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Chapter IV
Mr and Mrs Quilp resided on Tower Hill; and in her bower on Tower
Hill. Mrs Quilp was left to pine the absence of her lord, when he
quitted her on the business which he had already seen to transact.
Mr Quilp could scarcely be said to be of any particular trade or
calling, though his pursuits were diversified and his occupations
numerous. He collected the rents of whole colonies of filthy streets
and alleys by the waterside, advanced money to the seamen and petty
officers of merchant vessels, had a share in the ventures of divers
mates of East Indiamen, smoked his smuggled cigars under the very
nose of the Custom House, and made appointments on 'Change with
men in glazed hats and round jackets pretty well every day. On the
Surrey side of the river was a small rat-infested dreary yard called
'
Quilp's Wharf,' in which were a little wooden counting-house
burrowing all awry in the dust as if it had fallen from the clouds and
ploughed into the ground; a few fragments of rusty anchors; several
large iron rings; some piles of rotten wood; and two or three heaps of
old sheet copper, crumpled, cracked, and battered. On Quilp's Wharf,
Daniel Quilp was a ship-breaker, yet to judge from these appearances
he must either have been a ship-breaker on a very small scale, or have
broken his ships up very small indeed. Neither did the place present
any extraordinary aspect of life or activity, as its only human
occupant was an amphibious boy in a canvas suit, whose sole change
of occupation was from sitting on the head of a pile and throwing
stones into the mud when the tide was out, to standing with his
hands in his pockets gazing listlessly on the motion and on the bustle
of the river at high-water.
The dwarf's lodging on Tower hill comprised, besides the needful
accommodation for himself and Mrs Quilp, a small sleeping-closet for
that lady's mother, who resided with the couple and waged perpetual
war with Daniel; of whom, notwithstanding, she stood in no slight
dread. Indeed, the ugly creature contrived by some means or other -
whether by his ugliness or his ferocity or his natural cunning is no
great matter - to impress with a wholesome fear of his anger, most of
those with whom he was brought into daily contact and
communication. Over nobody had he such complete ascendance as
Mrs Quilp herself - a pretty little, mild-spoken, blue-eyed woman, who
having allied herself in wedlock to the dwarf in one of those strange
infatuations of which examples are by no means scarce, performed a
sound practical penance for her folly, every day of her life.
It has been said that Mrs Quilp was pining in her bower. In her bower
she was, but not alone, for besides the old lady her mother of whom
mention has recently been made, there were present some half-dozen
ladies of the neighborhood who had happened by a strange accident
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