Dickens' Women by Miriam Margolyes Page A

great deal of room. And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at home, we received her timidly; for she seemed to come in like cold weather, and so make the little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
    â€˜These, young ladies,’ said Mrs Pardiggle, ‘are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our esteemed friend, Mr Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket money, to the amount of five-and-threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians, Gerald my second (ten-and-a-half) is the child who contributed two-and-ninepence to The Great Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one-and-sixpence-halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to use tobacco, in any form.’
    We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that they were weakened and shrivelled – though they were certainly that too – but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of the tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, darkened in apeculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly, and evenly, miserable.
    In the final chapter of Bleak House , ‘The Close of Esther’s Narrative’, when all loose ends are tied up, and all virtue is rewarded, reference is made to Mrs Jellyby:
    She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure, in consequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody who survived the climate, for Rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one.
    Even Mrs Pankhurst would forgive a man who compared stay-lacing to a summer-house.
Urania Cottage
    Â â€˜Gaslight Fairies’ from Household Words
    Nothing is easier than for any one of us to get into a pulpit, or upon a tub, or a stump, or a platform, and blight (so far as with our bilious and complacent breath we can) any class of small people we may choose to select. But, it by no means follows that because it is easy and safe it is right. Even these very gaslight Fairies, now! Why should I be bitter on them because they are shabby personages, tawdrily dressed for the passing hour, and then to be shabby again?
    â€¦ Poor, good humoured, patient, fond of a little self display perhaps (sometimes but far from always), they will come trudging through the mud, leading brother and sister lesser Fairies by the hand, and will hover about in the dark stage-entrances, shivering and chattering in their shrill way, and earning their little money hard…
    Let me [ … ] take a single fairy [ … ] and sketch the Family Picture. I select Miss Fairy, aged three-and-twenty, lodging within cannon range of Waterloo Bridge, London – not alone, but with her mother, Mrs Fairy, disabled by chronic rheumatism, in the knees; and with her father, Mr Fairy, principally employed in lurking about a public-house , and waylaying the theatrical profession for twopence wherewith to purchase a glass of old ale, that he may have something warming on his stomach (which has been cold for fifteen years); and with Miss Rosina Fairy, Miss Angelica Fairy, and Master Edmund Fairy, aged respectively, fourteen , ten and eight. Miss Fairy has an engagement of twelve shillings a week – sole means of preventing the Fairy family from coming to a deadlock. To be sure, at this time of year the three young