Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she retraced her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too easily into her father’s house. But so many and such varieties of people did the same, through Mr. Dorrit’s participation in his elder daughter’s society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case. A perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance, had seized the House of Dorrit.

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They were usually going away again tomorrow or next week, and rarely knew their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or went where they said they would go: in all this again, very like the prison debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and disparaged a place while they pretended to like it: which was exactly the Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went away by people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that again was the Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the College and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still, always like the people in the Marshalsea.

The period of the family’s stay at Venice came, in its course, to an end, and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a repetition of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more haggard as they went on, and bringing them at length to where the very air was diseased, they passed to their destination. A fine residence had been taken for them on the Corso, and there they took up their abode, in a city where everything seemed to be trying to stand still forever on the ruins of something else⁠—except the water, which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its glorious multitude of fountains.

Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the upper hand. Everybody was walking about St. Peter’s and the Vatican on somebody else’s cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody else’s sieve. Nobody said what anything was, but everybody said what the Mrs. Generals, Mr. Eustace, or somebody else said it was. The whole body of travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr. Eustace and his attendants, to have the entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs and palaces and senate halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded moderns were carefully feeling their way, incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism in the endeavour to set their lips according to the received form. Mrs. General was in her pure element. Nobody had an opinion. There was a formation of surface going on around her on an amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage or honest free speech in it.

Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on Little Dorrit’s notice very shortly after their arrival. They received an early visit from Mrs. Merdle, who led that extensive department of life in the Eternal City that winter; and the skilful manner in which she and Fanny fenced with one another on the occasion, almost made her quiet sister wink, like the glittering of small-swords.

“So delighted,” said Mrs. Merdle, “to resume an acquaintance so inauspiciously begun at Martigny.”

“At Martigny, of course,” said Fanny. “Charmed, I am sure!”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Merdle, “from my son Edmund Sparkler, that he has already improved that chance occasion. He has returned quite transported with Venice.”

“Indeed?” returned the careless Fanny. “Was he there long?”

“I might refer that question to Mr. Dorrit,” said Mrs. Merdle, turning the bosom towards that gentleman; “Edmund having been so much indebted to him for rendering his stay agreeable.”

“Oh, pray don’t speak of it,” returned Fanny. “I believe Papa had the pleasure of inviting Mr. Sparkler twice or thrice⁠—but it was nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house, that if he had that pleasure, it was less than nothing.”

“Except, my dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, “except⁠—ha⁠—as it afforded me unusual gratification to⁠—hum⁠—show by any means, however slight and worthless, the⁠—ha, hum⁠—high estimation in which, in⁠—ha⁠—common with the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and princely a character as Mr. Merdle’s.”

The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner. “Mr. Merdle,” observed Fanny, as a means of dismissing Mr. Sparkler into the background, “is quite a theme of Papa’s, you must know, Mrs. Merdle.”

“I have been⁠—ha⁠—disappointed, madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, “to understand from Mr. Sparkler that there is no great⁠—hum⁠—probability of Mr. Merdle’s coming abroad.”

“Why, indeed,” said Mrs. Merdle, “he is so much engaged and in such request, that I fear not. He has not been able to get abroad for years. You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually abroad for a long time.”

“Oh dear yes,” drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. “An immense number of years.”

“So I should have inferred,” said Mrs. Merdle.

“Exactly,” said Fanny.

“I trust, however,” resumed Mr. Dorrit, “that if I have not the⁠—hum⁠—great advantage of becoming known to Mr. Merdle on this side of the