So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid wooden legs – that popular order of architecture – Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone Lodge, M. P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.
There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of the company.
After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and know what I am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech from a man who, when he sees a Post, says ‘that’s a Post,’ and when he sees a Pump says ‘that’s a Pump,’ and is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fort-night, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you don’t I can’t help it. I do feel independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At the same time – not to deceive you – I believe I am worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife has found.”
Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting for her – flushed, either with his feelings or the vinous part of the breakfast.
“What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!” whispered Tom.
She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first time.
“Old Bounderby’s quite ready,” said Tom. “Time’s up. Good-bye! I shall be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo! An’t it uncommonly jolly now!”
Book The Second: Reaping
Chapter I Effects In The Bank
A sunny midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness: – Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.