My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my
Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make
of both names nothing longer or more explicit than
Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be
called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on
the authority of his tombstone and my sister —
Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw
any likeness of either of them (for their days were
long before the days of photographs), my first fancies
regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived
from their tombstones. The shape of the letters
on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was
a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair.
From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also
Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish
conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.
To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and
a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside
their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five
little brothers of mine — who gave up trying
to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal
struggle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously
entertained that they had all been born on their backs
with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had
never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within,
as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.
My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity
of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time
I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown
with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip,
late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the
above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew,
Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the
aforesaid, were also dead and buried; 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;
and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid
of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice,
as a man started up from among the graves at the side
of the church porch. “Keep still, you
little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”
A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron
on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken
shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head.
A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered
in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and
stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped,
and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth
chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
