Indice
Coketown to which Messrs Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked was a triumph of fact it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs Gradgrind herself . Let us strike the key-note Coketown before pursuing our tune. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if
the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a
town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and
ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a
river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of
building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling
all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked
monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state
of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very
like one another, and many small streets still more like one
another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went
in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same
as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the
last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the
work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off,
comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine
lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The
rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the
members of eighteen religious persuasions had done - they made it a
pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in
highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it.
The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with
a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles
like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town
were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The
jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been
the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or
anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the
graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school
of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man
were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in
hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures,
or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in
the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of
course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects
like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery
of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations?
Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very
strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note
how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving
the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from
their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where
they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going,
as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it
merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native
organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of
in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for
acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main
force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these
same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that
they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement,
human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their
custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with
other tabular statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk,
they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail,
with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular
statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low
haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing
and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged
twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months'
solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself
particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly
sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top
moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two
gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both
eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular
statements derived from their own personal experience, and
illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly
appeared - in short, it was the only clear thing in the case - that
these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do
what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen;
that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they
wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and
insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat,
and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable.
THE FOLLOWING EXTRACT FOCUSES ON THE DESCRIPTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL CENTRE OF COKETOWN WHARE THE STORY IS SET AND WHERE MR GRADGRIND THE HEADMASTER OF THE LOCAL SCHOOL , AND HIS FRIEND MR BOUNDERBY ARE NOW WALKING.
the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a
town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and
ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a
river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of
building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling
all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked
monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state
of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very
like one another, and many small streets still more like one
another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went
in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same
as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the
last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the
work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off,
comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine
lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The
rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the
members of eighteen religious persuasions had done - they made it a
pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in
highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it.
The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with
a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles
like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town
were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The
jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been
the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or
anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the
graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school
of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man
were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in
hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures,
or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in
the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of
course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects
like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery
of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations?
Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very
strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note
how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving
the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from
their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where
they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going,
as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it
merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native
organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of
in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for
acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main
force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these
same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that
they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement,
human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their
custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with
other tabular statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk,
they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail,
with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular
statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low
haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing
and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged
twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months'
solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself
particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly
sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top
moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two
gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both
eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular
statements derived from their own personal experience, and
illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly
appeared - in short, it was the only clear thing in the case - that
these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do
what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen;
that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they
wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and
insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat,
and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable.
THE FOLLOWING EXTRACT FOCUSES ON THE DESCRIPTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL CENTRE OF COKETOWN WHARE THE STORY IS SET AND WHERE MR GRADGRIND THE HEADMASTER OF THE LOCAL SCHOOL , AND HIS FRIEND MR BOUNDERBY ARE NOW WALKING.
