George Silverman\'s Explanation
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George Silverman's Explanation by Charles Dickens
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GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION
FIRST CHAPTER
IT happened in this wise -
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again,
without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow,
it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They
may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth
phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better.
SECOND CHAPTER
IT happened in THIS wise -
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former
opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. This is the
more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new
connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard
the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the
preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my
explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a
third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that
it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they
be of head or heart.
THIRD CHAPTER
NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon
it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that
is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of father's
Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different
in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I
recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-
tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will
be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and
that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-
pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of
bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her
eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and
hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a
three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would
pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money
home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my
ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces),
would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I
cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for
that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner
when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!' And the sting of
it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be
locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change
came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
it.
We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
corner, which we called 'the bed.' For three days mother lay upon
it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
sound frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side
to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died.
FOURTH CHAPTER
WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came
peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I
could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the
road-way, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around
me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly
little devil, I broke silence by saying, 'I am hungry and thirsty!'
'Does he know they are dead?' asked one of another.
'Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?' asked
a third of me severely.
'I don't know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that,
when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over
them. I am hungry and thirsty.' That was all I had to say about
it.
The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked
around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor,
thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great
vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and then they all
looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was
brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I
couldn't help it.
I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had
begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I
heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, 'My name is
Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.' Then the ring
split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad
all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman
and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the
vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself
carefully, and me copiously.
'He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just
dead too,' said Mr. Hawkyard.
I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner,
'Where's his houses?'
'Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,' said Mr.
Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my
devil out of me. 'I have undertaken a slight - a very slight -
trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of
mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon
myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.'
The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much
more favourable than their opinion of me.
'He shall be taught,' said Mr. Hawkyard, '(O, yes, he shall be
taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present? He may
be infected. He may disseminate infection.' The ring widened
considerably. 'What is to be done with him?'
He held some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no
word save 'Farm-house.' There was another sound several times
repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I
knew afterwards to be 'Hoghton Towers.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Hawkyard. 'I think that sounds promising; I think
that sounds hopeful. And he can be put by himself in a ward, for a
night or two, you say?'
It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he
who replied, Yes! It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm,
and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed
room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to
sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug
and blanket to cover me. Where I had enough to eat too, and was
shown how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to
me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was
put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags
were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared and disinfected in a
variety of ways.
When all this was done, - I don't know in how many days or how few,
but it matters not, - Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door,
remaining close to it, and said, 'Go and stand against the opposite
wall, George Silverman. As far off as you can. That'll do. How
do you feel?'
I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, and
didn't feel thirsty. That was the whole round of human feelings,
as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten.
'Well,' said he, 'you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to
be purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an
out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. You had better
not say much - in fact, you had better be very careful not to say
anything - about what your parents died of, or they might not like
to take you in. Behave well, and I'll put you to school; O, yes!
I'll put you to school, though I'm not obligated to do it. I am a
servant of the Lord, George; and I have been a good servant to him,
I have, these five-and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good
servant in me, and he knows it.'
What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine. As
little do I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent
member of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member
of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he
was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to know, on that
day in the ward, that the farmer's cart was waiting for me at the
street corner. I was not slow to get into it; for it was the first
ride I ever had in my life.
It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Preston streets
as long as they lasted; and, meanwhile, I may have had some small
dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was; but I doubt
it. Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who
would bury father and mother, or where they would be buried, or
when. The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the
covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as at the
ward superseded those questions.
The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me; and I found
that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-
road through a field. And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace,
and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and
passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in the
thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers:
which I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no specially in,
seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it;
assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin
that I knew, - poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the
cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls
pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them
might be killed for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether
the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying in the sunlight, could be goodly
porringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and
which he polished when he had done, according to my ward
experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shadows, passing over
that airy height on the bright spring day, were not something in
the nature of frowns, - sordid, afraid, unadmiring, - a small brute
to shudder at.
To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I
had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in
this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into
the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no
higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or
wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in
the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been
solitary often enough, but nothing better.
Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the
kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was my condition when I lay on
my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the
narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a
young vampire.
FIFTH CHAPTER
WHAT do I know of Hoghton Towers? Very little; for I have been
gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions. A house,
centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road
between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in
his hurry to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of
those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted
and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land
or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and
a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural
prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a counter-blast,
hinting at steam-power, powerful in two distances.
What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first peeped in at
the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the
mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its guardian ghost;
when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among
the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings
falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the
plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the
windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery
commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades
upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not
what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up
with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when
all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky
stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy
rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten
floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into
which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies
fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways;
when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of
fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never
dreamed of, - I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of
these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of
Hoghton Towers?
I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein have
I anticipated the answer. I knew that all these things looked
sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without
pity for me, 'Alas! poor worldly little devil!'
There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller
pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked in. They
were scuffling for some prey that was there; and, when they started
and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old
life (it had grown old already) in the cellar.
How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a
repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats? I hid in a
corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and
crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not
purely physical), and I tried to think about it. One of the farm-
ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help
me as it went on with its two horses up and down the field so
peacefully and quietly.
There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and
she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had
come into my mind, at our first dinner, that she might take the
fever from me. The thought had not disquieted me then. I had only
speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and
whether she would die. But it came into my mind now, that I might
try to prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her. I
knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the less
worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.
From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret
corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she
went to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them
calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it
again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of
hearing. I often watched for her at the dim windows; and, when I
saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier.
Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of
myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I felt, in
some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her, - by the pride
of making the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new
feeling, it insensibly softened about mother and father. It seemed
to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and
all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me
only, but sorrowful for mother and father as well. Therefore did I
cry again, and often too.
The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and
were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such
broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One night when
I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her
pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her
ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door. She had
heard the clink of the latch, and looked round.
'George,' she called to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my
birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys
and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be
sociable for once, George.'
'I am very sorry, miss,' I answered; 'but I - but, no; I can't
come.'
'You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,' she returned
disdainfully; 'and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never
speak to you again.'
As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I
felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
'Eh, lad!' said he; 'Sylvy's right. You're as moody and broody a
lad as never I set eyes on yet.'
I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said
coldly, 'Maybe not, maybe not! There, get thy supper, get thy
supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart's content again.'
Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for
the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could
have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue,
listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching
the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the
ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to
bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, 'They
will take no hurt from me,' - they would not have thought mine a
morose or an unsocial nature.
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be
of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an
inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or
worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself
to such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of
the studious and retired life of a poor scholar.
SIXTH CHAPTER
BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to
school, and told me to work my way. 'You are all right, George,'
he said. 'I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his
service for this five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows
the value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he
does!); and he'll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward.
That's what HE'll do, George. He'll do it for me.'
From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways
of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part.
As I grew a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I liked it less
and less. His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,
- as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word, - I found
distasteful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me; for I
had a dread that they were worldly.
As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good foundation,
and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing. When I had worked my way so
far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a
presentation to college and a fellowship. My health has never been
strong (some vapour from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I
think); and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to
be regarded - that is, by my fellow-students - as unsocial.
All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few miles
of Brother Hawkyard's congregation; and whenever I was what we
called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire.
Before the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place
of meeting these brothers and sisters were no better than the rest
of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly,
as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops,
and not speaking the truth, - I say, before this knowledge became
forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit,
their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of
heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and
littlenesses, greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the
frame of mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted
state of grace was the 'worldly' state, I did for a time suffer
tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-
devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom
of my non-appreciation.
Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and
generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a
table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He
was by trade a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a
crabbed face, a large dog's-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue
neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a
drysalter and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest
admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once)
bore him a jealous grudge.
Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to
read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and
customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously,
literally, exactly, from the life and the truth.
On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for,
and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother
Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:
'Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began,
that I didn't know a word of what I was going to say to you (and
no, I did not!), but that it was all one to me, because I knew the
Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
('That's it!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
('So he did!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And why?'
('Ah, let's have that!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty
years, and because he knows it. For five-and-thirty years! And he
knows it, mind you! I got those words that I wanted on account of
my wages. I got 'em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down! I
said, "Here's a heap of wages due; let us have something down, on
account." And I got it down, and I paid it over to you; and you
won't wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet
pocketankercher, but you'll put it out at good interest. Very
well. Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going
to conclude with a question, and I'll make it so plain (with the
help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather
hope!) as that the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your
heads, - which he would be overjoyed to do.'
('Just his way. Crafty old blackguard!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And the question is this, Are the angels learned?'
('Not they. Not a bit on it!' from Brother Gimblet, with the
greatest confidence.)
'Not they. And where's the proof? sent ready-made by the hand of
the Lord. Why, there's one among us here now, that has got all the
learning that can be crammed into him. I got him all the learning
that could be crammed into him. His grandfather' (this I had never
heard before) 'was a brother of ours. He was Brother Parksop.
That's what he was. Parksop; Brother Parksop. His worldly name
was Parksop, and he was a brother of this brotherhood. Then wasn't
he Brother Parksop?'