Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
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Chapter 1
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian
name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names
nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called
myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the
authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe
Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my
father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either
of them (for their days were long before the days of
photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were
like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.
The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd
idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly
black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription,
‘Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,’ I drew a childish
conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To
five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long,
which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and
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were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine -
who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in
that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I
religiously entertained that they had all been born on their
backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had
never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river,
within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My
first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of
things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found
out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with
nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of
this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were
dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew,
Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the
aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat
wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes
and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was
the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the
wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle
of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was
Pip. ‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man
started up from among the graves at the side of the church
porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’
3
A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on
his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and
with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been
soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by
stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by
briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled;
and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by
the chin.
‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray
don’t do it, sir.’
‘Tell us your name!’ said the man. ‘Quick!’
‘Pip, sir.’
‘Once more,’ said the man, staring at me. ‘Give it
mouth!’
‘Pip. Pip, sir.’
‘Show us where you live,’ said the man. ‘Pint out the
place!’
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore
among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from
the church. The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned meupside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing
in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to
itself - for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go
4
head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my
feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated
on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread
ravenously.
‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what
fat cheeks you ha’ got.’
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time
undersized for my years, and not strong.
‘Darn me if I couldn’t eat em,’ said the man, with a
threatening shake of his head, ‘and if I han’t half a mind
to’t!’
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and
held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me;
partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from
crying.
‘Now lookee here!’ said the man. ‘Where’s your
mother?’
‘There, sir!’ said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked
over his shoulder.
‘There, sir!’ I timidly explained. ‘Also Georgiana.
That’s my mother.’
‘Oh!’ said he, coming back. ‘And is that your father
alonger your mother?’
5
‘Yes, sir,’ said I; ‘him too; late of this parish.’
‘Ha!’ he muttered then, considering. ‘Who d’ye live
with - supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t
made up my mind about?’
‘My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery,
the blacksmith, sir.’
‘Blacksmith, eh?’ said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he
came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and
tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes
looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine
looked most helplessly up into his.
‘Now lookee here,’ he said, ‘the question being
whether you’re to be let to live. You know what a file is?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you know what wittles is?’
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so
as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
‘You get me a file.’ He tilted me again. ‘And you get
me wittles.’ He tilted me again. ‘You bring ‘em both to
me.’ He tilted me again. ‘Or I’ll have your heart and liver
out.’ He tilted me again.
6
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to
him with both hands, and said, ‘If you would kindly please
to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and
perhaps I could attend more.’
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the
church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held
me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the
stone, and went on in these fearful terms:
‘You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and
them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery
over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word
or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a
person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let
to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any
partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and
your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain’t
alone, as you may think I am.
There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of
getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in
wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young
man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may
tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may
7
think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man
will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him
open. I am a-keeping that young man from harming of
you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it
wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside.
Now, what do you say?’
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get
him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come
to him at the Battery, early in the morning.
‘Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!’ said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
‘Now,’ he pursued, ‘you remember what you’ve
undertook, and you remember that young man, and you
get home!’ ‘Goo-good night, sir,’ I faltered.
‘Much of that!’ said he, glancing about him over the
cold wet flat. ‘I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!’
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in
both his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself
together - and limped towards the low church wall. As I
saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and
among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he
looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands
8
of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their
graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it,
like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then
turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I
set my face towards home, and made the best use of my
legs.
But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw
him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself
in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet
among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and
there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or
the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line
then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just
another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so
black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines
and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river
I could faintly make out the only two black things in all
the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of
these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an
unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you
were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging
to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping
on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life,
9
and come down, and going back to hook himself up
again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as
I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I
wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round
for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him.
But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without
stopping.
Chapter 2
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty
years older than I, and had established a great reputation
with herself and the neighbours because she had brought
me up ‘by hand.’ Having at that time to find out for
myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to
have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit
of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I
supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by
hand.She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I
had a general impression that she must have made Joe
Gargery marry her by hand.
Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going,
foolish, dear fellow - a sort of Hercules in strength, and
also in weakness.
10
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such
a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to
wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a
nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and
almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her
figure behind with two loops, and having a square
impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and
needles.
She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a
strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so
much. Though I really see no reason why she should have
worn it at all: or why, if she did wear it at all, she should
not have taken it off, every day of her life.
Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden
house, as many of the dwellings in our country were -
most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the
churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting
alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and
having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to
me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped
in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.
‘Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you,
Pip. And she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.’
‘Is she?’
‘Yes, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler
with her.’ At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great
11
depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of
cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
‘She sot down,’ said Joe, ‘and she got up, and she made
a grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she
did,’ said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower
bars with the poker, and looking at it: ‘she Ram-paged
out, Pip.’
‘Has she been gone long, Joe?’ I always treated him as a
larger species of child, and as no more than my equal.
‘Well,’ said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, ‘she’s
been on the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes,
Pip. She’s a- coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and
have the jack-towel betwixt you.’
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Januszek66