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"I think they were a little so," observed Mrs Quilp with a sob.
"Legs crooked," said Brass, writing as he spoke. "Large head, short
body, legs crooked
"Very crooked," suggested Mrs Jiniwin.
"We'll not say very crooked, ma'am," said Brass, piously. Let us not
bear hard on the weaknesses of the deceased. He is gone, ma'am, to
where his legs will never come in question. We will content our
selves with crooked, Mrs Jiniwin."
"I thought you wanted the truth," said the old lady, "that's all."
Dickens not only had an eye for the comic, but also for the gruesome.
Quite superfluously he mentions in NICHOLAS NICKLEBY that Mr Crummies
lodged at Porthmouth with one, Bulph, a pilot, who had the little finger
of a drowned man on his parlour mantelshelf. A chapter of the
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER (Some recollections of Mortality) is largely
devoted to Dickens's visits to the Morgue in Paris. This is also dealt
with in the chapter entitled 'Travelling Abroad' when he confesses
that "Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into
the Morgue
In the chapter 'Some recollections of Mortality' he also records an
incident by the canal at Regent's Park Londen
"I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards us,
a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly
dressed in black... The policeman who had just got her out, and the
passing costermonger who had helped him, were standing near the
body... A barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the silence, and
a woman steered it. The man with the horse, that towed it, cared so
little for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair,
and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our cry of
horror took him to the bridle."
This morbid interest is shown further in an article 'Down with the
Tide' included in REPRINTED PIECES. This describes Dickens's experiences
with the Thames river police who took him out in a four-cared galley
(similar to the one which intercepted Pip's boat in GREAT EXPEXTATIONS)
commended by an officer whom Dickens refers to as 'Peacoat' or merely
'Pea'
