memorable raw afternoon towards evening . . . was
. . . that this bleak place, overgrown with nettles, was the churchyard,
and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected
with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and
that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the
sea. . . . On the edge of the river . . . only two black things in all
the prospect seemed to be standing upright . . . one, the beacon by
which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly
thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet with some chains
hanging to it which had once held a pirate." Here Magwitch, an escaped
convict from Chatham, terrifies the child Pip into stealing for him food
and a file; and though recaptured and transported, he carries with him
to Australia such a grateful heart for the small creature's service,
that on making a fortune there he resolves to make his little friend a
gentleman. This requires circumspection; and is so done, through the
Old-Bailey attorney who has defended Magwitch at his trial (a character
of surprising novelty and truth), that Pip imagines his present gifts
and "great expectations" to have come from the supposed rich lady of
the story (whose eccentricities are the unattractive part of it, and
have yet a weird character that somehow fits in with the kind of wrong
she has suffered). When therefore the closing scenes bring back Magwitch
himself, who risks his life to gratify his longing to see the gentleman
he has made, it is an unspeakable horror to the youth to discover his
benefactor in the convicted felon. If any one doubts Dickens's power of
so drawing a character as to get to the heart of it, seeing beyond
surface peculiarities into the moving springs of the human being
himself, let him narrowly examine those scenes. There is not a grain of
substitution of mere sentiment, or circumstance, for the inner and
absolute reality of the position in which these two creatures find
themselves. Pip's loathing of what had built up his fortune, and his
horror of the uncouth architect, are apparent in even his most generous
efforts to protect him from exposure and sentence. Magwitch's convict
habits strangely blend themselves with his wild pride in, and love for,
the youth whom his money has turned into a gentleman. He has a craving
for his good opinion; dreads to