MR. GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of
considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model.
He intended every child in it to be a model - just as the young Gradgrinds were
all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had
been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost
as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room.
The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a
remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white
figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact forbid! I
only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows
how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it
into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon
before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly
jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little
Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at
five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven
Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever
associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who
tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with
that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those
celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating
quadruped with several stomachs.
To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind
directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware trade
before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a suitable
opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was
situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great town - called Coketown in the
present faithful guide-book.
A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was. Not the
least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in the
landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal
windows, as its master's heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast
up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on
that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing;
four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant
avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account- book. Gas and ventilation,
drainage and water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders,
fire-proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all
their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in various
departments of science too. They had a little conchological cabinet, and a
little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the
specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked
as though they might have been broken from the parent substances by those
tremendously hard instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle
legend of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If the
greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it for good
gracious goodness' sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped it!
Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was an
affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably have described
himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a definition) as 'an
eminently practical' father. He had a particular pride in the phrase eminently
practical, which was considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever
the public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting,
some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently
practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend.
He knew it to be his due, but his due was acceptable.
He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which was
neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears were invaded
by the sound of music. The clashing and banging band attached to the
horse-riding establishment, which had there set up its rest in a wooden
pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the temple,
proclaimed to mankind that it was 'Sleary's Horse-riding' which claimed their
suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow,
in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss
Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill
announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments with her graceful equestrian
Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders
which must be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to 'elucidate
the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs.'
He was also to exhibit 'his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five
hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus forming a
fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or any
other country, and which having elicited such rapturous plaudits from
enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.' The same Signor Jupe was to
'enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste
Shaksperean quips and retorts.' Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in
his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the highly
novel and laughable hippo- comedietta of The Tailor's Journey to Brentford.'
Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed on
as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his
thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction. But, the turning of the
road took him by the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of
children were congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in
at the hidden glories of the place.
This brought him to a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,' said he,
'attracting the young rabble from a model school.'
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young
rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child he knew
by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly
seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all
her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas
abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian
Tyrolean flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family was
thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:
'Louisa!! Thomas!!'
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father with more
boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself
up to be taken home like a machine.
'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr. Gradgrind, leading
each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'
'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.
'What it was like?'
'Yes, father.'
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the
girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light
with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination
keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the
brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful
flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a
blind face groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would seem
to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked at her. She
was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he thought in his eminently practical
way) but for her bringing-up.
'Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe
that you, with your education and resources, should have brought your sister to
a scene like this.'
'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to come.'
'I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It makes Thomas no
better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.'
She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
'You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open; Thomas and
you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and you, who have been
trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and you, here!' cried Mr. Gradgrind.
'In this degraded position! I am amazed.'
'I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.
'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.
'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'
'Say not another word,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'You are childish. I will
hear no more.' He did not speak again until they had walked some half-a-mile in
silence, when he gravely broke out with: 'What would your best friends say,
Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby
say?' At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable
for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before
he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!
'What,' he repeated presently, 'would Mr. Bounderby say?' All the way to
Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home, he
repeated at intervals 'What would Mr. Bounderby say?' - as if Mr. Bounderby had
been Mrs. Grundy.
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