Book II - Chapter I. Five Years Later

by Charles Dickens

　　Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in theyear one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, verydark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place,moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House wereproud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness,proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of itseminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express convictionthat, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable.This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashedat more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wantedno elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted noembellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might;but Tellson's, thank Heaven!--

　　Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on thequestion of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was muchon a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sonsfor suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long beenhighly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

　　Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphantperfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idioticobstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson'sdown two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop,with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your chequeshake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature bythe dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mudfrom Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own ironbars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your businessnecessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species ofCondemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life,until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you couldhardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of,or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew upyour nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Yourbank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing intorags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouringcesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a dayor two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made ofkitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of theirparchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of familypapers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a greatdining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in theyear one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters writtento you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newlyreleased from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by theheads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocityworthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.

　　But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in voguewith all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's.Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's?Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad notewas put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death;the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; theholder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put toDeath; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders ofthree-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put toDeath. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--itmight almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly thereverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of eachparticular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be lookedafter. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business,its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laidlow before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of beingprivately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what littlelight the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.

　　Cramped in all kinds of dun cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, theoldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took ayoung man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till hewas old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he hadthe full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was hepermitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, andcasting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of theestablishment.

　　Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was anodd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as thelive sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours,unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: agrisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. Peopleunderstood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated theodd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in thatcapacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. Hissurname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncingby proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church ofHounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry.

　　The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley,Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy Marchmorning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncherhimself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes:apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from theinvention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

　　Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, andwere but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glassin it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept.Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he layabed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups andsaucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a veryclean white cloth was spread.

　　Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequinat home. At fast, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to rolland surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spikyhair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At whichjuncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:

　　"Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!"

　　A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees ina corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she wasthe person referred to.

　　"What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're atit agin, are you?"

　　After hailing the mom with this second salutation, he threw a boot atthe woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introducethe odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy,that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with cleanboots, he often got up next morning to find the same bootscovered with clay.

　　"What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missinghis mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?"

　　"I was only saying my prayers."

　　"Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean byflopping yourself down and praying agin me?"

　　"I was not praying against you; I was praying for you."

　　"You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with.Here! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying aginyour father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, myson. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going andflopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may besnatched out of the mouth of her only child."

　　Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and,turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of hispersonal board.

　　"And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher,with unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of your prayers may be?Name the price that you put your prayers at!"

　　"They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that."

　　"Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher."They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no,I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it.I'm not a going to be made unlucky by your sneaking.If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favourof your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If Ihad had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any buta unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week insteadof being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwentedinto the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who allthis time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what withpiety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last weekinto as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with!Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keepa eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of moreflopping, give me a call. For, I tell you," here he addressed hiswife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am asrickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines isstrained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for thepain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none thebetter for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at itfrom morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket,and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!"

　　Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too.You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husbandand child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparksfrom the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betookhimself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business.In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes,and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did,kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed thatpoor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet,where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop,mother. --Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm,darting in again with an undutiful grin.

　　Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to hisbreakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particularanimosity.

　　"Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?"

　　His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing."

　　"Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he ratherexpected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife'spetitions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home.I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!"

　　Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at aparty which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncherworried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like anyfour-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothedhis ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-likean exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forthto the occupation of the day.

　　It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favouritedescription of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consistedof a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, whichstool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried everymorning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest TempleBar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw thatcould be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wetfrom the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day.On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-streetand the Temple, as the Bar itself,--and was almost as in-looking.

　　Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's,Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with youngJerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through theBar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description onpassing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Fatherand son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at themorning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to oneanother as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblanceto a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by theaccidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat outstraw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were asrestlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street.

　　The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached toTellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word wasgiven:

　　"Porter wanted!"

　　"Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!"

　　Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself onthe stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw hisfather had been chewing, and cogitated.

　　"Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!" muttered young Jerry."Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get noiron rust here!"