Chương Chương 20 · The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five

. The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five

hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse stage-coach by

which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about

the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was

treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything:

otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I

might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly,

crooked, narrow, and dirty.

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and

he had written after it on his card, “just out of Smithfield, and close

by the coach-office.” Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to

have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed

me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier

of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on

his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old

weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a

work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets

outside, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how many footmen to

hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from

yielding to the temptation.

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a

straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the

horses’ nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman

beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop

we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open

door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.

“How much?” I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, “A shilling—unless you wish to make it more.”

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.

“Then it must be a shilling,” observed the coachman. “I don’t want to

get into trouble. _I_ know _him_!” He darkly closed an eye at Mr.

Jaggers’s name, and shook his head.

When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the

ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his

mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in my

hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?

“He is not,” returned the clerk. “He is in Court at present. Am I

addressing Mr. Pip?”

I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

“Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room. He couldn’t say how

long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time

being valuable, that he won’t be longer than he can help.”

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner

chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a

velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on

being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.

“Go and wait outside, Mike,” said the clerk.

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk

shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,

and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most

dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head,

and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted

themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers

about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd

objects about, that I should not have expected to see,—such as an old

rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and

packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly

swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed

chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it,

like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and

bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the

clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the

wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with

shoulders. I recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled

forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being

turned out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers’s

chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I

called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to

everybody else’s disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many

other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have

the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what

was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came

there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers’s

family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such

ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the

blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.

Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits

may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and

grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in

Mr. Jaggers’s close room, until I really could not bear the two casts

on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers’s chair, and got up and went out.

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I

waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into

Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being

all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to

me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a

street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me

from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate

Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered

with straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and

from the quantity of people standing about smelling strongly of spirits

and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk

minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a

trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half

a crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice

in his wig and robes,—mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and

presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence. As I

declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as

to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also

where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors’

Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest

of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that “four on ’em”

would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the

morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a

sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice’s

proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his

pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not

belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had

bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought

myself well rid of him for a shilling.

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and I

found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the tour

of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I became

aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well as