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Dombey and Son: Blimber

Wishing to hasten Paul's education, Mr. Dombey sends him to Doctor Blimber's school, famed for its method of crushing out each boyish trait and making learned prigs of all its pupils. Here the boy finds a friend and champion in Toots, the head boy of the school, who falls a victim to the charms of Florence, but in the end consoles himself by marrying her faithful maid, the sprightly Susan Nipper.

The story of Paul's life at Doctor Blimber's, where his weak frame is tried beyond endurance and finally breaks down, is a pathetic one, although it is enlivened by much that is amusing and absurd in the descriptions of the school and of the Blimber family.

Fatally ill, the boy is carried home to the big house, where all the skill in London, coupled with his sister's devotion, cannot save him, and after lingering awhile he slips away from the grand future his father has so carefully arranged. The death-bed scene where little Paul leaves the big house forever is one of the most famous in fiction.

Clasped in his sister's arms, the dying boy murmurs: "How fast the river runs. . it's very near the sea. I hear the waves.". . "And now there was a shore before him--Who stood on the bank." He sees his mother there awaiting him and whispers, "The light about her head is shining on me as I go." The bereaved father, in an agony of grief and blasted hopes, turns coldly from the heartbreaking appeal of his sorrowing daughter, who pleads for some response in this dark hour. Bidding her seek her own apartments, he shuts himself up in his rooms alone.