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Grandfather Smallweed's Anger
Harry Furniss
1910
13.8 cm x 9.5 cm (5 ½ by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted.
Mr Smallweed throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces. "That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
Dickens's Bleak House, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Chapter 33, "Interlopers" — facing XIV, 448.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
"Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just mention to him what our understanding is."
Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr. Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.
"But I think you asked me, Mr. George" — old Smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now — "I think you asked me, what did the letter mean?"
"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."
Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity has now attained its profoundest point.
"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!" [Chapter XXXIV, "A Turn of the Screw," 485-486]
Since Tulkinghorn is convinced that acquiring Hawdon's papers will reveal the dead man's romantic liaison with Honoria Dedlock, he presses the irascible money-lender for them. When George Rouncewell and Matthew Bagnet, both in debt to him over financing the shooting gallery in Leicester Square, attempt to thwart him, he reveals his true nature. Joshua Smallweed shows no mercy to people who owe him money, and enjoys inflicting emotional pain on others. Here, he drops all pretence of being George's "dear friend," breaking to pieces the pipe he habitually offers his client and ordering his daughter, Judy, to remove the pair from his parlour since they have refused to comply with his demands for Hawdon's personal correspondence (which will palpably connect him to the dead law-writer Nemo). Smallweed has been able to lay claim to the deceased Krook's possessions because Smallweed's senile wife is Krook's only living relation. After this unpleasant interview, Smallweed drives Mr. George into bankruptcy by calling in debts, in turn threatening Bagnet's music shop. Since Smallweed holds the upper hand and since Tulkinghorn agrees to remove the twin threats if George hands over his former Captain's correspondence, Trooper George relents, thereby saving Bagnet's business as well as his own.
Left: Phiz's January 1853 engraving of the same incident: Mr. Smallweed breaks the pipe of peace. Right: Fred Barnard's realisation of Grandfather Smallweed: "I have come down," repeated Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the property." — Chap. xxxiii (1873) in the Household Edition.
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Created 13 March 2021