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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going home upon a dull September evening, observed at a distance by Arthur Clennam. This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Her original timidity had grown with this concealment, and her light step and her little figure shunned the thronged streets while they passed along them.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea at twenty-two. With a still surviving attachment to the one miserable yard and block of houses as her birthplace and home,

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

He yielded to it in that light only, when he submitted to her entreaties, backed by those of his uncle and sister. There was no want of precedent for his return; it was accounted for to the father in the usual way;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip’s graceless feet.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

‘Ah! But that’s not the worst of it.’ ‘Not the worst of it?’ ‘Don’t look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back, you see; but—don’t look so startled—I have come back in what I may call a new way. I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in now, as one of the regulars.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any questions. He saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry. ‘I am afraid, Amy, you’ll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!’ ‘I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him once. A whisper passed among the elder collegians that he had been seen at a mock auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for massive silver, and paying for them with the greatest liberality in bank notes;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

At length, after another interval of successorship to Mrs Bangham, he found a pursuit for himself, and announced it. ‘Amy, I have got a situation.’ ‘Have you really and truly, Tip?’ ‘All right. I shall do now. You needn’t look anxious about me any more, old girl.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

‘God bless you, dear Tip. Don’t be too proud to come and see us, when you have made your fortune.’ ‘All right!’ said Tip, and went. But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her brother’s rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes, she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he was tired of nothing to do,

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs Bangham succession, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend, got him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade, into the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a stockbroker’s,

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Tip languished in Clifford’s Inns for six months, and at the expiration of that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets, and incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back again.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as they passed in and out. He put this second one so perseveringly that a stool and twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the office of an attorney in a great National Palladium called the Palace Court;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of poor Tip, and had even gone so far with the view of averting their fulfilment, as to sound Tip in reference to the expediency of running away and going to serve his country.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

‘Dear Bob,’ said she, ‘what is to become of poor Tip?’ His name was Edward, and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs Bangham in executing commissions, and out of the slang interchange with very doubtful companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

‘Well, Amy, well. I don’t quite follow you, but it’s natural I suppose that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should, too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way. Good, good. I’ll not meddle; don’t mind me.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

‘A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and look after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You all go out so much; you all go out so much.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary for the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the Father. ‘Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

He had been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days; and when he fell with his brother, resorted for support to playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the theatre in which his niece became a dancer;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family group—ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty—on whom her protection devolved.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

So, over and above other daily cares, the Child of the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the Father of the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of character.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

‘I am afraid you are so weak, you see,’ the milliner objected. ‘I don’t think I am weak, ma’am.’ ‘And you are so very, very little, you see,’ the milliner objected. ‘Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,’ returned the Child of the Marshalsea;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

‘I am sorry I haven’t got anything for you,’ said the milliner, shaking her head. ‘It’s not that, ma’am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.’ ‘Why should you do that,’ returned the milliner, ‘with me before you? It has not done me much good.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ she said, looking timidly round the door of the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: ‘but I was born here.’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master’s continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Indeed the dancing-master was so proud of it, and so wishful to display it before he left to a few select friends among the collegians, that at six o’clock on a certain fine morning, a minuet de la cour came off in the yard—the college-rooms being of too confined proportions for the purpose—

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

‘My child, I’ll teach her for nothing,’ said the dancing-master, shutting up the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so apt a pupil, and the dancing-master had such abundant leisure to bestow upon her

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

‘If you please, I was born here, sir.’ ‘Oh! You are the young lady, are you?’ said the dancing-master, surveying the small figure and uplifted face. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And what can I do for you?’ said the dancing-master.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared a dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the dancing-master’s art, and seemed to have a taste that way.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the matter of lifting and carrying;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the one so strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in prisons;

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Yes. Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life! #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with many mysteries.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her,

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen. The first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished, when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce his law for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it all his life, and died intestate after all. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

‘But look here,’ quoth the turnkey. ‘Supposing she had, say a brother, say a father, say a husband, who would be likely to make a grab at that property when she came into it—how about that?’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

‘Supposing,’ he would say, stating the case with his key on the professional gentleman’s waistcoat; ‘supposing a man wanted to leave his property to a young female, and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else should ever be able to make a grab at it; how would you tie up that property?’

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

His experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the enormous difficulty of ‘tying up’ money with any approach to tightness, and contrariwise of the remarkable ease with which it got loose,

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained undetermined on the day of his death.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

They used to issue from the lodge on alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows or green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in the course of the week; and there she picked grass and flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the subject to hard-bake: always his last resource when he found his little friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

‘Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?’ The turnkey was discomfited. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Not in general.’ ‘Are they very pretty, Bob?’ She called him Bob, by his own particular request and instruction.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high fender in the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window, until, when she turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between her and her friend, and she would see him through a grating, too.

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DickensYouSay @dickensyousay.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with something in it for only him that was like protection, this Child of the Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea,

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