In London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a
suburb of note where in the days of William Shakespeare, author and stage-
player, there were Royal hunting-seats--howbeit no sport is left there now but
for hunters of men--Bleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much changed in
feature and in fortune, yet with some relish of ancient greatness about it. Two
or three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a few large dark rooms which had escaped
being walled and subdivided out of the recognition of their old proportions,
gave the Yard a character. It was inhabited by poor people, who set up their
rest among its faded glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents among the
fallen stones of the Pyramids; but there was a family sentimental feeling
prevalent in the Yard, that it had a character.
As if the aspiring city had become puffed up in the very ground on which it
stood, the ground had so risen about Bleeding Heart Yard that you got into it
down a flight of steps which formed no part of the original approach, and got
out of it by a low gateway into a maze of shabby streets, which went about and
about, tortuously ascending to the level again. At this end of the Yard and over
the gateway, was the factory of Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating like a
bleeding heart of iron, with the clink of metal upon metal. The opinion of the
Yard was divided respecting the derivation of its name. The more practical of
its inmates abided by the tradition of a murder; the gentler and more
imaginative inhabitants, including the whole of the tender sex, were loyal to
the legend of a young lady of former times closely imprisoned in her chamber by
a cruel father for remaining true to her own true love, and refusing to marry
the suitor he chose for her. The legend related how that the young lady used to
be seen up at her window behind the bars, murmuring a love-lorn song of which
the burden was, 'Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away,' until she died.
It was objected by the murderous party that this Refrain was notoriously the
invention of a tambour-worker, a spinster and romantic, still lodging in the
Yard. But, forasmuch as all favourite legends must be associated with the
affections, and as many more people fall in love than commit murder--which it
may be hoped, howsoever bad we are, will continue until the end of the world to
be the dispensation under which we shall live--the Bleeding Heart, Bleeding
Heart, bleeding away story, carried the day by a great majority. Neither party
would listen to the antiquaries who delivered learned lectures in the
neighbourhood, showing the Bleeding Heart to have been the heraldic cognisance
of the old family to whom the property had once belonged. And, considering that
the hour-glass they turned from year to year was filled with the earthiest and
coarsest sand, the Bleeding Heart Yarders had reason enough for objecting to be
despoiled of the one little golden grain of poetry that sparkled in it.
Down in to the Yard, by way of the steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr Meagles, and
Clennam. Passing along the Yard, and between the open doors on either hand, all
abundantly garnished with light children nursing heavy ones, they arrived at its
opposite boundary, the gateway. Here Arthur Clennam stopped to look about him
for the domicile of Plornish, plasterer, whose name, according to the custom of
Londoners, Daniel Doyce had never seen or heard of to that hour.
It was plain enough, nevertheless, as Little Dorrit had said; over a
lime-splashed gateway in the corner, within which Plornish kept a ladder and a
barrel or two. The last house in Bleeding Heart Yard which she had described as
his place of habitation, was a large house, let off to various tenants; but
Plornish ingeniously hinted that he lived in the parlour, by means of a painted
hand under his name, the forefinger of which hand (on which the artist had
depicted a ring and a most elaborate nail of the genteelest form) referred all
inquirers to that apartment.
Parting from his companions, after arranging another meeting with Mr Meagles,
Clennam went alone into the entry, and knocked with his knuckles at the
parlour-door. It was opened presently by a woman with a child in her arms, whose
unoccupied hand was hastily rearranging the upper part of her dress. This was
Mrs Plornish, and this maternal action was the action of Mrs Plornish during a
large part of her waking existence.
Was Mr Plornish at home? 'Well, sir,' said Mrs Plornish, a civil woman, 'not
to deceive you, he's gone to look for a job.'
'Not to deceive you' was a method of speech with Mrs Plornish. She would
deceive you, under any circumstances, as little as might be; but she had a trick
of answering in this provisional form.
'Do you think he will be back soon, if I wait for him?'
'I have been expecting him,' said Mrs Plornish, 'this half an hour, at any
minute of time. Walk in, sir.' Arthur entered the rather dark and close parlour
(though it was lofty too), and sat down in the chair she placed for him.
'Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,' said Mrs Plornish, 'and I take it
kind of you.'
He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as much in
his looks, elicited her explanation.
'It ain't many that comes into a poor place, that deems it worth their while
to move their hats,' said Mrs Plornish. 'But people think more of it than people
think.'
Clennam returned, with an uncomfortable feeling in so very slight a courtesy
being unusual, Was that all! And stooping down to pinch the cheek of another
young child who was sitting on the floor, staring at him, asked Mrs Plornish how
old that fine boy was?
'Four year just turned, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'He IS a fine little fellow,
ain't he, sir? But this one is rather sickly.' She tenderly hushed the baby in
her arms, as she said it. 'You wouldn't mind my asking if it happened to be a
job as you was come about, sir, would you?' asked Mrs Plornish wistfully.
She asked it so anxiously, that if he had been in possession of any kind of
tenement, he would have had it plastered a foot deep rather than answer No. But
he was obliged to answer No; and he saw a shade of disappointment on her face,
as she checked a sigh, and looked at the low fire. Then he saw, also, that Mrs
Plornish was a young woman, made somewhat slatternly in herself and her
belongings by poverty; and so dragged at by poverty and the children together,
that their united forces had already dragged her face into wrinkles.
'All such things as jobs,' said Mrs Plornish, 'seems to me to have gone
underground, they do indeed.' (Herein Mrs Plornish limited her remark to the
plastering trade, and spoke without reference to the Circumlocution Office and
the Barnacle Family.)
'Is it so difficult to get work?' asked Arthur Clennam.
'Plornish finds it so,' she returned. 'He is quite unfortunate. Really he
is.' Really he was. He was one of those many wayfarers on the road of life, who
seem to be afflicted with supernatural corns, rendering it impossible for them
to keep up even with their lame competitors.
A willing, working, soft hearted, not hard-headed fellow, Plornish took his
fortune as smoothly as could be expected; but it was a rough one. It so rarely
happened that anybody seemed to want him, it was such an exceptional case when
his powers were in any request, that his misty mind could not make out how it
happened. He took it as it came, therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of
difficulties, and tumbled out of them; and, by tumbling through life, got
himself considerably bruised.
'It's not for want of looking after jobs, I am sure,' said Mrs Plornish,
lifting up her eyebrows, and searching for a solution of the problem between the
bars of the grate; 'nor yet for want of working at them when they are to be got.
No one ever heard my husband complain of work.'
Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart Yard.
From time to time there were public complaints, pathetically going about, of
labour being scarce--which certain people seemed to take extraordinarily ill, as
though they had an absolute right to it on their own terms--but Bleeding Heart
Yard, though as willing a Yard as any in Britain, was never the better for the
demand. That high old family, the Barnacles, had long been too busy with their
great principle to look into the matter; and indeed the matter had nothing to do
with their watchfulness in out-generalling all other high old families except
the Stiltstalkings.
While Mrs Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord
returned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered man of thirty. Long
in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face, flannel-jacketed,
lime-whitened.
'This is Plornish, sir.'
'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little conversation
with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.'
Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, 'Ah, yes. Well.
He didn't know what satisfaction he could give any gentleman, respecting that
family. What might it be about, now?'
'I know you better,' said Clennam, smiling, 'than you suppose.'
Plornish observed, not Smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the pleasure of
being acquainted with the gentleman, neither.
'No,' said Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the best
authority; through Little Dorrit.--I mean,' he explained, 'Miss Dorrit.'
'Mr Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, Sir.'
'And I of you,' said Arthur.
'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.-- Why, yes,'
said Plornish, taking a chair, and lifting the elder child upon his knee, that
he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger over his head, 'I have
been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and in that way we come to know Miss
Dorrit. Me and my wife, we are well acquainted with Miss Dorrit.' 'Intimate!'
cried Mrs Plornish. Indeed, she was so proud of the acquaintance, that she had
awakened some bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an enormous
amount the sum for which Miss Dorrit's father had become insolvent. The Bleeding
Hearts resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.
'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting
acquainted with him, you see--why--I got acquainted with her,' said Plornish
tautologically.
'I see.'
'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have run to
seed in the Marshalsea jail! Why, perhaps you are not aware,' said Plornish,
lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse admiration of what he ought to
have pitied or despised, 'not aware that Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn't let
him know that they work for a living. No!' said Plornish, looking with a
ridiculous triumph first at his wife, and then all round the room. 'Dursn't let
him know it, they dursn't!'
'Without admiring him for that,' Clennam quietly observed, 'I am very sorry
for him.' The remark appeared to suggest to Plornish, for the first time, that
it might not be a very fine trait of character after all. He pondered about it
for a moment, and gave it up.
'As to me,' he resumed, 'certainly Mr Dorrit is as affable with me, I am
sure, as I can possibly expect. Considering the differences and distances
betwixt us, more so. But it's Miss Dorrit that we were speaking of.'
'True. Pray how did you introduce her at my mother's!'
Mr Plornish picked a bit of lime out of his whisker, put it between his lips,
turned it with his tongue like a sugar-plum, considered, found himself unequal
to the task of lucid explanation, and appealing to his wife, said, 'Sally, you
may as well mention how it was, old woman.'
'Miss Dorrit,' said Sally, hushing the baby from side to side, and laying her
chin upon the little hand as it tried to disarrange the gown again, 'came here
one afternoon with a bit of writing, telling that how she wished for needlework,
and asked if it would be considered any ill-conwenience in case she was to give
her address here.' (Plornish repeated, her address here, in a low voice, as if
he were making responses at church.) 'Me and Plornish says, No, Miss Dorrit, no
ill-conwenience,' (Plornish repeated, no ill- conwenience,) 'and she wrote it
in, according. Which then me and Plornish says, Ho Miss Dorrit!' (Plornish
repeated, Ho Miss Dorrit.) 'Have you thought of copying it three or four times,
as the way to make it known in more places than one? No, says Miss Dorrit, I
have not, but I will. She copied it out according, on this table, in a sweet
writing, and Plornish, he took it where he worked, having a job just then,'
(Plornish repeated job just then,) 'and likewise to the landlord of the Yard;
through which it was that Mrs Clennam first happened to employ Miss Dorrit.'
Plornish repeated, employ Miss Dorrit; and Mrs Plornish having come to an end,
feigned to bite the fingers of the little hand as she kissed it.
'The landlord of the Yard,' said Arthur Clennam, 'is--'
'He is Mr Casby, by name, he is,' said Plornish, 'and Pancks, he collects the
rents. That,' added Mr Plornish, dwelling on the subject with a slow
thoughtfulness that appeared to have no connection with any specific object, and
to lead him nowhere, 'that is about what they are, you may believe me or not, as
you think proper.'
'Ay?' returned Clennam, thoughtful in his turn. 'Mr Casby, too! An old
acquaintance of mine, long ago!'
Mr Plornish did not see his road to any comment on this fact, and made none.
As there truly was no reason why he should have the least interest in it, Arthur
Clennam went on to the present purport of his visit; namely, to make Plornish
the instrument of effecting Tip's release, with as little detriment as possible
to the self- reliance and self-helpfulness of the young man, supposing him to
possess any remnant of those qualities: without doubt a very wide stretch of
supposition. Plornish, having been made acquainted with the cause of action from
the Defendant's own mouth, gave Arthur to understand that the Plaintiff was a
'Chaunter'--meaning, not a singer of anthems, but a seller of horses--and that
he (Plornish) considered that ten shillings in the pound 'would settle
handsome,' and that more would be a waste of money. The Principal and instrument
soon drove off together to a stable-yard in High Holborn, where a remarkably
fine grey gelding, worth, at the lowest figure, seventy-five guineas (not taking
into account the value of the shot he had been made to swallow for the
improvement of his form), was to be parted with for a twenty-pound note, in
consequence of his having run away last week with Mrs Captain Barbary of
Cheltenham, who wasn't up to a horse of his courage, and who, in mere spite,
insisted on selling him for that ridiculous sum: or, in other words, on giving
him away. Plornish, going up this yard alone and leaving his Principal outside,
found a gentleman with tight drab legs, a rather old hat, a little hooked stick,
and a blue neckerchief (Captain Maroon of Gloucestershire, a private friend of
Captain Barbary); who happened to be there, in a friendly way, to mention these
little circumstances concerning the remarkably fine grey gelding to any real
judge of a horse and quick snapper-up of a good thing, who might look in at that
address as per advertisement. This gentleman, happening also to be the Plaintiff
in the Tip case, referred Mr Plornish to his solicitor, and declined to treat
with Mr Plornish, or even to endure his presence in the yard, unless he appeared
there with a twenty-pound note: in which case only, the gentleman would augur
from appearances that he meant business, and might be induced to talk to him. On
this hint, Mr Plornish retired to communicate with his Principal, and presently
came back with the required credentials. Then said Captain Maroon, 'Now, how
much time do you want to make the other twenty in? Now, I'll give you a month.'
Then said Captain Maroon, when that wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell what I'll do
with you. You shall get me a good bill at four months, made payable at a
banking-house, for the other twenty!' Then said Captain Maroon, when THAT
wouldn't suit, 'Now, come; Here's the last I've got to say to you. You shall
give me another ten down, and I'll run my pen clean through it.' Then said
Captain Maroon when THAT wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell you what it is, and this
shuts it up; he has used me bad, but I'll let him off for another five down and
a bottle of wine; and if you mean done, say done, and if you don't like it,
leave it.' Finally said Captain Maroon, when THAT wouldn't suit either, 'Hand
over, then!'--And in consideration of the first offer, gave a receipt in full
and discharged the prisoner.
'Mr Plornish,' said Arthur, 'I trust to you, if you please, to keep my
secret. If you will undertake to let the young man know that he is free, and to
tell him that you were employed to compound for the debt by some one whom you
are not at liberty to name, you will not only do me a service, but may do him
one, and his sister also.'
'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient. Your
wishes shall be attended to.'
'A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. A Friend who
hopes that for his sister's sake, if for no one else's, he will make good use of
his liberty.'
'Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.'
'And if you will be so good, in your better knowledge of the family, as to
communicate freely with me, and to point out to me any means by which you think
I may be delicately and really useful to Little Dorrit, I shall feel under an
obligation to you.'
'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a pleasure an
a--it'l be ekally a pleasure and a--' Finding himself unable to balance his
sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish wisely dropped it. He took Clennam's
card and appropriate pecuniary compliment.
He was earnest to finish his commission at once, and his Principal was in the
same mind. So his Principal offered to set him down at the Marshalsea Gate, and
they drove in that direction over Blackfriars Bridge. On the way, Arthur
elicited from his new friend a confused summary of the interior life of Bleeding
Heart Yard. They was all hard up there, Mr Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to
be sure. Well, he couldn't say how it was; he didn't know as anybody could say
how it was; all he know'd was, that so it was.
When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was, that
man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that he was poor
somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no more than you could
talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was better off said, and a good
many such people lived pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it
so he'd heerd, that they was 'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down
the Yard. For instance, if they see a man with his wife and children going to
Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you
was poor, my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What
was a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you
wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would be the worse
for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad. You was always at
it--if not with your right hand, with your left. What was they a doing in the
Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see. There was the girls and their mothers a
working at their sewing, or their shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their
waistcoat making, day and night and night and day, and not more than able to
keep body and soul together after all--often not so much. There was people of
pretty well all sorts of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet not
able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives, going and
being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and treated
altogether, than--Mr Plornish said manufacturers, but appeared to mean
malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a crumb of
comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know who was to blame
for it. He could tell you who suffered, but he couldn't tell you whose fault it
was. It wasn't HIS place to find out, and who'd mind what he said, if he did
find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put right by them what undertook that
line of business, and that it didn't come right of itself. And, in brief, his
illogical opinion was, that if you couldn't do nothing for him, you had better
take nothing from him for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was
about what it come to. Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did
Plornish turn the tangled skein of his estate about and about, like a blind man
who was trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they reached the
prison gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he rode away, how
many thousand Plornishes there might be within a day or two's journey of the
Circumlocution Office, playing sundry curious variations on the same tune, which
were not known by ear in that glorious institution.
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