The Old Curiosity Shop

Kit finds the grandfather, crying and rocking in his seat at the hearth. Kit begs him to speak to him, but he thinks Kit is a ghost. Mr. Garland, the single gentleman, the bachelor, and the schoolmaster arrive. They comfort the grandfather as best they can. The single gentleman tries to tell Grandfather Trent who he is, hoping to reunite as a family, but the grandfather believes it is all a plot to pull his focus away from Nell. He retreats down the hall to Nell’s room, and they follow him. Once inside, they see Nell in her bed, having passed away in her sleep.

Nell has been dead for two days. Before she passed, she said she missed the Edwards sisters she used to watch from afar and that she hoped to see Kit again. One of the schoolboys, who was very fond of Nell and was one of Nell’s favorites, offers to take the grandfather out for a walk. As they move through town, the grandfather notices people wearing mourning garments and shuttering the windows, and he runs to the sexton. When he makes it back to the church, he sees mourners assembled for Nell’s funeral. Inside the church, he is upset to find Nell’s body is gone, and he faints when they tell him they had to move her for the funeral.

The party stays with the grandfather for a few months, helping him cope with Nell’s death. In his fragile mental state, the grandfather refuses to accept that she is dead. Soon, he takes up a spot at her grave, repeatedly insisting “She will come tomorrow!” (508). One spring day, they find him dead at her gravestone, and they bury him by her side.

Sampson Brass is detained and found guilty of perjury and fraud; he is disbarred and jailed. Sally’s disappearance swirls with rumors, such as that she set off as a female sailor or soldier. The closest to the truth is that she and Sampson became beggars in London. Quilp’s body is found on a small, remote island, and his death is incorrectly ruled a suicide. He is buried at a crossroads with a stake through his heart. Tom Scott, Quilp’s boy, leaves England and assumes an Italian identity, doing handstands and somersaults for crowds. Mrs. Quilp inherits all of Quilp’s money and remarries happily, with no input from her mother. Dick sends the Marchioness to school and funds a good life for her, renaming her Sophronia Sphynx. When she turns 19, they marry.

Upon learning that his family has no money, Nell’s brother Frederick “riot[s] abroad” (515), and he eventually dies alone, his body unclaimed in a Paris hospital. The single gentleman continues his travels, retracing the journey undertaken by his brother and granddaughter and meeting all their friends—even the man who tended the furnace fire. Kit and Barbara marry and have several children, to whom Kit regularly tells Nell’s story. He even takes them on trips to the spot where the Curiosity Shop once stood. However, as time passes, his memory fades, and the storefronts change so much that he can only approximate its old location.