As he said this with a gentle melancholy,which was the next thing to making no charge at all,I expressed my acknowledgements on Peggotty’s behalf,and paid Tiffey in banknotes.Peggotty then retired to her lodging, and Mr.Spenlow and I went into Court,where we had a divorce-suit coming on,under an ingenious little statute (repealed now,I believe, but in virtue of which I have seen several marriages annulled),of which the merits were these. The husband,whose name was Thomas Benjamin,had taken out his marriage licence as Thomas only;suppressing the Benjamin,in case he should not find himself as comfortable as he expected.NOT finding himself as comfortable as he expected,or being a little fatigued with his wife, poor fellow,he now came forward, by a friend,after being married a year or two,and declared that his name was Thomas Benjamin,and therefore he was not married at all.Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.
I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this,and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat which reconciles all anomalies. But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter with me. He said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT. It was all part of a system. Very good. There you were!
I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, as not being worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would be glad to hear from me of what improvement I thought the Commons susceptible?
Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us--for our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and strolling past the Prerogative Office--I submitted that I thought the Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow inquired in what respect?I replied, with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference,I am afraid, to his being Dora’s father),that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court,containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public’s wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits of the deputy registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),--while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.
Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject,and then argued this question with me as he had argued the other.He said, what was it after all?It was a question of feeling.If the public felt that their wills were in safe keeping,and took it for granted that the office was not to be made better,who was the worse for it?Nobody. Who was the better for it?All the Sinecurists. Very well.Then the good predominated.It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect;but what he objected to, was,the insertion of the wedge.Under the Prerogative Office,the country had been glorious.Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office,and the country would cease to be glorious.He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them;and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time.I deferred to his opinion,though I had great doubts of it myself.I find he was right, however;for it has not only lasted to the present moment,but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don’t know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.
I have set all this down,in my present blissful chapter,because here it comes into its natural place. Mr.Spenlow and I falling into this conversation,prolonged it and our saunter to and fro,until we diverged into general topics.And so it came about, in the end, that Mr.Spenlow told me this day week was Dora’s birthday,and he would be glad if I would come down and join a little picnic on the occasion. I went out of my senses immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of a little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, ‘Favoured by papa. To remind’; and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.
I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought. My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture. I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for money. At six in the morning, I was in Covent Garden Market, buying a bouquet for Dora. At ten I was on horseback (I hired a gallant grey, for the occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it fresh, trotting down to Norwood.