De grandes espérances

My father's surname was Pirrip and my Christian name was Philip, but as a small child I could get my tongue round nothing longer than Pip. So Pip I called myself, and Pip I became.

I never knew my parents. They died before I could remember them, and there were no portraits in those days for poor people like us. Everything I imagined about them came from their gravestones. The square, heavy letters on my father's stone made me picture a stout dark man with curly hair. The words "Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above" suggested to me that my mother had been pale and freckled. Next to them lay five small stones, each no longer than my arm, in memory of five little brothers of mine who had given up the struggle of life almost before it began.

We lived in the marsh country, down by the river, about twenty miles from the sea. The churchyard was a bleak place overgrown with nettles. Beyond it stretched the dark flat marshes, cut through with ditches, with a few cattle grazing here and there. Beyond them lay the low grey line of the river, and beyond that the sea, where the wind came from. One raw evening in December I stood among the graves, a small shivering bundle of a boy, and began to cry.