57
Dickens did not portray such a happy scene in MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
when Jonas Chuzzlewit explains how Old Chuffey "had been addling
his old brains with figures and book-keeping all his life, and
twenty years ago or so, he went and took a fever. All the time he
was out of his mind (which was three weeks) he never left off
casting up hand he got to so many million at last that I don't
believe he's ever been quite right since." When old Anthony
Chuzzlewit dies, Old Chuffey is stricken with grief. "Three score
and ten," said Chuffey, "ought and carry seven. Some men are so
strong they live to four score. Four times Ought's an Ought. Four
times two's an eight, Eighty. Oh, why why why didn'e he live
to be four time Ought's an Ought, and four times two's an eight,
Eighty Then Mr Pecksniff tried to comfort the old clerk "Come
Mr Chuffey," he said "Come with me. Summon up your fortitude, Mr
Chuffey." "Yes, I will, returned the old clerk. "Yes I'll summon
up my forty How many times forty
Even when Dickens was talking about or telling fairy stories, he
still had this bee in his bonnet. Writing about one of his favourite
childhood books, -in MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, he referred to "The mighty
talisman, the rare "Arabian Nights", with Cassim Baba, divided by
four, like the ghost of a dreadful sum, hanging up, all gory, in the
robbers' cave."
And in his children's story, THE MAGIC FISHBONE, we read how de pug-
dog made a snap at one of the little princes and caused him to put
his hand through a pane of glass. "When the seventeen other Princes
and Princesses saw him bleed bleed bleed they were
terrified out of'their wits and screamed themselves black in their
seventeen faces all at once. But the Princes Alicia put her hands
over their seventeen mouth, one after another, and persuaded them to
be quiet. And then, she put the wounded Prince's hand in a basin of
fresh cold water, while they stared with their twice seventeen are
thirty-four, put down four and carry three eyes, and then she looked
in the hand for bits of glass."
This is a particularly interesting passage, because it raises the
suspicion that despite Dickens's repeated references to arithmetic,
