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1The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five hours. It was a little past midday when the
2four-horse stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood
3Street, Cheapside, London. We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having
4and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had
5some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty. Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address;
6it was, Little Britain, and he had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield, and close by the
7coach-office." Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was
8years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going
9to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained
10pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great
11coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to
12prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation. I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how
13like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I
14observed the coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop we presently did, in a
15gloomy street, at certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS. "How much?" I asked the coachman.
16The coachman answered, "A shilling--unless you wish to make it more." I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.
17"Then it must be a shilling," observed the coachman. "I don't want to get into trouble. I know him!" He darkly closed an
18eye at Mr. Jaggers's name, and shook his head. When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the
19ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his mind), I went into the front office with my little
20portmanteau in my hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home? "He is not," returned the clerk. "He is in Court at present.
21Am I addressing Mr. Pip?" I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip. "Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his
22room. He couldn't say how long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time being valuable, that he
23won't be longer than he can help." With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner chamber at
24the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his
25sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper. "Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk. I began to say
26that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw
27used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone. Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a
28most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as
29if they had twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I should have
30expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see,--such as an old rusty
31pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces
32peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black horsehair, with
33rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger
34at the clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the
35wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too, that the one-eyed
36gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned out. I sat down in the
37cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I
38called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had.
39I wondered how many other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery
40of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came there.
41I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a
42pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, instead
43of giving them a place at home. Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been
44oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and
45waiting in Mr. Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair,
46and got up and went out. When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I waited, he advised me to go
47round the corner and I should come into Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear
48with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning
49into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a
50bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden the
51noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing about smelling strongly of spirits
52and beer, I inferred that the trials were on. While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk
53minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a
54front place for half a crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in his wig and
55robes,--mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence.
56As I declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where the
57gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which
58culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on
59'em" would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row. This was
60horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's proprietor wore (from his hat
61down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not belonged
62to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I
63thought myself well rid of him for a shilling.
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