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And raw, then
"Chill and bitter," said Riah, drawing out a handkerchief, and wiping
the moisture from his beard and long grey hair as he stood on the
verge of the rug, with his eyes on the acceptable fire.
With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh.
"Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?" he asked.
"No, sir, no. Not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty clean."
"You needn't brag about it," returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his
desire to.heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets.
"But you're always bragging about something."
In this scene, taken from OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (Chapter 1, bk 3) Dickens
is looking at the situation from the opposite side from that he
occupied during the Dingley Dell scenes. The reader is asked to identify
himself with the character who is in the cold not with Mr Pickwick
and old Wardle who are enjoying the warmth. In fact, Dickens began to ring
changes on the warm/cold idea quite early. The following passage occurs
in MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT:
"When Mr Pecksniff and the two young ladies got into the coach at the
end of the lane, they found it empty, which was a great comfort,
particularly as the outside of the coach was quite full and the
passengers looked very frosty. For as Mr Pecksniff justly observed
when he and his daughters had burrowed their feet deep in the straw,
wrapped themselves to the chin, and pulled up both windows it is
always satisfactory to feel, in keen weather, that many other people
are not as warm as you are. And this, he said, was quite natural, and
a very beautiful arrangement... "For," he observed, "if everyone were
warm and well-fed, we should lose the satisfaction of admiring the
fortitude with which certain conditions of men bear cold and hunger."
Then, in A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Dickens gave the idea another twist. In all
the passages so far quoted, the warmth is inside (whether inside a
house or a coach) and the cold is outsideBut in the CAROL we read
"The cold within Ebenezer Scrooge froze his old features, nipped his
pointed nose, shrivelled his sheekstiffened his gait, made his eyes
red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out in his grating voice. A frosty
rime was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin.
