If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a
satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging
illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it
amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean
experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready
to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend
anybody's money, drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards.
To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout
invoking the death's head apparition of the family gentility to come and
scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the
first water. Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a
billiard-marker. He had troubled himself so little as to the means of
his release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of
impressing the mind of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid
him the compliment, he very readily accepted the compliment with HIS
compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate
on these easy terms, he became a billiard-marker; and now occasionally
looked in at the little skittle-ground in a green Newmarket coat
(second-hand), with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank
the beer of the Collegians.
One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman's
character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling
had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put
himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that
Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea
flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she
sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she
had done anything for himself.
When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically
to produce the family skeleton for the overawing of the College, this
narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when
they began to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more
reduced and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton
emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly
shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest
flourish. Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept
late, and afterwards there was his breakfast to prepare and his room to
arrange. She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore
stayed with him until, with Maggy's help, she had put everything right
about him, and had seen him off upon his morning walk (of twenty yards
or so) to the coffee-house to read the paper.