



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





GREAT EXPECTATIONS

[1867 Edition]

by Charles Dickens


[Project Gutenberg Editor's Note: There is also another version of
this work etext98/grexp10.txt scanned from a different edition]




Chapter I

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.

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.

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 dikes 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.

"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!"

A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man
with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his
head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and
lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by
briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose
teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it,
sir."

"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"

"Pip, sir."

"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"

"Pip. Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"

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.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and
emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When
the church came to itself,--for he was so sudden and strong that he
made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my
feet,--when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high
tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you
ha' got."

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my
years, and not strong.

"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake
of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to
the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it;
partly, to keep myself from crying.

"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"

"There, sir!" said I.

He started,