Prescription, proscription and sterilization.(LAW)(Speech)

IN CHARLES DICKENS Great Expectations, the hero is befriended by his guardian's clerk, Wemmick. Today Mr Wemmick would be described by some as a member of the aspirational class. There is every possibility that he might reside, if he were alive today, in what the condescending class would slightingly describe as a "mini-McMansion". The nature of his house, its suburban surroundings, and his pride in it, are brought to life in these passages in which Pip enjoys Wemmick's hospitality:

... we had arrived in the district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back ditches, and little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement. Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns.

"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?"

I highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham), and a gothic door, almost too small to get in at.

"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it up--so--and cut off the communication."

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and not merely mechanically.