Chapter 15

Chapter 15 — Bell Yard
While we were in London, Mr Jarndyce was constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much astonished us. Mr Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on, and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit, for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of Mrs Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake, and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of people.

Mrs Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something — and with her, Mr Quale. Whatever Mrs Pardiggle said, Mr Quale repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs Jellyby out, he drew Mrs Pardiggle out. Mrs Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my Guardian, in behalf of her eloquent friend, Mr Gusher. With Mr Gusher appeared Mr Quale again. Mr Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface, and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet, he was scarcely seated, before Mr Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature — which he certainly was, flabbily speaking; though Mr Quale meant in intellectual beauty — and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many Missions of various sorts, among this set of people; but, nothing respecting them was half so clear to us, as that it was Mr Quale’s mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else’s mission, and that it was the most popular mission of all.

Mr Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but, that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms; where charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing, rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down; he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr Quale by Mr Gusher (who had already