Oliver Twist: After the Edit

Chapter 2

Treats of Oliver’s growth, education, and board ; and how he asked for more

For the best part of a year Oliver Twist (not Obidiah Tomkins nor yet Ormerod Trelawney) was reared by hand—the back of the hand, the front, the side ... it was a matter of indifference so long as it led to the desired submission of that rebellious animal otherwise known as a human child. The workhouse authorities, heedful of the wee mite’s hunger and poverty, conveyed their anxieties to the parish authorities. With their customary dignity the parish authorities inquired in turn whether there was no female, presently luxuriating in their charity, who might supply the babe with comfort and nourishment. The workhouse authorities humbly begged to inform them there was not, at which the parish authorities, with their habitual tenderness for both children and the annual accounts, agreed that Oliver should be farmed away to Coldharbour, a branch-workhouse in the same union. There, on the wholesale principle, some two to three dozen other juvenile offenders against the poor laws were given leave to roll about the floor all day, happily unencumbered by too many clothes or too much food.

Such gaiety did not come cheap. A full sevenpence-halfpenny a week was allowed for the rearing of each baby culprit; and all thirty farthings of it were paid directly into the hand of Mrs Mann, their parental superintendent—a mite for a mite, one could say. This widow of advancing years was, at first sight, well named, for there was little in her manner and appearance to suggest femininity. Square of build and jaw, dressed overall in black weeds, there was something about her that most people shunned; perhaps it was that suggestion of the Arctic which seemed permanently to attend her, for she was always resettling a great black shawl about her neck and shoulders, as if some biting wind were forever insinuating its icy fingers there.

And yet, beneath those broad acres of black bombazine, there beat a wise and tender heart. For Mrs Mann knew what was good for children almost as well as she knew what was good for herself. She was sure, for instance, that a child’s frail stomach might easily bloat and be made uncomfortable on a full thirty farthings a week—quite unlike the stomach of a full-grown widow, accustomed to bloat over decades of practice. She was a student of that philosopher who swore that horses could live without food—and who would, indeed, have proved it if his silly horse, having survived a whole week on one straw a day, had not taken it into its head to expire on the very eve of graduating to a diet of air. Undaunted by his failure, Mrs Mann, applied the identical philosophy to her little angels, treating their bodies like fine violins—that is, she fine-tuned the gut (and the diet) to the point where no more than eight and a half out of ten followed the trail of the professor’s horse into a better world, there to be gathered to fathers they had never known in this.

Occasionally, when one forgotten child was discovered on turning up a bedstead or another scalded itself to death at the washtub (an opportunity wisely denied them twenty-nine days out of thirty), a meddlesome coroner’s jury might ask vexatious questions; but they were speedily checked by the evidence of both surgeon and beadle. Doctor Lydd would testify that on opening the infant he found nothing inside (which surprised none familiar with Mrs Mann’s dietary), and Mr Bumble, a devoted servant if ever there was one, would swear whatever the parish required. Their testimony was made the more credible by the periodical inspections the board carried out at the farm—always on the day after the beadle had been sent to warn Mrs Mann of the visitation; they never found the infants to be other than neat and clean and submissive. What more did people want?

That Oliver Twist survived Mrs Mann’s tenderness for nine long years will come as some surprise; that he reached his ninth birthday small in stature and meagre in build will not. But nature or inheritance had planted a sturdy spirit within him, where it had found ample room for expansion—to such an extent, indeed, that he and two other young gentlemen of similar mettle had spent much of that day locked in the coal cellar, having dared to complain they were hungry. For this wickedness they were soundly thrashed before their incarceration. Mrs Mann was listening so avidly for the snivels and whimpers that would signal a further rebellion from them that she failed to notice the beadle’s arrival at her gate.

Eaay, Mister Bumble, sir! she cried joyfully from her window while behind her she flapped a hand at Susan, the maid, and muttered over her shoulder at the girl: Get Oliver and them two brats upstairs and scrubbed directly. Aloud she added, My heart alive, Mister Bumble, I was never more glad to see you. Since she had never been particularly glad to see him before, it was but the smallest perjury.

Had Mr Gillray ever set eyes on Mr Bumble, he must have caricatured him as a pear, or even as a pair of pears—a small one perched atop a large—for the profusion of his chins perfectly miniaturized the profusion of his bellies. Three wearisome miles stretched between Fellgate and Coldharbour and, though he had ridden with Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker, for all but a hundred paces, those hundred had taken their toll of his humour. It did not help that he would have to walk the entire way back again, either.

Mr Bumble gave the bolted wicket gate a perfunctory shake before favouring it with a kick that only a beadle’s leg might manage.

Lor, Mister Bumble! cried the good baby-farmer as she rushed in distress from the house. What was I thinking of to leave yon gate bolted when I knew you were coming. ’Tis only to protect them dear bairns that I keep it so, sir. She slipped the bolt, hiding her annoyance at the damage the beadle had done. Walk in, sir, pray do, Mister Bumble.

The curtsy she dropped might have melted the heart of a mere churchwarden but it left the beadle unmoved. Intruding no more than two of his bellies and one of his chins through the gate, he said, "Do you think it respectable and proper, Mrs Mann, to keep a porochial officer bent on porochial business connected with porochial orphans a-waiting at your gate? Must I remind you that—upon my recommendation—you are a porochial pensioner at sevenpence-halfpenny a head?"

The widow hung her head, not so much in humility (though that is how she hoped the beadle might construe it) as to hide the contemptuous fury he might otherwise see in her eyes. Why, Mister Bumble! she cried. What a power of words you have! And them bairns is in such awe of you I’ve scarce been able to quell their agitation all this day. But for that I’d surely have remembered to unbolt the gate agin your coming.

Mr Bumble had never doubted his oratory, nor his importance, and so, having displayed the one and vindicated the other, he relaxed. Well, well, Mrs Mann, said he, I may have been a touch severe. Lead the way in for I have come on business and have aught to say.

She conducted him into her parlour, trying not to wince at the damage his hobnail boots were doing to its polished brick floor. She hastened with his chair before he could wreck it all the way to the window. And, with the ceremonial reverence that never failed to please him, she laid his beadle’s cocked hat and long pole on the table at his side. And he, being but a mortal after all, ran a complacent eye over them, and her, and the room, and he smiled. Then he took out a large bandana of the kind in which travelling men tie up all their worldly goods (and leave behind in workhouses when they pass beyond all such needs), and he mopped his brow of the perspiration those gruelling hundred paces had engendered. Even a master skinflint could not have failed to understand this ritual.

Mrs Mann took his meaning at once. Now don’t be offended at what I’m a-going to say, she trilled. You’ve had a champion walk or I’d not even mention it, but will you not revive yourself with a little drop of something, Mister Bumble?

Not a drop! The beadle brushed the very idea aside with a dignified wave of his hand—even as his eyes quartered the room for the faintest gleam of a bottle. Not a drop.

Oh, I think you will. Mrs Mann smiled a woman’s knowing smile. Just a sip to settle the dust? With a little cold water? And a lump of sugar?

Still finding no bottle, the beadle cleared his throat uncertainly.

Having tantalized him long enough, she unlocked a cupboard and took down a bottle. ’Tis gin, she said. I’ll not deceive thee, Mister B. ’Tis gin. I’m obliged to keep some by me for the darling bairns, to mix up their Daffy’s elixir.

Licking his lips, Mr Bumble said, And do you give the children Daffy, Mrs M?

Eeay, but I’m a fool to myself—I know it. She sighed. But these silly, tender eyes of mine cannot bear to see them suffer when they’ve overeaten. ’Tis naught but senna with a little watered gin, but it’s champion for settling them, so it is.

Mr Bumble nodded admiringly as she set an ample glass before him. Your generous heart will never make you rich, Mrs Mann, he said, but it has already earned you mansions of gold in heaven—that I’ll stake my oath on. You are the milk of human kindness personified and I shall take the earliest opportunity of mentioning it to the board.

I have a mother’s heart, see thee, she replied, though I never bore a bairn of my own. Here a sour glance at the portrait of her late husband, glowering at them from the wall, allowed her visitor to understand that the fault had hardly been hers.

I drink your health with joy, ma’am! The beadle raised his glass and downed a mighty swig. And so to business, he added with a smack of his lips as he took out an imposing leather notebook. That child, Oliver Twist, is nine year old this day.

Ah, bless him! Mrs Mann scrubbed at her left eye with her coarse apron, hoping to inflame it to a suitable redness.

And, notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was later raised to twenty, no less, and notwithstanding the most superlative, I would even say supernat’ral, exertions by the parish—here he stared modestly at his own fingernails—not one word, not one syllable of his true name, nor that of his father, nor of his mother’s settlement, have we been able to learn.

Why then, Mister B., he must be glad that one so literary as yourself was at hand to supply the want. ‘Oliver’ is a name far superior to his likely station in life, as also is ‘Twist,’ I dare swear. I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again now—you are, indeed, sir, some kind of genius in that department.

Well, well! The beadle tilted his head with diffidence. Perhaps I may be, ma’am. He sank the last of his gin and waved away the offer of more. But let us see the fortunate young man now. He is too old to linger on here. I must take him back with me to Fellgate.

Mrs Mann left the room directly, satisfied herself that as much encrusted dirt as could be removed in a single washing had, in fact, been removed, and then, disguised as a benevolent protectress, she brought him into the parlour.

Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver, she said. He is the nearest to a father you will ever know, for it is to him you owe your lofty name.

While Oliver obeyed, she edged her way to a position behind the beadle’s chair.

Mr Bumble assumed his most majestic voice to say, Will you come along with me, young Oliver?

The little mite’s heart leaped up at the words. Still smarting from the punishment he had received that day, he was ready to declare he would go with hobgoblins rather than spend another night beneath that roof.

But he understood why Mrs Mann had placed herself there, for, with one terrifying wag of a monitory finger, she let him know that his answer had better please her or his birthday torment would be doubled. And then he showed that nimbleness of mind and tongue which was to sustain him through many a future adventure. Oh, sir, he begged. "May dear Mrs Mann not come with me, too?"

Alas, no. The beadle turned an approving smile toward the lady at his rear, though, fortunately for her, his abundance of chins prevented him from rotating far enough to see her clearly. But, he added, returning to the boy, she may come and see you from time to time.

The joy Oliver managed to show at this dire news would have gained him a place on any stage in the kingdom. To add a few tears when the old widow pressed him to her frigid bosom required much less skill; the memory of his recent thrashing at those same hands was enough.

She gave him a thousand embraces and—what was a thousand times more welcome—a crust of bread and butter, lest a hunger-faint upon the road should show her up. And so, with his slice of bread in one hand and the beadle’s gold-braided cuff in the other, and his brown-shoddy parish cap upon his head, Oliver was led from that place, where no kind word nor tender look had ever lighted his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief as the Coldharbour gate closed behind him—for he was now leaving, too, all he had known of human companionship. Even the companionship of misery is preferable to loneliness, and now a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world sank into the child’s heart for the first time.

Fortunately that vast importance which Mr Bumble carried before him prevented him from taking strides much longer than Oliver’s own. But the good humour engendered by the gin soon wore off and then the boy’s whine of Are we nearly there? after every two furlongs made him curt and snappish.

Arrived at Fellgate, Oliver asked if he might see the room where he was born. The request was met with a cuff about the ears before the beadle delivered him into the care of an old female inmate—Old Sal, as chance would have it.

Why, bless us, chiel! she cried on hearing his name. Tha’s not grown above six inches beyond what tha was the neet tha was born, I’ll swear. What do they feed thee on yonder at Coldharbour? Bread and kisses?

Bread—sometimes. Oliver eyed a loaf his sharp eyes had spotted, almost hidden behind a Bible on a shelf nearby. And kisses of leather or birch.

Aye, so I’ve heard tell. She gazed at him fondly and ran her fingers through his curls. Had but one of her own boys lived, she thought, he might have been such an angelic starveling as this. She followed his eyes to the purloined loaf and said, Aye, well, I suppose I can’t deny thee a slice.

As she cut it for him—a good, generous helping—she added, Especially as tha’ll surely peach on me if I don’t!

But when she handed it to him, the shock in his eyes told her that no such thought had crossed his mind. Then she almost wept. Eeay, lad, such innocence! Such deadly innocence! Tha must learn to look after theesen. For of one thing you may be sure—in all this wide world there’s no one else’ll do it for thee!

Having secured his first objective—the slice of bread—Oliver turned to his second. Pray, ma’am, he said in his Sunday School voice, may I ask how you know what size I were when I were born?

Why, bless you! She tousled his hair again. I were there. I helped deliver your mother of you. And what a lusty cry you gave on seeing the world you were about to enter! Her smile turned sad, though, when she added, Aye, and five minutes after that, I held your dear mother’s hand as she slipped beyond this vale of tears into the arms of a merciful God.

Oliver stopped eating and then swallowed hard, almost choking on the half-chewed bread. What was she ...? he stammered. I mean, was she ...?

Was she pretty? Old Sal rightly interpreted. Aye, that she was. She had tramped her way north, nigh on three-hundred mile I should think, but her skin were as fair as a white swan’s wing and her hair, when it dried, as fine as silk. She were a fine lady—no doubt of it. Tha’rt the son of a fine lady, Oliver Twist—so be an honourable boy and do nothing to disgrace her!

Tears choked off any reply the poor lad might have made, but his heart was filled with a resolve to do as the old woman bade. And Old Sal, for her part, was so moved that she almost showed him the locket and rings she had—how may one put it delicately?—rescued from his mother’s warm but lifeless body.

She might have done so, too—and have saved Oliver a great deal of anguish hereafter—if Mr Bumble had not returned at that moment, more peppery than ever, to tell him it was a board night and that the said board had decreed he was to appear before it. Oliver was still wondering what a ‘board’ might be when he felt the sharp knock of the beadle’s cane upon his head and the determined prod of its other end upon his back.

His head was still ringing when the man ushered him into what was either a large room or a small church. In place of a congregation, however, was a long wooden table besieged by ten rather grim-looking gentlemen. The two nearest him were thin as cadavers, and just about as jolly. The rest, though fat, had none of the joviality that often goes with the condition. The man at the far end of the table, in a chair much higher than the rest, was the fattest—and the least jovial—of all.

Make a bow to the board, boy! Mr Bumble swept Oliver’s cap from his head with a cuff from behind.

The board?

The table of course!

Oliver bowed to the table.

Name? snapped the fat gentleman at the head of the board.

That blow to his head had hurt; his eyes filled with tears.

The boy’s a fool, said one of the cadavers nearest him. He had on a white waistcoat.

Boy! said the head of the board. Listen to me! You know you’re an orphan, I suppose?

Did he mean orpheling? That was what Susan, the maid at the orpheling farm, had always called them.

Orphan, sir? he repeated uncertainly.

"The boy is a fool," the white waistcoat said.

Now, now! the other reprimanded him mildly. Then, to Oliver again: You know you have no father or mother and that you’ve been brought up by this parish, don’t you?

Sir. The boy swallowed heavily.

And, put in another, a reverend gentleman by his collar, for no better reason than that your mother could not go another pace when she chose to collapse upon our doorstep—and died before anyone could ask her where she came from, which made it impossible for us to send her back there?

The piteous scene conjured by these words was too much for the poor mite, especially with Old Sal’s tale still fresh in his mind. He broke down completely then.

Cries at everything one says, muttered the white waistcoat.

I hope you say your prayers every night like a Christian, barked the reverend, and pray for these gracious people who feed you and take care of you. It did not cross his mind that only a Christian saint would have prayed for those who fed and clothed Oliver and his companions.

Well! said the head of the table. You have come here to be educated and taught a useful trade.

In short, added the white waistcoat, you start picking oakum at six-o’clock tomorrow morning!

To think that education and industral training could be compressed into one simple, repetitive process! For this boon Oliver, assisted by a shove from the beadle, bowed low. Mr Bumble then hurried him away to a large, ill-ventilated ward, full of coughing old men in their twenties and thirties as well as a host of younger orphans, little older than himself. And there, on a bed of deal, with a few mungo rags to serve as a blanket, he sobbed himself to sleep—for even in this England the Poor Laws do not forbid the poor to sleep.

As Oliver was soon to learn, those wise and kindly men who had just promised him an education and a trade had further boons in mind. They had lately come to realize that the workhouses in their union, intended as temporary refuges for the unfortunate, had instead become palaces of entertainment for the poorer classes—taverns without tariff, ever-open restaurants serving four meals a day all the year round, brick-and-mortar elysiums where it was all play and no work. It had to be stopped, of course—and, bah goom!, they were the men to do it! Henceforth each workhouse would offer its applicants a simple choice: quick starvation outside or a slower variety within. True, slow starvation would allow the poor time to realize that robbery or revolution would offer them a better chance of survival—but there was no need for one small board in an insignificant corner of the realm to carry the analysis so far. Better, then, to get on with the practical business.

They therefore contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply. And the corn-factor was to furnish small quantities of oatmeal groats from time to time. And from this they were able to issue three meals of thin gruel each day, with, for variety, an onion twice a week and half a bread roll on Sundays. Their benevolence knew no bounds. Realizing that the cost of a petition for divorce in Doctor’s Commons was beyond the reach of any pauper, they undertook to divorce all married paupers for nothing. And they did away entirely with the irksome old system whereby a married man was compelled to support his family; instead they made him a bachelor, free as air! Ladies and gentlemen of every class for miles around came flocking to the union, eager to avail themselves of these benefits—only to retire disappointed on being told that the service was not available outside the workhouse walls. It was inseparable from oakum and gruel.

This new system was in full steam throughout Oliver’s first six months at Fellgate. It was rather expensive to begin with, on account of increased payments to Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker, and to the needlewomen who had to take in the paupers’ clothing as it began to flutter loosely on their shrinking forms. But the numbers of inmates were shrinking, too, and so the board was vindicated, not to say ecstatic.

Oliver and his young fellows were fed in a large stone hall with a copper boiler at one end, out of which the master and two female paupers would ladle the gruel at mealtimes. As if in mocking promise, the curvature of this polished vessel shrivelled the reflected images of all who stood before it, as in a hall of mirrors, though here was a hall where laughter never dared to venture. Each boy received one porringer, no more, no less—except at high festivities, when they were doled two ounces and a quarter of bread beside. Even without the bread to mop around, the porringers never needed washing; nor did the spoons, nor any finger that might have caught a stray droplet from the ladle’s careless splash.

The boys, to one side of the central aisle, and the girls, to the other, ate in silence. The master, a spindleshanks of a man with beady eyes and a probing nose, enforced it, striding the aisle, whacking his leather gaiter with a soft, whippy cane. But in truth his efforts were not needed, for when the gruel was devoured, which happened inside a minute, what could any child there do but stare at the copper as if he or she would devour both it and the very bricks that supported it?

To make the diet more bitter still, the master and his minions would conduct a weekly mopping-up of all the loose food in the house, for fear that it might otherwise go bad and harm the paupers. The smell of roast beef and succulent capons, of potatoes and greens, of rich pastry-crust and gravy, would rise through the wards and wake the boys from their dreams of chop-houses and pastrycooks. And then, as the sweet scent of nectar will, they say, fetch a butterfly three miles upwind, so the aromas of these left-overs fetched the boys from their beds, one by one, until they were all gathered in silent yearning in the galleries above the dining hall. There they would press their little faces between the bars and gaze in wonder that the world whose staple was gruel could also yield such wondrous viands as those they saw on the groaning boards below.

After just such a mouth-watering vigil, one young fellow, tall and strapping for his age (for his late father had owned a cook’s shop) eyed his companions with a wild and hungry stare and swore that, unless he had one more bowl of gruel a day, his hunger would compel him to eat one of them up. A council was held, palliasses were raided for straws, one of which was clipped short, and lots were cast to pick that brave lad who would go up to the master after supper the following evening and ask for more.

Lumpkins and Simpkins and Potkins and Welkins and kindred kins of every kind drew straws that pulled out with a long and, to them, satisfactory tug. And so at length the hand was proffered to Oliver. All eyes were upon him as his trembling fingers wavered between this straw and that. The lad holding them tipped him a wink and tilted his head ever so slightly leftward.

Oliver nipped the leftmost straw between thumb and forefinger.

Oliver made his pluck.

There was a gasp all about him as the straw came free at once. Little wraiths in tattered nightshirts vanished into the circumambient darkness. Alone in the guttering light of the single candle Oliver stood shivering, staring in disbelief at the two inches of straw he had drawn.

The following evening came. The gruel was served and devoured within the customary minute. A ghastly, unnatural silence fell as all eyes turned upon Oliver. But he discovered one more drop in his porringer and scraped at it desperately with his spoon. Then another. And another ... until the boy opposite gave him a kick that would have broken his shin had his foot been shod at the time.

Oliver at last raised his eyes to the scene he had dreaded all that long and terrifying day: the master striding up and down on the dais behind the copper, whacking his gaiters with that soft and whippy cane.