Hard Times

Chapter V

THE KEYNOTE



COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was
a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.
Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before
pursuing our tune.

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if
the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a
town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and
ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a
river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of
building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling
all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked
monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state
of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very
like one another, and many small streets still more like one
another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went
in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same
as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the
last and the next.

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the
work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off,
comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine
lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The
rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the
members of eighteen religious persuasions had done - they made it a
pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in
highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it.
The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with
a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles
like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town
were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The
jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been
the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or
anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the
graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school
of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man
were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in
hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures,
or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in
the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.

A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of
course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!

No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects
like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery
of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations?
Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very
strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note
how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving
the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from
their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where
they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going,
as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it
merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native
organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of
in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for
acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main
force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these
same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that
they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement,
human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their
custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with
other tabular statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk,
they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail,
with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular
statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low
haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing
and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged
twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months'
solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself
particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly
sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top
moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two
gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both
eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular
statements derived from their own personal experience, and
illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly
appeared - in short, it was the only clear thing in the case - that
these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do
what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen;
that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they
wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and
insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat,
and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it
was the moral of the old nursery fable:


There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.


Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the
case of the Coketown population and the case of the little
Gradgrinds? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted
with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the
foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people
had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That
there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy
existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in
the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew
within them for some physical relief - some relaxation, encouraging
good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent - some
recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a
stirring band of music - some occasional light pie in which even
M'Choakumchild had no finger - which craving must and would be
satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the
laws of the Creation were repealed?

'This man lives at Pod's End, and I don't quite know Pod's End,'
said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Which is it, Bounderby?'

Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more
respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.

Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the
street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr.
Gradgrind recognized. 'Halloa!' said he. 'Stop! Where are you
going! Stop!' Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and
made him a curtsey.

'Why are you tearing about the streets,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'in
this improper manner?'

'I was - I was run after, sir,' the girl panted, 'and I wanted to
get away.'

'Run after?' repeated Mr. Gradgrind. 'Who would run after you?'

The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the
colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind
speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that
he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind's waistcoat and
rebounded into the road.

'What do you mean, boy?' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'What are you doing?
How dare you dash against - everybody - in this manner?' Bitzer
picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and
backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an
accident.

'Was this boy running after you, Jupe?' asked Mr. Gradgrind.

'Yes, sir,' said the girl reluctantly.

'No, I wasn't, sir!' cried Bitzer. 'Not till she run away from me.
But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they're famous
for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding
what they say,' addressing Sissy. 'It's as well known in the town
as - please, sir, as the multiplication table isn't known to the
horse-riders.' Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this.

'He frightened me so,' said the girl, 'with his cruel faces!'

'Oh!' cried Bitzer. 'Oh! An't you one of the rest! An't you a
horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would
know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her
again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might
know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn't have thought
of saying such mischief if you hadn't been a horse-rider?'

'Her calling seems to be pretty well known among 'em,' observed Mr.
Bounderby. 'You'd have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a
week.'

'Truly, I think so,' returned his friend. 'Bitzer, turn you about
and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of
your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me
through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go
along.'

The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again,
glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.

'Now, girl,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'take this gentleman and me to
your father's; we are going there. What have you got in that
bottle you are carrying?'

'Gin,' said Mr. Bounderby.

'Dear, no, sir! It's the nine oils.'

'The what?' cried Mr. Bounderby.

'The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.'

'Then,' said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, 'what the
devil do you rub your father with nine oils for?'

'It's what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in
the ring,' replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure
herself that her pursuer was gone. 'They bruise themselves very
bad sometimes.'

'Serve 'em right,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'for being idle.' She
glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.

'By George!' said Mr. Bounderby, 'when I was four or five years
younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty
oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em by
posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-
dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with
the rope.'

Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man
as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things
considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had
only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it,
years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as
they turned down a narrow road, 'And this is Pod's End; is it,
Jupe?'

'This is it, sir, and - if you wouldn't mind, sir - this is the
house.'

She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-
house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if,
for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone
the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.

'It's only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you
wouldn't mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle.
If you should hear a dog, sir, it's only Merrylegs, and he only
barks.'

'Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!' said Mr. Bounderby, entering last
with his metallic laugh. 'Pretty well this, for a self-made man!'