and
uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was
too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having
forgotten her suggestion.

'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,' he
said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it,
'where's Miss Florence?'

'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
'but I understood from her maid that they were not to--'

Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.

'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she
chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the
children be together, when Richards wishes it.'

The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly--it was a
good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr
Dombey--requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there,
to make friends with her little brother.

She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this
errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey's colour changed; that
the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as
if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only
deterred by very shame.

And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there
had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which
was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed
as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not
forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part
in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth
lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on
the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator--not a sharer with
them--quite shut out.

Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his
mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were
fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the
mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards little
Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. Young as
she was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in his too)
even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence,
he almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held the
clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he
was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one
jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath could
sound it.

His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had
never conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or
in his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to
him. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He
would have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known
how. Perhaps--who shall decide on such mysteries!--he was afraid that he
might come to hate her.

When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped in his
pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater
interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance
the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run
clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, 'Oh father,
try to love me! there's no one else!' the dread of a repulse; the fear
of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she
stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young
heart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow
and affection.

But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door
and look towards him; and he saw no more.

'Come in,' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?'

She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain
air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the
door.

'Come here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?'

'Yes, Papa.'

'Have you nothing to say to me?'

The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face,
were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put
out her trembling hand.

Mr Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her
for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.

'There! Be a good girl,' he said, patting her on the head, and regarding
her as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. 'Go to
Richards! Go!'

His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would
have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might
raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more.
He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been when
she looked round at the Doctor--that night--and instinctively dropped
her hand and turned away.

It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great
disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon
the child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her
actions. As she sported and played about her baby brother that night,
her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it naturally was,
and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her (she had,
perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the instant and
became forced and embarrassed.

Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and,
judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal
of poor little Florence's mourning dress. 'It's hard indeed,' thought
Polly, 'if he takes only to one little motherless child, when he has
another, and that a girl, before his eyes.'

So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed
so well with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all the
livelier for his sister's company. When it was time to withdraw
upstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say
good-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; and
when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as
if to shut out her own unworthiness, 'Oh no, no! He don't want me. He
don't want me!'

The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr
Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine,
what the matter was.

'Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say
good-night,' said Richards.

'It doesn't matter,' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can let her come and go
without regarding me.'

The child shrunk as she listened--and was gone, before her humble friend
looked round again.

However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her
well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought
it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was
once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof
of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association
for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her
demonstrations of joy.

'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.

'Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you,' returned
Susan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have
put an additional bone in her stays.

'You don't show it,' said Polly.

'Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't be expected to show it like a
temporary,' said Susan Nipper. 'Temporaries carries it all before 'em
here, I find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between this
house and the next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards,
notwithstanding!'

A few weeks after Richards comes to live at the Dombey house, she meets Florence for the first time. Richards immediately feels attached to the grieving little girl. She also meets Florence's maid, Susan Nipper, who explains to her that Florence is neglected by her father and lonely. Richards intervenes, telling Mr. Dombey it would be good for Paul to spend time with his sister. Mr. Dombey agrees, though he feels uncomfortable because he was made to feel guilty when he saw Florence interact with her dying mother and now does not like to see or think of her. Florence clearly longs to express affection to her father, but is shy and awkward in his presence

The opening chapters introduce the web of characters whose lives will intersect over the course of the novel. Several of the major themes immediately become clear. A number of different family dynamics are presented and contrasted. Mr. Dombey is able to give his children economic privilege and elevated social standing, but he also sees them as projections of his own ego. He values his infant son because of the potential for continuing a family legacy, and is not only disinterested in, but also actively jealous of Florence. On the other hand, the Toodle family, or Uncle Sol and his nephew Walter, while in much more precarious economic straits, and in fact dependent on the Dombeys for their income, show much more genuine love. The idea of families being created from unlikely combinations of individuals, which will reoccur as eclectic groups of characters form bonds throughout the novel, takes root as it becomes clear that Susan Nipper and Richards are the ones actually providing love to Florence and Paul. At the same time, their position as working-class employees ensures that they are viewed with suspicion: Mr. Dombey insists on isolating Richards from her family, and even renaming her, because he fears what influence she might have on Paul. Efforts to insulate the Dombey children, however, prove unsuccessful. There is an irony to the impetus for the catastrophic expedition to Stagg's Garden: a misguided belief on Dombey's part that he is benefiting Biler Toodle by providing him with some form of education only makes his mother more aware of the poignancy of him growing up without her. Not only the decision to leave the Dombey mansion, but also to take the children to a working class neighborhood, would be a direct reflection of Dombey's worst fears for his son. And while Florence does indeed have a traumatic experience, her horizon is also permanently broadened by the contact she makes with Walter and his uncle. Without this serendipity, she would almost certainly never have encountered someone from so far outside of her own social position. Despite Dombey's attempts to control his children, just as he controls his business, the complex social and economic web around him will still impact his life.


Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the
City of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing
voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were there
hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of the
adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes'
walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England, with
its vaults of gold and silver 'down among the dead men' underground, was
their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the rich East
India House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones,
tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins,
and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on carpets, with
their slippers very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere in the
immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of ships speeding away
full sail to all parts of the world; outfitting warehouses ready to pack
off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half an hour; and little timber
midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the
shop doors of nautical Instrument-makers in taking observations of the
hackney carriages.

Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies--of that which might
be called, familiarly, the woodenest--of that which thrust itself
out above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the least
endurable, and had the shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the least
reconcileable to human reason, and bore at its right eye the most
offensively disproportionate piece of machinery--sole master and
proprietor of that Midshipman, and proud of him too, an elderly
gentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, rates, and dues,
for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood has
numbered in his life; and midshipmen who have attained a pretty green
old age, have not been wanting in the English Navy.

The stock-in-trade of this old gentleman comprised chronometers,
barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants,
and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of a
ship's course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the prosecuting
of a ship's discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were in his drawers
and on his shelves, which none but the initiated could have found the
top of, or guessed the use of, or having once examined, could have ever
got back again into their mahogany nests without assistance. Everything
was jammed into the tightest cases, fitted into the narrowest corners,
fenced up behind the most impertinent cushions, and screwed into the
acutest angles, to prevent its philosophical composure from being
disturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such extraordinary precautions were
taken in every instance to save room, and keep the thing compact; and
so much practical navigation was fitted, and cushioned, and screwed into
every box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some were, or something
between a cocked hat and a star-fish, as others were, and those quite
mild and modest boxes as compared with others); that the shop itself,
partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become a snug,
sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good sea-room, in the event
of an unexpected launch, to work its way securely to any desert island
in the world.

Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships'
Instrument-maker who was proud of his little Midshipman, assisted and
bore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers
and so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on
his table. It was familiar with dried meats and tongues, possessing an
extraordinary flavour of rope yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, in
great wholesale jars, with 'dealer in all kinds of Ships' Provisions' on
the label; spirits were set forth in case bottles with no throats. Old
prints of ships with alphabetical references to their various mysteries,
hung in frames upon the walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was
on the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds, and mosses, decorated the
chimney-piece; the little wainscotted back parlour was lighted by a
sky-light, like a cabin.

Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephew
Walter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman,
to carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills
himself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a maritime
appearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and
stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he looked like
anything but a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old
fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns looking at
you through a fog; and a newly-awakened manner, such as he might have
acquired by having stared for three or four days successively through
every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back to the
world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his outward
man, was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and
ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus
the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very
precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his
forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt
which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy
against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even
of the very Sun itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shop
and parlour behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; going
regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the
lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had
little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns.

It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader
and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of
seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily
clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human
tide is still rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr
Gills says, 'very much.' It threatens to be wet to-night. All the
weatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already
shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.

'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had carefully
put up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner been ready, half an hour,
and no Walter!'

Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked out
among the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew might be
crossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and he
certainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly
working his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over
Mr Gills's name with his forefinger.

'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go
and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be
fidgetty,' said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses with
his knuckles. 'I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture!
Well! it's wanted.'

'I believe,' said Mr Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of a
compass-case, 'that you don't point more direct and due to the back
parlour than the boy's inclination does after all. And the parlour
couldn't bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a
point either way.'

'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'

'Halloa, my boy!' cried the Instrument-maker, turning briskly round.
'What! you are here, are you?'

A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain;
fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.

'Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready?
I'm so hungry.'

'As to getting on,' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it would be odd if I
couldn't get on without a young dog like you a great deal better than
with you. As to dinner being ready, it's been ready this half hour and
waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!'

'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'

'Confound the admiral!' returned Solomon Gills. 'You mean the Lord
Mayor.'

'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for the
admiral! For-ward!'

At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne without
resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party of
five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged on
a fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.

'The Lord Mayor, Wally,' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals. The
Lord Mayor's your admiral.'

'Oh, is he though!' said the boy, shaking his head. 'Why, the Sword
Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.'

'And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains,' returned the Uncle.
'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.'

'Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?' exclaimed the
boy.

'I have,' said his Uncle. 'No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out
of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the
City. We started in life this morning.'

'Well, Uncle,' said the boy, 'I'll drink out of anything you like, so
long as I can drink to you. Here's to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for
the--'

'Lord Mayor,' interrupted the old man.

'For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery,' said the
boy. 'Long life to 'em!'

The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. 'And now,' he said,
'let's hear something about the Firm.'

'Oh! there's not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle,' said the boy,
plying his knife and fork. 'It's a precious dark set of offices, and in
the room where I sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and some
cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some
desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and
a lot of cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up
blue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.'

'Nothing else?' said the Uncle.

'No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
there!) and a coal-scuttle.'

'No bankers' books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth
rolling in from day to day?' said old Sol, looking wistfully at his
nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and laying
an unctuous emphasis upon the words.

'Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose,' returned his nephew carelessly;
'but all that sort of thing's in Mr Carker's room, or Mr Morfin's, or Mr
Dombey's.'

'Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?' inquired the Uncle.

'Oh yes! In and out all day.'

'He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?'.

'Yes he did. He walked up to my seat,--I wish he wasn't so solemn and
stiff, Uncle,--and said, "Oh! you are the son of Mr Gills the Ships'
Instrument-maker." "Nephew, Sir," I said. "I said nephew, boy," said he.
But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.'

'You're mistaken I daresay. It's no matter.'

'No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so sharp, I thought. There
was no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told me that you had
spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in the House
accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual, and
then he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much.'

'You mean, I suppose,' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn't
seem to like him much?'

'Well, Uncle,' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thought
of that.'

Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his dinner, and glanced
from time to time at the boy's bright face. When dinner was done, and
the cloth was cleared away (the entertainment had been brought from a
neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went down
below into a little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy
staircase, dutifully held the light. After a moment's groping here and
there, he presently returned with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered
with dust and dirt.

'Why, Uncle Sol!' said the boy, 'what are you about? that's the
wonderful Madeira!--there's only one more bottle!'

Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he was
about; and having drawn the cork in solemn silence, filled two glasses
and set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.

'You shall drink the other bottle, Wally,' he said, 'when you come to
good fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when the
start in life you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I pray
Heaven it may!--to a smooth part of the course you have to run, my
child. My love to you!'

Some of the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into his
throat; for he spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked his
glass against his nephew's. But having once got the wine to his lips, he
tossed it off like a man, and smacked them afterwards.

'Dear Uncle,' said the boy, affecting to make light of it, while the
tears stood in his eyes, 'for the honour you have done me, et cetera,
et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with three times
three and one cheer more. Hurrah! and you'll return thanks, Uncle, when
we drink the last bottle together; won't you?'

They clinked their glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his wine,
took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical an
air as he could possibly assume.

His Uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes
at last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied his
thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time.

'You see, Walter,' he said, 'in truth this business is merely a habit
with me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live if
I relinquished it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that
uniform was worn,' pointing out towards the little Midshipman, 'then
indeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition,
competition--new invention, new invention--alteration, alteration--the
world's gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where
my customers are.'

'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'

'Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for
instance--and that's ten days,' said Solomon, 'I don't remember more
than one person that has come into the shop.'

'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign--'

'That's the one,' said Solomon.

'Why Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to
Mile-End Turnpike?'

'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.'

'To be sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy.

'No. They didn't buy anything,' said Solomon, quietly.

'Nor want anything,' cried the boy.

'No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop,' said Solomon, in the
same tone.

'But there were two of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy, as if that were a
great triumph. 'You said only one.'

'Well, Wally,' resumed the old man, after a short pause: 'not being like
the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island, we can't live on a man
who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way
to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me.
I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the
same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not
the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my
stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned
shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen
behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise it
makes a long way ahead, confuses me.'

Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.

'Therefore, Wally--therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early
in the busy world, and on the world's track. I am only the ghost of this
business--its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost
will be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have
thought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only fragment of
the old connexion that stands by me, through long habit. Some people
suppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake they were right. But
whatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in such a
House as Dombey's are in the road to use well and make the most of. Be
diligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady independence,
and be happy!'

'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed I
will,' said the boy, earnestly.

'I know it,' said Solomon. 'I am sure of it,' and he applied himself
to a second glass of the old Madeira, with increased relish. 'As to the
Sea,' he pursued, 'that's well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won't do
in fact: it won't do at all. It's natural enough that you should think
about it, associating it with all these familiar things; but it won't
do, it won't do.'

Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he
talked of the sea, though; and looked on the seafaring objects about him
with inexpressible complacency.

'Think of this wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the
East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once
round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and
rolling seas:'

'The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,' said the boy.

'To be sure,' said Solomon,--'that this wine has passed through. Think
what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and
howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:'

'What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each other who shall lie
out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and
pitches, like mad!' cried his nephew.

'Exactly so,' said Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask that held
this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the--'

'In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty minutes past
twelve when the captain's watch stopped in his pocket; he lying
dead against the main-mast--on the fourteenth of February, seventeen
forty-nine!' cried Walter, with great animation.

'Ay, to be sure!' cried old Sol, 'quite right! Then, there were five
hundred casks of such wine aboard; and all hands (except the first mate,
first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work
to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing "Rule Britannia",
when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in
chorus.'

'But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast of
Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourth
of March, 'seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the
horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to and
fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set up
such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of devils,
some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in despair,
and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.'

'And when,' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus--'

'Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons,
Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,' cried Walter.

'The same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair
wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night--'

'There were two brothers on board,' interposed his nephew, speaking very
fast and loud, 'and there not being room for both of them in the only
boat that wasn't swamped, neither of them would consent to go, until
the elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then
the younger, rising in the boat, cried out, "Dear Edward, think of your
promised wife at home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap
down into my place!" and flung himself in the sea!'

The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen from
his seat in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remind
old Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist had
hitherto shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he
had evidently intended but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough,
and said, 'Well! suppose we change the subject.'

The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attraction
towards the marvellous and adventurous--of which he was, in some sort,
a distant relation, by his trade--had greatly encouraged the same
attraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put
before the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual
unaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable.
It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told,
expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure
and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.

But an addition to the little party now made its appearance, in the
shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a
hand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick
stick in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs.
He wore a loose black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a very
large coarse shirt collar, that it looked like a small sail. He was
evidently the person for whom the spare wine-glass was intended, and
evidently knew it; for having taken off his rough outer coat, and hung
up, on a particular peg behind the door, such a hard glazed hat as a
sympathetic person's head might ache at the sight of, and which left a
red rim round his own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight basin,
he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself down
behind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor; and had
been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three perhaps;
and was a very salt-looking man indeed.

His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands
with Uncle and nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic disposition, and
merely said:

'How goes it?'

'All well,' said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him.

He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, said with extraordinary
expression:

'The?'

'The,' returned the Instrument-maker.

Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think they
were making holiday indeed.

'Wal'r!' he said, arranging his hair (which was thin) with his hook, and
then pointing it at the Instrument-maker, 'Look at him! Love! Honour!
And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage, and when
found turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!'

He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference
to it, that he could not help repeating the words again in a low voice,
and saying he had forgotten 'em these forty year.

'But I never wanted two or three words in my life that I didn't know
where to lay my hand upon 'em, Gills,' he observed. 'It comes of not
wasting language as some do.'

The reflection perhaps reminded him that he had better, like young
Norval's father, "increase his store." At any rate he became silent, and
remained so, until old Sol went out into the shop to light it up, when
he turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark:--

'I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?'

'I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle,' returned the boy.

'And it would go!' said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in
the air with his hook. 'Lord, how that clock would go!'

For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in contemplating the pace of
this ideal timepiece, and sat looking at the boy as if his face were the
dial.

'But he's chock-full of science,' he observed, waving his hook towards
the stock-in-trade. 'Look'ye here! Here's a collection of 'em. Earth,
air, or water. It's all one. Only say where you'll have it. Up in a
balloon?  There you are. Down in a bell? There you are. D'ye want to put
the North Star in a pair of scales and weigh it? He'll do it for you.'

It may be gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle's reverence
for the stock of instruments was profound, and that his philosophy knew
little or no distinction between trading in it and inventing it.

'Ah!' he said, with a sigh, 'it's a fine thing to understand 'em. And
yet it's a fine thing not to understand 'em. I hardly know which
is best. It's so comfortable to sit here and feel that you might be
weighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very
devil with: and never know how.'

Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion
(which rendered it desirable to improve and expand Walter's mind), could
have ever loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance to this
prodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the manner in
which it opened up to view the sources of the taciturn delight he had
had in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten years. Becoming a
sadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace.

'Come!' cried the subject of this admiration, returning. 'Before you
have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.'

'Stand by!' said Ned, filling his glass. 'Give the boy some more.'

'No more, thank'e, Uncle!'

'Yes, yes,' said Sol, 'a little more. We'll finish the bottle, to the
House, Ned--Walter's House. Why it may be his House one of these
days, in part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master's
daughter.'

'"Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old you
will never depart from it,"' interposed the Captain. 'Wal'r! Overhaul
the book, my lad.'

'And although Mr Dombey hasn't a daughter,' Sol began.

'Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,' said the boy, reddening and laughing.

'Has he?' cried the old man. 'Indeed I think he has too.'

'Oh! I know he has,' said the boy. 'Some of 'em were talking about it in
the office today. And they do say, Uncle and Captain Cuttle,' lowering
his voice, 'that he's taken a dislike to her, and that she's left,
unnoticed, among the servants, and that his mind's so set all the while
upon having his son in the House, that although he's only a baby now,
he is going to have balances struck oftener than formerly, and the
books kept closer than they used to be, and has even been seen (when
he thought he wasn't) walking in the Docks, looking at his ships and
property and all that, as if he was exulting like, over what he and
his son will possess together. That's what they say. Of course, I don't
know.'

'He knows all about her already, you see,' said the instrument-maker.

'Nonsense, Uncle,' cried the boy, still reddening and laughing,
boy-like. 'How can I help hearing what they tell me?'

'The son's a little in our way at present, I'm afraid, Ned,' said the
old man, humouring the joke.

'Very much,' said the Captain.

'Nevertheless, we'll drink him,' pursued Sol. 'So, here's to Dombey and
Son.'

'Oh, very well, Uncle,' said the boy, merrily. 'Since you have
introduced the mention of her, and have connected me with her and have
said that I know all about her, I shall make bold to amend the toast. So
here's to Dombey--and Son--and Daughter!'

Not far from the Dombey house lives Solomon Gills, who sells instruments used for the navigation of ships. He lives with his nephew Walter. Walter has just been hired to work at Dombey & Son, and his uncle is hopeful that this will be a stepping stone to a successful career. Captain Ned Cuttle, a former seaman and friend of Solomon's, joins them. Cuttle and Gills joke about Walter someday marrying Dombey's daughter, though Walter mentions he has heard gossip that Dombey doesn't care about his daughter and is preoccupied with ensuring the prosperity of his business in preparation for his son someday inheriting it