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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 Alps or Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to

England. It is an honour I particularly desire and shall particularly

esteem.' 'Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle, who had been looking admiringly

at Fanny through her eye-glass, 'will esteem it, I am sure, no less.'

Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though no longer

alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism. But as her

father when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs Merdle's,

harped at their own family breakfast-table on his wish to know Mr

Merdle, with the contingent view of benefiting by the advice of that

wonderful man in the disposal of his fortune, she began to think it had

a real meaning, and to entertain a curiosity on her own part to see the

shining light of the time.

CHAPTER 8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves

for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched

out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling

pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in

Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard

there through the working hours.

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound

trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had

done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man,

he had necessarily to encounter every discouragement that the ruling

powers for a length of time had been able by any means to put in the way

of this class of culprits; but that was only reasonable self-defence in

the powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural

and mortal enemy of How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis

of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution

Office, of warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious

at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by

making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the

best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as

though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly

found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable,

too; for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles

abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very

reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a great

amount of earnestness, there might, in an exceeding short space of time,

be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post.

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached

to it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam cheering him

with a hearty co-operation, was a moral support to him, besides doing

good service in his business relation. The concern prospered, and the

partners were fast friends. But Daniel could not forget the old design

of so many years. It was not in reason to be expected that he should; if

he could have lightly forgotten it, he could never have conceived it,

or had the patience and perseverance to work it out. So Clennam thought,

when he sometimes observed him of an evening looking over the models and

drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put them

away again, that the thing was as true as it ever was.

To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment,

would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as among the implied

obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in

the subject which had been by chance awakened at the door of the

Circumlocution Office, originated in this feeling. He asked his partner

to explain the invention to him; 'having a lenient consideration,' he

stipulated, 'for my being no workman, Doyce.'

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman if you

had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for understanding such

things as I have met with.'

'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say

that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has improved

himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I don't

particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and clear

explanation, be judged by one class of man as another, provided he had

the qualification I have named.'

'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were exchanging

compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the advantage of as

plain an explanation as can be given.'

'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it so.'

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of

explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct force

and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of

demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy

to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous in the complete

irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that he must be a

visionary man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of his eye and

thumb over the plans, their patient stoppages at particular points,

their careful returns to other points whence little channels of

explanation had to be traced up, and his steady manner of making

everything good and everything sound at each important stage, before

taking his hearer on a line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself

from his description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I

discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed the

whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened

to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant touch of respect

was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he

was that it was established on irrefragable laws.

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was

quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the

oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye

kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--instrument for probing his

heart though it had been made for twelve long years--the less he could

reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more.

At length he said:

'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be sunk with

Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made of

it after a dozen years.'

'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of myself,

when I am one of so large a company.'

'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his

work-roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no. Better

put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one day. I can

put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I HAVE put it by. It's all at an

end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and

rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I am younger

than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am

fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You shall do exactly as you

have been doing since we have been together. I will add (as I easily

can) to what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done

to you; and, unless I have some success to report, you shall hear no

more of it.'

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged

that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he should

gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and should

yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of

striving to make way with the Circumlocution Office.

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his

presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much

as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal

difference being that the object of the latter class of public business

is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to

get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great

Department; and so the work of form-filling, corresponding, minuting,

memorandum-making, signing, counter-signing, counter-counter-signing,

referring backwards and forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and

zig-zag, recommenced.

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously

mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department got

into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament whom

the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under diabolic

possession, attacked on the merits of no individual case, but as an

Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right

honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House, would smite that

member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of the quantity of

business (for the prevention of business) done by the Circumlocution

Office. Then would that noble or right honourable Barnacle hold in his

hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, with the permission

of the House, he would entreat its attention. Then would the inferior

Barnacles exclaim, obeying orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then

would the noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this

little document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the

perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the Barnacle fry),

that within the short compass of the last financial half-year, this

much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen

thousand letters (Loud cheers), had written twenty-four thousand minutes

(Louder cheers), and thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen

memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected

with the Department, and himself a valuable public servant, had done

him the favour to make a curious calculation of the amount of stationery

consumed in it during the same period. It formed a part of this same

short document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the

sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would pave

the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave

nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and

laughter); while of tape--red tape--it had used enough to stretch, in