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1Five Years Later Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred
2and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the
3moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its
4ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by
5an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but
6an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room,
7Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but
8Tellson's, thank Heaven--! Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding
9Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for
10suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
11Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of
12idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a
13miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled
14it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from
15Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your
16business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you
17meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in
18the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your
19nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast
20decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications
21corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and
22sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family
23papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and
24where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by
25your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed
26on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time,
27putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death
28is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a
29bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and
30sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner
31of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to
32Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact
33was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing
34else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its
35contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of
36being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather
37significant manner. Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the
38business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They
39kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he
40permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general
41weight of the establishment. Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man, an
42occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours,
43unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image.
44People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some
45person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the
46youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had
47received the added appellation of Jerry. The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley,
48Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty.
49(Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the
50Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher's
51apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass
52in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room
53in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the
54lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread. Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a
55Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the
56surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a
57voice of dire exasperation: "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!" A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from
58her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to. "What!" said
59Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it agin, are you?" After hailing the morn with this second
60salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance
61connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots,
62he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay. "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe
63after missing his mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?" "I was only saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers! You're
64a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" "I was not praying against you; I was
65praying for you." "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman,
66young Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a
67religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be
68snatched out of the mouth of her only child." Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to
69his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board. "And what do you suppose, you conceited female,"
70said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of your prayers may be? Name the price that you put
71your prayers at!" "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that."
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