There were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.

Background.

‘There were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.‘ is a quotation from Bleak House (Chapter 8).

Bleak House was the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, intended to illustrate the evils caused by long, drawn-out legal cases in the Court of Chancery.

 

Context.

Quotation said by the character John Jarndyce. Mr. Jarndyce is guardian to Richard, Ada, and Esther, and owner of Bleak House.

In Chapter 8  of Bleak House, the misguided charity worker Mrs. Pardiggle pays a visit to Bleak House, accompanied by her five miserable sons. Dickens uses the character of Mrs. Pardiggle (along with another, Mrs. Jellyby) in  to satirize Victorian philanthropy which sought to help others far away, but in doing so often neglected those closest to them (termed telescopic philanthropy). In this quote, Jarndyce is poking fun at people such as Mrs. Pardiggle who enjoy bragging about their charitable efforts. Today, we tend to term such self-publicity as virtue signalling.

Taken from the following passage in Chapter 8 (Covering a Multitude of Sins) of Bleak House:

Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle became the subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr. Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five young sons.

 

 

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