Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Chapter One
(where Pip meets Magwitch in the
graveyard)
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My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.
So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. |
A photo of the Kent graveyard on which Dickens based his description.
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I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of
either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs),
my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived
from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my
father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with
curly black hair. From the character and turn of the
inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish
conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five
little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were
arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory
of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living,
exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief
I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with
their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in
this state of existence. |
Video clip (on RealPlayer or Windows Media Player), from the 1946 film, of Pip visiting his parents' grave (from the British Film Institute website)
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Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
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"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep
still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!" |
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I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the
alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. |
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"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you
ha' got." |
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After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to
my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he
could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine,
and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
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He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:
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I
said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits
of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the
morning. |
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At
the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms - clasping
himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped towards the low
church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the
nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in
my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people,
stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his
ankle and pull him in. |
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The Kent marshes on which Dickens based his decription.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs
were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me.
When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use
of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw
him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms,
and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into
the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy,
or the tide was in. The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
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