Charles Dickens

“ Whereas you couldn’t be more occupied with your day’s calculations and combinations than you habitually show yourself to be, if you were a carpenter.’
‘A carpenter!’ repeated Mr Merdle, checking something like a groan. ‘I shouldn’t so much mind being a carpenter, Mrs Merdle.’
‘And my complaint is,’ pursued the lady, disregarding the low remark, ‘that it is not the tone of Society, and that you ought to correct it, Mr Merdle. If you have any doubt of my judgment, ask even Edmund Sparkler.’ The door of the room had opened, and Mrs Merdle now surveyed the head of her son through her glass. ”

“ Society requires that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!’
For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as if he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like one) , had wound up the exposition with a shriek.
‘Cases there are,’ said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little finger of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat action ”

“ So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other job but the job immediately in hand.
Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with the parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head on one side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species. ”

“ And as to that, they may live for ever. My dear, they are just the kind of people to do it.’
Now, Mrs Merdle, who really knew her friend Society pretty well, and who knew what Society’s mothers were, and what Society’s daughters were, and what Society’s matrimonial market was, and how prices ruled in it, and what scheming and counter-scheming took place for the high buyers, and what bargaining and huckstering went on, thought in the depths of her capacious bosom that this was a sufficiently good catch. ”

“ When, to these three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his, and that Mr Meagles’s objection to the marriage had been the sole obstacle in its way all along, it becomes the height of probability that the relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing particular, turned these ideas in her sagacious mind. ”

“ The fault is not yours. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You must exercise the strength of mind for which you are renowned, and make the best of it.’
‘The girl’s family have made,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘of course, the most strenuous endeavours to—as the lawyers say—to have and to hold Henry.’
‘Of course they have, my dear,’ said Mrs Merdle. ”

“ Society expresses its views on a question of marriage
Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that Power) , Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his wealth. ”

“ It had reached this point when Mr Merdle came home from his daily occupation of causing the British name to be more and more respected in all parts of the civilised globe capable of the appreciation of world-wide commercial enterprise and gigantic combinations of skill and capital. ”