Tender, Loving, Consistent, Honoring Care

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the sweetest themes in Great Expectations is the loving way in which law clerk Wemmick cares for his father who is experiencing old age frailty. His son blesses his father with:

• Love
• Respect
• Excellent care
• Specific responsibilities that make his father know he is needed
• Regularly scheduled activities that he can look forward to and depend on without fail

When Wemmick first invites the book’s main character Pip to his home, he asks his guest, “You don’t object to an aged parent, I hope?” and then added, “Because I have got an aged parent at my place.”

When Pip arrived at Wemmick’s humble, yet creative and fanciful, home and garden, his host asked him if he minded being introduced at once to the Aged. Dickens described Pip’s response in this way:

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.

During that first visit, Wemmick and Pip visited out of doors until almost nine in the evening when Wemmick said:

“Getting near gun-fire. It’s the Aged’s treat.”

Dickens described what happened next in this way:

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged—who I believe would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for holding on by the elbows—cried out exultingly,

“He’s fired! I heerd him!” and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

During another visit to the Castle, Pip witnessed another example of Wemmick’s commitment to consistency and to his assuring his father that he was valued and needed. In Dickens’ words:

Wemmick said, “Now, Aged Parent, tip us the paper.”

Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spectacles out, that this was according to custom, and that it gave the old gentleman infinite satisfaction to read the news aloud. “I won’t offer an apology,” said Wemmick, “for he isn’t capable of many pleasures—are you, Aged P.?”

“All right, John, all right,” returned the old man, seeing himself spoken to.

“Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks off his paper,” said Wemmick, “and he’ll be as happy as a king. We are all attention, Aged One.”

“All right, John, all right!” returned the cheerful old man, so busy and so pleased, that it really was quite charming.

. . . As he wanted the candles close to him, and as he was always on the verge of putting either his head or the newspaper into them, he required as much watching as a powder-mill. But Wemmick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, and the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many rescues. Whenever he looked at us, we . . . expressed the greatest interest and amazement, and nodded until he resumed again.

I am convinced that every single person in your life and mine needs this kind of tender, loving, consistent, honoring care—the toddling little one, the nine-year-old who struggles in math, the fourteen-year-old who excels at everything, the husband who wants to do better, the husband who doesn’t want to do better, the aged parent who did a good job, the aged parent who should have done better, the lonely neighbor, the newly-widowed woman at church, the most successful businessman in town . . . .

Great-Grand-Father’s Tale of the Revolution—
A Portrait of Reverend Zachariah Greene
by William Sidney Mount, 1852

God made us to need Him and to need one another. Just as God loves and cares for us freely and not out of obligation, we each need that kind of love and care from one another.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,
but with humility of mind regard one another
as more important than yourselves; 
do not merely look out for your own personal interests,
but also for the interests of others.
Philippians 2:3-4

Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is from God;
and everyone who loves is born of God
and knows God.
1 John 4:7

Above all, keep fervent
in your love for one another,
because love covers a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8

For you were called to freedom, brethren;
only do not turn your freedom
into an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love serve one another.
Galatians 5:13

Painting courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Morris K. Jesup and Maria DeWitt Jesup Funds, Gift of George I. Seney and Bequest of Vera Ruth Miller, by exchange; and Gift of Anita Pohndorff Yates, in memory of her father, F. G. Pohndorff, 1984

 

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