Review: Dombey and Son

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a wonderful world... dear Charles D.

‘but it’s of no consequence. I hope’



And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love—of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away!

(location 120199)



Florence asked him what he thought he heard. ‘I want to know what it says,’ he answered, looking steadily in her face.

‘The sea’ Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?’ She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said.

‘But I know that they are always saying something. Always the same thing. What place is over there?’

He rose up, looking eagerly at the horizon.

She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he didn’t mean that: he meant further away—farther away!

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It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished; and now, when Walter found himself cut off from that great Dombey height, by the depth of a new and terrible tumble, and felt that all his old wild fancies had been scattered to the winds in the fall, he began to suspect that they might have led him on to harmless visions of aspiring to Florence in the remote distance of time.

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The very speed at which the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way—its own—defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death. Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!

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There were some children staying in the house. Children who were as frank and happy with fathers and with mothers as those rosy faces opposite home. Children who had no restraint upon their love, and freely showed it. Florence sought to learn their secret; sought to find out what it was she had missed; what simple art they knew, and she knew not; how she could be taught by them to show her father that she loved him, and to win his love again.

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‘My lad,’ said the Captain, whose opinion of Mr Toots was much improved by this candid avowal, ‘a man’s thoughts is like the winds, and nobody can’t answer for ‘em for certain, any length of time together. Is it a treaty as to words?’

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‘If so be,’ returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, ‘as he’s dead, my opinion is he won’t come back no more. If so be as he’s alive, my opinion is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearings of this obserwation lays in the application on it.’

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‘Certainly, Miss Dombey,’ says Mr Toots, ‘I—I—that’s exactly what I mean. It’s of no consequence.’

‘Good-bye!’ cries Florence.

‘Good-bye, Miss Dombey!’stammers Mr Toots. ‘I hope you won’t think anything about it. It’s—it’s of no consequence, thank you. It’s not of the least consequence in the world.’

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When we shall gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles; when fields of grain shall spring up from the offal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fat churchyards that they cherish; then we may look for natural humanity, and find it growing from such seed. Oh for a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more p

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‘Hooroar, my Heart’s Delight!’ vociferates the Captain, with a countenance of strong emotion. ‘Hooroar, Wal’r my lad. Hooroar! Hooroar!’

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