BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY - CHAPTER 34 A Shoal of Barnacles

Mr Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the

cottage, and the day was fixed for the wedding. There was to be a

convocation of Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very

high and very large family might shed as much lustre on the

marriage as so dim an event was capable of receiving.

To have got the whole Barnacle family together would have been

impossible for two reasons. Firstly, because no building could

have held all the members and connections of that illustrious

house. Secondly, because wherever there was a square yard of

ground in British occupation under the sun or moon, with a public

post upon it, sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid

navigator could plant a flag-staff upon any spot of earth, and take

possession of it in the British name, but to that spot of earth, so

soon as the discovery was known, the Circumlocution Office sent out

a Barnacle and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were all over

the world, in every direction--despatch-boxing the compass.

But, while the so-potent art of Prospero himself would have failed

in summoning the Barnacles from every speck of ocean and dry land

on which there was nothing (except mischief) to be done and

anything to be pocketed, it was perfectly feasible to assemble a

good many Barnacles. This Mrs Gowan applied herself to do; calling

on Mr Meagles frequently with new additions to the list, and

holding conferences with that gentleman when he was not engaged (as

he generally was at this period) in examining and paying the debts

of his future son-in-law, in the apartment of scales and scoops.

One marriage guest there was, in reference to whose presence Mr

Meagles felt a nearer interest and concern than in the attendance

of the most elevated Barnacle expected; though he was far from

insensible of the honour of having such company. This guest was

Clennam. But Clennam had made a promise he held sacred, among the

trees that summer night, and, in the chivalry of his heart,

regarded it as binding him to many implied obligations. In

forgetfulness of himself, and delicate service to her on all

occasions, he was never to fail; to begin it, he answered Mr

Meagles cheerfully, 'I shall come, of course.'

His partner, Daniel Doyce, was something of a stumbling-block in Mr

Meagles's way, the worthy gentleman being not at all clear in his

own anxious mind but that the mingling of Daniel with official

Barnacleism might produce some explosive combination, even at a

marriage breakfast. The national offender, however, lightened him

of his uneasiness by coming down to Twickenham to represent that he

begged, with the freedom of an old friend, and as a favour to one,

that he might not be invited. 'For,' said he, 'as my business with

this set of gentlemen was to do a public duty and a public service,

and as their business with me was to prevent it by wearing my soul

out, I think we had better not eat and drink together with a show

of being of one mind.' Mr Meagles was much amused by his friend's

oddity; and patronised him with a more protecting air of allowance

than usual, when he rejoined: 'Well, well, Dan, you shall have your

own crotchety way.'

To Mr Henry Gowan, as the time approached, Clennam tried to convey

by all quiet and unpretending means, that he was frankly and

disinterestedly desirous of tendering him any friendship he would

accept. Mr Gowan treated him in return with his usual ease, and

with his usual show of confidence, which was no confidence at all.

'You see, Clennam,' he happened to remark in the course of

conversation one day, when they were walking near the Cottage

within a week of the marriage, 'I am a disappointed man. That you

know already.'

'Upon my word,' said Clennam, a little embarrassed, 'I scarcely

know how.'

'Why,' returned Gowan, 'I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a

family, or a connection, or whatever you like to call it, that

might have provided for me in any one of fifty ways, and that took

it into its head not to do it at all. So here I am, a poor devil

of an artist.'

Clennam was beginning, 'But on the other hand--' when Gowan took

him up.

'Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by a

beautiful and charming girl whom I love with all my heart.'

('Is there much of it?' Clennam thought. And as he thought it,

felt ashamed of himself.)

'And of finding a father-in-law who is a capital fellow and a

liberal good old boy. Still, I had other prospects washed and

combed into my childish head when it was washed and combed for me,

and I took them to a public school when I washed and combed it for

myself, and I am here without them, and thus I am a disappointed

man.'

Clennam thought (and as he thought it, again felt ashamed of

himself), was this notion of being disappointed in life, an

assertion of station which the bridegroom brought into the family

as his property, having already carried it detrimentally into his

pursuit? And was it a hopeful or a promising thing anywhere?

'Not bitterly disappointed, I think,' he said aloud.

'Hang it, no; not bitterly,' laughed Gowan. 'My people are not

worth that--though they are charming fellows, and I have the

greatest affection for them. Besides, it's pleasant to show them

that I can do without them, and that they may all go to the Devil.

And besides, again, most men are disappointed in life, somehow or

other, and influenced by their disappointment. But it's a dear

good world, and I love it!'

'It lies fair before you now,' said Arthur.

'Fair as this summer river,' cried the other, with enthusiasm, 'and

by Jove I glow with admiration of it, and with ardour to run a race

in it. It's the best of old worlds! And my calling! The best of

old callings, isn't it?'

'Full of interest and ambition, I conceive,' said Clennam.

'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the

imposition. I hope I may not break down in that; but there, my

being a disappointed man may show itself. I may not be able to

face it out gravely enough. Between you and me, I think there is

some danger of my being just enough soured not to be able to do

that.'

'To do what?' asked Clennam.

'To keep it up. To help myself in my turn, as the man before me

helps himself in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the

pretence as to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted

to my art, and giving up many solitary days to it, and abandoning

many pleasures for it, and living in it, and all the rest of it--in

short, to pass the bottle of smoke according to rule.'

'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it

is; and to think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it

the respect it deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your

vocation, Gowan, may really demand this suit and service. I

confess I should have thought that all Art did.'

'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other,

stopping to look at him, as if with irrepressible admiration.

'What a capital fellow! You have never been disappointed. That's

easy to see.'

It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly

resolved to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without pausing,

laid his hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went

on:

'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would

give any money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured

mist. But what I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we

fellows do, we do to sell. If we didn't want to sell it for the

most we can get for it, we shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to

be done; but it's easily enough done. All the rest is hocus-pocus.

Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a

disappointed man. You hear the truth.'

Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or

another, it sank into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that

he began to fear Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and

that so far he had gained little or nothing from the dismissal of

Nobody, with all his inconsistencies, anxieties, and

contradictions. He found a contest still always going on in his

breast between his promise to keep Gowan in none but good aspects

before the mind of Mr Meagles, and his enforced observation of

Gowan in aspects that had no good in them. Nor could he quite

support his own conscientious nature against misgivings that he

distorted and discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he

never sought those discoveries, and that he would have avoided them

with willingness and great relief. For he never could forget what

he had been; and he knew that he had once disliked Gowan for no

better reason than that he had come in his way.

Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage over,

Gowan and his young wife gone, and himself left to fulfil his

promise, and discharge the generous function he had accepted. This

last week was, in truth, an uneasy interval for the whole house.

Before Pet, or before Gowan, Mr Meagles was radiant; but Clennam

had more than once found him alone, with his view of the scales and

scoop much blurred, and had often seen him look after the lovers,

in the garden or elsewhere when he was not seen by them, with the

old clouded face on which Gowan had fallen like a shadow. In the

arrangement of the house for the great occasion, many little

reminders of the old travels of the father and mother and daughter

had to be disturbed and passed from hand to hand; and sometimes, in

the midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had had

together, even Pet herself would yield to lamenting and weeping.

Mrs Meagles, the blithest and busiest of mothers, went about

singing and cheering everybody; but she, honest soul, had her

flights into store rooms, where she would cry until her eyes were

red, and would then come out, attributing that appearance to

pickled onions and pepper, and singing clearer than ever. Mrs

Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded mind in Buchan's Domestic

Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits, and from moving

recollections of Minnie's infancy. When the latter was powerful

with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing that she

was not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she

solicited a sight of 'her child' in the kitchen; there, she would

bless her child's face, and bless her child's heart, and hug her

child, in a medley of tears and congratulations, chopping-boards,

rolling-pins, and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an old attached

servant, which is a very pretty tenderness indeed.

But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to be,

and it came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden to

the feast.

There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and

Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle

NEE Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter Days so long in coming, and

the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double-loaded with

accomplishments and ready to go off, and yet not going off with the

sharpness of flash and bang that might have been expected, but

rather hanging fire. There was Barnacle junior, also from the

Circumlocution Office, leaving the Tonnage of the country, which he

was somehow supposed to take under his protection, to look after

itself, and, sooth to say, not at all impairing the efficiency of

its protection by leaving it alone. There was the engaging Young

Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the family, also from

the Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping the occasion

along, and treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the

official forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do

it. There were three other Young Barnacles from three other

offices, insipid to all the senses, and terribly in want of

seasoning, doing the marriage as they would have 'done' the Nile,

Old Rome, the new singer, or Jerusalem.

But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite

Barnacle himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very

smell of Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite

Barnacle, who had risen to official heights on the wings of one

indignant idea, and that was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told

that it behoves a Minister of this free country to set bounds to

the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public

spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self-

reliance, of its people. That was, in other words, that this great

statesman was always yet to be told that it behoved the Pilot of

the ship to do anything but prosper in the private loaf and fish

trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard pumping, to keep

the ship above water without him. On this sublime discovery in the

great art How not to do it, Lord Decimus had long sustained the

highest glory of the Barnacle family; and let any ill-advised

member of either House but try How to do it by bringing in a Bill

to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and buried when Lord

Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said,

soaring into indignant majesty as the Circumlocution cheering

soared around him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it

behoved him as the Minister of this free country, to set bounds to

the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter the public

spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self-

reliance, of its people. The discovery of this Behoving Machine

was the discovery of the political perpetual motion. It never wore

out, though it was always going round and round in all the State

Departments.

And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was

William Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor

Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recipe

for How not to do it; sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it

fresh out of him, with a 'First, I will beg you, sir, to inform the

House what Precedent we have for the course into which the

honourable gentleman would precipitate us;' sometimes asking the

honourable gentleman to favour him with his own version of the

Precedent; sometimes telling the honourable gentleman that he

(William Barnacle) would search for a Precedent; and oftentimes

crushing the honourable gentleman flat on the spot by telling him

there was no Precedent. But Precedent and Precipitate were, under

all circumstances, the well-matched pair of battle-horses of this

able Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy honourable

gentleman had been trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to

precipitate William Barnacle into this--William Barnacle still put

it to the House, and (at second-hand or so) to the country, whether

he was to be precipitated into this. No matter that it was utterly

irreconcilable with the nature of things and course of events that

the wretched honourable gentleman could possibly produce a

Precedent for this--William Barnacle would nevertheless thank the

honourable gentleman for that ironical cheer, and would close with

him upon that issue, and would tell him to his teeth that there Was

NO Precedent for this. It might perhaps have been objected that

the William Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom or the earth it

bamboozled would never have been made, or, if made in a rash

mistake, would have remained blank mud. But Precedent and

Precipitate together frightened all objection out of most people.

And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had leaped

through twenty places in quick succession, and was always in two or

three at once, and who was the much-respected inventor of an art

which he practised with great success and admiration in all

Barnacle Governments. This was, when he was asked a Parliamentary

question on any one topic, to return an answer on any other. It

had done immense service, and brought him into high esteem with the

Circumlocution Office.

And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished

Parliamentary Barnacles, who had not as yet got anything snug, and

were going through their probation to prove their worthiness.

These Barnacles perched upon staircases and hid in passages,

waiting their orders to make houses or not to make houses; and they

did all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and barking, under

directions from the heads of the family; and they put dummy motions

on the paper in the way of other men's motions; and they stalled

disagreeable subjects off until late in the night and late in the

session, and then with virtuous patriotism cried out that it was

too late; and they went down into the country, whenever they were

sent, and swore that Lord Decimus had revived trade from a swoon,

and commerce from a fit, and had doubled the harvest of corn,

quadrupled the harvest of hay, and prevented no end of gold from

flying out of the Bank. Also these Barnacles were dealt, by the

heads of the family, like so many cards below the court-cards, to

public meetings and dinners; where they bore testimony to all sorts

of services on the part of their noble and honourable relatives,

and buttered the Barnacles on all sorts of toasts. And they stood,

under similar orders, at all sorts of elections; and they turned

out of their own seats, on the shortest notice and the most

unreasonable terms, to let in other men; and they fetched and

carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate heaps of

dirt, and were indefatigable in the public service. And there was

not a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, of places that might

fall vacant anywhere within half a century, from a lord of the

Treasury to a Chinese consul, and up again to a governor-general of

India, but as applicants for such places, the names of some or of

every one of these hungry and adhesive Barnacles were down.

It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles that

attended the marriage, for there were not two score in all, and

what is that subtracted from Legion! But the sprinkling was a

swarm in the Twickenham cottage, and filled it. A Barnacle

(assisted by a Barnacle) married the happy pair, and it behoved

Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle himself to conduct Mrs Meagles to

breakfast.

The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might have

been. Mr Meagles, hove down by his good company while he highly

appreciated it, was not himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that

did not improve him. The fiction that it was not Mr Meagles who

had stood in the way, but that it was the Family greatness, and

that the Family greatness had made a concession, and there was now

a soothing unanimity, pervaded the affair, though it was never

openly expressed. Then the Barnacles felt that they for their

parts would have done with the Meagleses when the present

patronising occasion was over; and the Meagleses felt the same for

their parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a disappointed man

who had his grudge against the family, and who, perhaps, had

allowed his mother to have them there, as much in the hope it might

give them some annoyance as with any other benevolent object, aired

his pencil and his poverty ostentatiously before them, and told

them he hoped in time to settle a crust of bread and cheese on his

wife, and that he begged such of them as (more fortunate than

himself) came in for any good thing, and could buy a picture, to

please to remember the poor painter. Then Lord Decimus, who was a

wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to be the

windiest creature here: proposing happiness to the bride and

bridegroom in a series of platitudes that would have made the hair

of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and trotting,

with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling

labyrinths of sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and

never so much as wanted to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could

not but feel that there was a person in company, who would have

disturbed his life-long sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full

official character, if such disturbance had been possible: while

Barnacle junior did, with indignation, communicate to two vapid

gentlemen, his relatives, that there was a feller here, look here,

who had come to our Department without an appointment and said he

wanted to know, you know; and that, look here, if he was to break

out now, as he might you know (for you never could tell what an

ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be up to next), and was to

say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment, you know, that

would be jolly; wouldn't it?

The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the

painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the

room with the two pictures (where the company were not), before

going with her to the threshold which she could never recross to be

the old Pet and the old delight, nothing could be more natural and

simple than the three were. Gowan himself was touched, and

answered Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan, take care of her, take care of

her!' with an earnest 'Don't be so broken-hearted, sir. By Heaven

I will!'

And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look

to Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the

carriage, and her husband waved his hand, and they were away for

Dover; though not until the faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown

and jet black curls, had rushed out from some hiding-place, and

thrown both her shoes after the carriage: an apparition which

occasioned great surprise to the distinguished company at the

windows.

The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and

the chief Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand

just then to send a mail or two which was in danger of going

straight to its destination, beating about the seas like the Flying

Dutchman, and to arrange with complexity for the stoppage of a good

deal of important business otherwise in peril of being done), went

their several ways; with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs

Meagles that general assurance that what they had been doing there,

they had been doing at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good,

which they always conveyed to Mr John Bull in their official

condescension to that most unfortunate creature.

A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the

father and mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one

remembrance to his aid, that really did him good.

'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look back

upon.'

'The past?' said Clennam.

'Yes--but I mean the company.'

It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it

really did him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often

repeating the remark in the course of the evening. 'Such high

company!'

Read next: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 35 What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand

Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 33 Mrs Merdle's Complaint

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