'Papa! what's money?'

On one of these occasions, when they had both been
perfectly quiet for a long time, and Mr Dombey only
knew that the child was awake by occasionally
glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was
sparkling like a jewel, little Paul broke silence
thus:
'Papa! what's money?'
The abrupt question had such immediate reference to
the subject of Mr Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey
was quite disconcerted.
'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'
'Yes,' said the child, laying his hands upon the
elbows of his little chair, and turning the old face
up towards Mr Dombey's;
'what is money?'
Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked
to give him some explanation involving the terms
circulating-medium, currency, depreciation of
currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value
of precious metals in the market, and so forth; but
looking down at the little chair, and seeing what a
long way down it was, he answered:
'Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings,
half-pence. You know what they are?'


Charles Dickens / Dombey and Son / Chapter 8

bleak house

The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It looks in at windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimneypiece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth and seems to rend it.

The Chalet in which Mr Dickens wrote his works. Gads Hill

In 1864 Fechter gave Dickens a prefabricated two-storey Swiss chalet as a Christmas present. Dickens had it assembled on land he owned on the opposite side of the Rochester High Road. Later, he had a brick-lined tunnel dug between the house's front lawn and the chalet.

stereoscopy