58
he did not really know how to do simple multiplication. Twice seven
teen is surely done by multiplying seven by to first of all, and
putting down four and carrying one.
BEE NUMBER TWO FOUND DROWNED
Dickens had a morbid interest in drowning. In several of his works
he refers to notices headed FOUND DROWNED or MISSING - PRESUMED
DROWNED. Thus, when Esther Summerson in BLEAK HOUSE went down with
Inspector Bucket to the riverside in the East End of London, she
described how "at length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy
turning I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in con
ference with several man Against de mouldering wall by which
they stood, there was a bill, on which I could discern the word
FOUND DROWNED; and this, and an insciption about drags, possedded me
with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place."
(Chapter 57)
In DOMBEY AND SON (Chapter 25) when Solomon Gills suddenly disappeared
from home, Captain Cuttle entertained similar suspicions. "For a
whole week, the captain read of all the found and missing people in
all the newspapers and handbills, and went forth on expeditions at
all hours of the day to identify Solomon Gills in poor little ship-
boys who had fallen overboard, and in tall foreigners with dark beards
who had taken poison."
When Mr Pegotty and David Copperfield followed the distracted Martha
"Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a
sticky substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the
rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men
fluttering above highwater mark, led down through the ooze and slush
to the ebb tideChapter 47
FOUND DROWNED bills are described elsewherebut nowhere with such
significance for the plot as in OUT MUTUAL FRIEND -"Taking up the
bottle with the lamp in it, Gaffer Hexam held it near a paper on the
wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND, Mortimer Lightwood and
Eugene Wrayburn read the handbill as it stuck against the wall..
"Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see," said Lightwoord ..."The
trouser pockets empty, and turned inside out."