BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES - CHAPTER 11 A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me,

and as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you

no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may

not find leisure for even that, though I hope you will some day),

I am now going to devote an hour to writing to you again. This

time, I write from Rome.

We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so

long upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way,

and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place

called the Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know

that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very

comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first

saw it than you would have done, because you have been in many

different countries and have seen many different customs. Of

course it is a far, far better place--millions of times--than any

I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don't look at

it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see

that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home,

even if she had not told me so with great love for it.

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common

staircase, and it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan

paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look out,

and the walls have been all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by

others who have lived there before--oh,--I should think, for years!

There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red, which divides it,

and the part behind the curtain makes the private sitting-room.

When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had fallen

out of her hand, and she was looking up at the sky shining through

the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you,

but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor

so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be.

On account of Mr Gowan's painting Papa's picture (which I am not

quite convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not

seen him doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her

since then than I might have had without this fortunate chance.

She is very much alone. Very much alone indeed.

Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day,

when it happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five

o'clock in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her

solitary dinner had been brought in from somewhere, over a kind of

brazier with a fire in it, and she had no company or prospect of

company, that I could see, but the old man who had brought it. He

was telling her a long story (of robbers outside the walls being

taken up by a stone statue of a Saint), to entertain her--as he

said to me when I came out, 'because he had a daughter of his own,

though she was not so pretty.'

I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I

have to say about her. He must admire her beauty, and he must be

proud of her, for everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her,

and I do not doubt that he is--but in his way. You know his way,

and if it appears as careless and discontented in your eyes as it

does in mine, I am not wrong in thinking that it might be better

suited to her. If it does not seem so to you, I am quite sure I am

wholly mistaken; for your unchanged poor child confides in your

knowledge and goodness more than she could ever tell you if she was

to try. But don't be frightened, I am not going to try.

Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan's unsettled and

dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little.

He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up

and throws them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without

caring about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during

the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could

be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief

in himself. Is it so? I wonder what you will say when you come to

this! I know how you will look, and I can almost hear the voice in

which you would tell me on the Iron Bridge.

Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best

company here--though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked

it when he is with it--and she sometimes accompanies him, but

lately she has gone out very little. I think I have noticed that

they have an inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she had

made some great self-interested success in marrying Mr Gowan,

though, at the same time, the very same people, would not have

dreamed of taking him for themselves or their daughters. Then he

goes into the country besides, to think about making sketches; and

in all places where there are visitors, he has a large acquaintance

and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a friend who is

much in his society both at home and away from home, though he

treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his

behaviour to him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so),

that she does not like this friend. He is so revolting to me, too,

that his being away from here, at present, is quite a relief to my

mind. How much more to hers!

But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have resolved

to tell you so much while I am afraid it may make you a little

uncomfortable without occasion, is this. She is so true and so

devoted, and knows so completely that all her love and duty are his

for ever, that you may be certain she will love him, admire him,

praise him, and conceal all his faults, until she dies. I believe

she conceals them, and always will conceal them, even from herself.

She has given him a heart that can never be taken back; and however

much he may try it, he will never wear out its affection. You know

the truth of this, as you know everything, far far better than I;

but I cannot help telling you what a nature she shows, and that you

can never think too well of her.

I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are

such friends now that I do so when we are quietly together, and she

speaks to me by my name--I mean, not my Christian name, but the

name you gave me. When she began to call me Amy, I told her my

short story, and that you had always called me Little Dorrit. I

told her that the name was much dearer to me than any other, and so

she calls me Little Dorrit too.

Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may

not know that she has a baby son. He was born only two days ago,

and just a week after they came. It has made them very happy.

However, I must tell you, as I am to tell you all, that I fancy

they are under a constraint with Mr Gowan, and that they feel as if

his mocking way with them was sometimes a slight given to their

love for her. It was but yesterday, when I was there, that I saw

Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and go out, as if he was

afraid that he might say so, unless he prevented himself by that

means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate, good-humoured,

and reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in him not to

think of them a little more.

I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked

at first as if I was taking on myself to understand and explain so

much, that I was half inclined not to send it. But when I thought

it over a little, I felt more hopeful for your knowing at once that

I had only been watchful for you, and had only noticed what I think

I have noticed, because I was quickened by your interest in it.

Indeed, you may be sure that is the truth.

And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and

have little left to say.

We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can

hardly think how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with

me. She has a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from

Switzerland, and then all the way from Venice, and who has just

confided to me that he means to follow her everywhere. I was much

confused by his speaking to me about it, but he would. I did not

know what to say, but at last I told him that I thought he had

better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell him this) is much too

spirited and clever to suit him. Still, he said he would, all the

same. I have no lover, of course.

If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will

perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off without

telling me something about her travels, and surely it is time she

did. I think it is indeed, but I don't know what to tell you.

Since we left Venice we have been in a great many wonderful places,

Genoa and Florence among them, and have seen so many wonderful

sights, that I am almost giddy when I think what a crowd they make.

But you can tell me so much more about them than I can tell you,

that why should I tire you with my accounts and descriptions?

Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar

difficulties in my travelling mind were before, I will not be a

coward now. One of my frequent thoughts is this:-- Old as these

cities are, their age itself is hardly so curious, to my

reflections, as that they should have been in their places all

through those days when I did not even know of the existence of

more than two or three of them, and when I scarcely knew of

anything outside our old walls. There is something melancholy in

it, and I don't know why. When we went to see the famous leaning

tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings

near it looked so old, and the earth and the sky looked so young,

and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not

at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought,

'O how many times when the shadow of the wall was falling on our

room, and when that weary tread of feet was going up and down the

yard--O how many times this place was just as quiet and lovely as

it is to-day!' It quite overpowered me. My heart was so full that

tears burst out of my eyes, though I did what I could to restrain

them. And I have the same feeling often--often.

Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear

to myself to have dreamed more than before, I have always dreamed

of myself as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say.

No, but that is not what I mean. I have always dreamed of myself

as a child learning to do needlework. I have often dreamed of

myself as back there, seeing faces in the yard little known, and

which I should have thought I had quite forgotten; but, as often as

not, I have been abroad here--in Switzerland, or France, or Italy--

somewhere where we have been--yet always as that little child. I

have dreamed of going down to Mrs General, with the patches on my

clothes in which I can first remember myself. I have over and over

again dreamed of taking my place at dinner at Venice when we have

had a large company, in the mourning for my poor mother which I

wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it was

threadbare and would mend no more. It has been a great distress to

me to think how irreconcilable the company would consider it with

my father's wealth, and how I should displease and disgrace him and

Fanny and Edward by so plainly disclosing what they wished to keep

secret. But I have not grown out of the little child in thinking

of it; and at the self-same moment I have dreamed that I have sat

with the heart-ache at table, calculating the expenses of the

dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how they were

ever to be made good. I have never dreamed of the change in our

fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me

that memorable morning to break it; I have never even dreamed of

you.

Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of you--and

others--so much by day, that I have no thoughts left to wander

round you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer

from home-sickness--that I long so ardently and earnestly for home,

as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. I cannot bear

to turn my face further away from it. My heart is a little

lightened when we turn towards it, even for a few miles, and with

the knowledge that we are soon to turn away again. So dearly do I

love the scene of my poverty and your kindness. O so dearly, O so

dearly!

Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are

all fond of the life here (except me), and there are no plans for

our return. My dear father talks of a visit to London late in this

next spring, on some affairs connected with the property, but I

have no hope that he will bring me with him.

I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General's

instruction, and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used to be. I

have begun to speak and understand, almost easily, the hard

languages I told you about. I did not remember, at the moment when

I wrote last, that you knew them both; but I remembered it

afterwards, and it helped me on. God bless you, dear Mr Clennam.

Do not forget your ever grateful and affectionate

LITTLE DORRIT.

P.S.--Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best

remembrance in which you can hold her. You cannot think too

generously or too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time.

Please, if you should see him, give him your Little Dorrit's kind

regard. He was very good to Little D.

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