Chapter LVIII

 

Size: 42 cm x 30 cm

Pip witnesses how Miss Havisham's Satis House is taken apart for auction.

In the penultimate chapter of the book, Pip returns to his childhood town, hoping to start over his life, trying to leave back his turmoil with the convict, and his London dandy life. He lodges at the Blue Boar, where he so often went. The next day, early in the morning, he goes for a walk down memory lane:

"Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting ready, I strolled round by Satis House. There were printed, bills on the gate, and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to be sold as old building materials and pulled down. LOT 1 was marked in whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brew house; LOT 2 on that part of the main building which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the dust and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open gate and looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who had no business there, I saw the auctioneer’s clerk walking on the casks and telling them off for the information of a catalogue compiler, pen in hand, who made a temporary desk of the wheeled chair I had so often pushed along to the tune of Old Clem."

Pip looks right into the viewer in the lower right corner, while some locals try to get a hand on the items that will be auctioned. They camp out at the entrance, waiting for the carriage coming out, and then surround it like vultures. A man from the auction crosses his arms to discourage them.

A worker is covering a big mirror with a blanket. It was in the wedding cake room (See Chapter XI).

Some other men are taking away Miss Havisham's chair, in which she sat so prominently. A man sits by the window from Miss Havisham's favourite room (e.g. Chapter VIII, Chapter XXIX, Chapter XLIV), in which Pip met her for the first time.

On the far back, a mountain of discarded furniture is taken apart and loaded on a cart. In the background, one can see the overgrown gardens of Satis House.

This illustration is done mainly with washed ink.