Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

Mr Merdle's Complaint

Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more
common wall than the fronts of other establishments of state on the
opposite side of the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the
opposing rows of houses in Harley Street were very grim with one
another. Indeed, the mansions and their inhabitants were so much
alike in that respect, that the people were often to be found drawn
up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in the shade of their own
loftiness, staring at the other side of the way with the dullness
of the houses.

Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people
who take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless
uniform twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same
form, all approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by
the same pattern of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-
escapes, the same inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and
everything without exception to be taken at a high valuation--who
has not dined with these? The house so drearily out of repair, the
occasional bow-window, the stuccoed house, the newly-fronted house,
the corner house with nothing but angular rooms, the house with the
blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always up, the
house where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea,
and found nobody at home--who has not dined with these? The house
that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain--who does not
know her? The showy house that was taken for life by the
disappointed gentleman, and which does not suit him at all--who is
unacquainted with that haunted habitation?

Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs
Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not
aware; but Mr and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was
aware of Mr and Mrs Merdle. Society had said 'Let us license them;
let us know them.'

Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a
Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was
in everything good, from banking to building. He was in
Parliament, of course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was
Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other. The
weightiest of men had said to projectors, 'Now, what name have you
got? Have you got Merdle?' And, the reply being in the negative,
had said, 'Then I won't look at you.'

This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom
which required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest
of crimson and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom
to repose upon,