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

turning at the end of London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint George’s Church, turning back suddenly once more, and flitting in at the open outer gate and little court-yard of the Marshalsea. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all things else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father, and the prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

and to come and go as secretly as she could, between the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she had never slept in her life. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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

she passed to and fro in it shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out to every one. Since she had begun to work beyond the walls, she had found it necessary to conceal where she lived,

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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

and the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip, supported it loyally. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring him to understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside himself if he knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and altogether a fanciful notion. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

‘Oh! Don’t say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don’t, don’t!’ ‘Well, I don’t want to say it,’ he returned in a reluctant tone; ‘but if you can’t understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in for forty pound odd.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

‘Why—yes.’ ‘Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well, I am less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

but it never reached her ears. One evening she was alone at work—standing up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above the wall—when he opened the door and walked in. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

‘What is it, Tip?’ ‘Why, you know Slingo by sight?’ ‘Not the man they call the dealer?’ ‘That’s the chap. He’ll be out on Monday, and he’s going to give me a berth.’ ‘What is he a dealer in, Tip?’ ‘Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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

After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back again.

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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

and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight course at last. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod, purposeless, down-at-heel way; until the real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their fascination over him, and brought him back. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general dealer’s, into a distillery, into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

‘Not going back again?’ said the poor little anxious Child of the Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank of her charges. ‘I am so tired of it,’ said Tip, ‘that I have cut it.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

at that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks to the dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn’t seem to care for his country. ‘Well, my dear,’ said the turnkey, ‘something ought to be done with him. Suppose I try and get him into the law?’ ‘That would be so good of you, Bob!’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

At eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour, from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom he derived anything useful or good, and she could find no patron for him but her old friend and godfather. #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

And as to Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born here as I was, you know, father.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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

This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that Amy herself went out by the day to work. ‘But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not?

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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

‘You surprise me. Why?’ ‘I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and looked after.’ #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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 fixture there a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted the task of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast, starvation—anything but soap. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined at the time when that calamity fell upon him, further than that he left off washing himself when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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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

With the same hand that he pocketed a collegian’s half-crown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that streamed over his cheeks if any reference were made to his daughters’ earning their bread. #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit

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

The more Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he became on the contributions of his changing family, the greater stand he made by his forlorn gentility.

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