Herbert Pocket Quotes

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Herbert Pocket who is now Pip’s London roommate turns out to be a true friend, much like Joe. He is described here by Pip as an open, honest and uncomplicated character. When Pip first comes to London Herbert extends the hand of friendship to him and also offers his support for Magwitch. Herbert is a man of integrity.

“Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew.” “Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I. “Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a gentleman.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Dickens highlights the absurdities of Victorian England’s social class system in this conversation with Herbert and Pip. It was acceptable for a gentleman to work, so long as it was not manual work like being a baker or selling beer in his own pub. Miss Havisham’s father was considered upper class because he owned a brewery where he had people at his command to make the beer and reap the profits for him. Dickens is satirizing ridiculous social conventions whereby brewing was respectable and genteel, but baking was not.

“Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.” I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I thanked him, and apologized.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Herbert Pocket instructs Pip on the etiquette of drinking wine and not guzzling it, when he offers him another glass. Society is personified here as having the ability to expect certain standards of behavior in people.

“It is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket explains to him about Miss Havisham’s disastrous relationship with Compeyson, quoting his father Matthew Pocket about the conman. Truly good actions come from a good heart and Compeyson did not have a true manner or heart, he says. His father’s metaphor about varnish being unable to hide the grain of the wood is telling us that a person’s true nature cannot be faked.

“And as to the condition on which you hold your advancement in life, – namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it, – you may be very sure that it will never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. After telling Pip the full story of Miss Havisham, Herbert promises that he will never inquire about the identity of Pip’s secret benefactor. Pip takes that as a sign that Herbert believes Miss Havisham to be his patron, as Pip does. This excerpt speaks to one of the novel’s most important themes, self-improvement and Pip’s journey to advance himself socially, financially and in social standing.

“Then the time comes,” said Herbert, “when you see your opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and then there you are! When you have once made your capital, you have nothing to do but employ it.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Herbert is talking to Pip about his future and his big dreams of being a successful capitalist. He sees himself seizing an opportunity when it opens up for him and making money from it to invest in further opportunities.

“What a hopeful disposition you have!” said I, gratefully admiring his cheery ways. “I ought to have,” said Herbert, “for I have not much else.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 30. Pip recognizes his friend Herbert to be an optimistic and cheerful young man, despite the fact that he has little money. The more grounded Herbert stands in contrast to Pip, who is obsessed with social climbing and the unobtainable Estella. Herbert is more focused on hard work and genuine relationships. At the end of the chapter Herbert reveals his secret engagement to Clara, who comes from a poor background and is “rather below my mother’s nonsensical family notions.”

Day by day as his hopes grew stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more and more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy. At length, the thing being done, and he having that day entered Clarriker’s House, and he having talked to me for a whole evening in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 37. Pip comes up with a secret plan to help his friend Herbert get a job with a young shipping broker. He invests a sizeable sum of money from his own fortune in the firm, so that it hires Herbert as a clerk to eventually become partner. The deal is done anonymously through Wemmick and Miss Skiffins’s brother, so that Herbert is unaware of Pip’s role in his career advancement. With all the negative and corrupting influences Pip’s wealth has had on him, this single act of goodness and generosity stands out. It is a pivotal moment that marks a turning point for both Pip and Herbert.

Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 46. Pip is fearful for the safety of Magwitch the convict who is in hiding in Clara’s house and is being pursued by Compeyson. Having spent time with the convict, Pip has grown close to him but realizes the risk he has taken to return to London to see Pip. In the symbolism of the tide, Herbert sees it flowing towards his love Clara, but to Pip it is ominously moving towards Magwitch and his capture.

“Fearing he should be called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so be the cause of her death, he hid himself (much as he grieved for the child), kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a certain man called Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child’s mother.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 50. Herbert explains part of Magwitch’s backstory to Pip. Magwitch was married to a woman who in a vengeful and jealous rage murdered another woman. She also threatened to destroy her own child she had with Magwitch, a child he was “exceedingly fond of.” Fearing that he might be the cause of the child’s death, Magwitch hid himself during his wife’s trial and remained anonymous. After she was acquitted, she disappeared and Magwitch lost both her and the child. We learn that this child was Estella. The incident also provided Compeyson the chance to blackmail Magwitch and suck him deeper into crime.

“That evil genius, Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, knowing of his keeping out of the way at that time and of his reasons for doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping him poorer and working him harder. It was clear last night that this barbed the point of Provis’s animosity.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 50. Herbert tells Pip how Compeyson blackmailed Magwitch after he learned how Magwitch went into hiding to avoid testifying against his wife at her murder trial. The evil Compeyson used the information to get Magwitch deeper into crime. This fueled Magwitch’s animosity towards Compeyson.

We owed so much to Herbert’s ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 58. After Pip moves to Egypt to work in the same firm as Herbert, he questions why he ever saw his friend as inept in business and financial matters. Earlier in the story Pip commented that Herbert would “never be very successful or rich.” In this later moment of self-realization, a more mature Pip sees that he was the one with the lack of aptitude.
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