25. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 916-989

Chapter 60: Perspective through Chapter 67: The Close of Esther's Narrative

As one might expect from the shock and the exposure to the elements she has endured, Esther becomes ill, though not for a long time. When Esther recovers he tells her that he plans to stay on in London for as much as six months, because "Ada stands much in need of you." Jarndyce is concerned that, because of his estrangement from Richard, he has little contact with the wards in Jarndyce, so he cautions Esther, as he says he cautioned Woodcourt, not to bring up the subject of the case with Ada and Richard, lest she alienate herself from them: "She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance of another separation from a friend."

Then he mentions Mrs Woodcourt, who has been a guest at his house in London for some time. Esther admits that she finds her "more agreeable than she used to be," and that she hasn't harped on the Woodcourt pedigree as much as she used to. So he proposes to ask Mrs Woodcourt to stay a while longer. Esther has some mixed feelings about this that she can't articulate to herself, given that she doesn't want to admit that she is still in love with Woodcourt, but she agrees. She asks Jarndyce if Woodcourt still has plans to try his profession in another country, and he tells her that in about half a year there is to be an opening for "a medical attendant for the poor" in Yorkshire, and that Woodcourt is a strong candidate for it.

So Esther resumes regular visits to Ada and Richard, and on one of them meets Miss Flite, who has just been to see Ada. She tells Esther that Richard hasn't returned from the court yet, and that when she left he was in conference with Mr Vholes. She urges Esther, "Don't like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!" She has named Richard her executor, she says, "if I should wear out, he will be able to watch that judgment." Her previous executor was Gridley, "But he wore out." And then she mentions that she has added two birds to her collection and named them "the Wards in Jarndyce." Esther recalls, "Her manner of running over the names of her birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, quite chilled me."

Richard brings Vholes to dinner with him, and the lawyer takes Esther aside to sound her out on how ill Richard is looking. But his manner is "So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser, and there were something of the Vampire in him." Vholes also comments that he thinks the marriage of Richard and Ada is "very ill-advised," to which Esther retorts that it would be much better "if Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which you are engaged with him." Vholes "inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even that." His defense is that Richard "had laid down the principle of watching his own interests; and that when a client of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I have carried it out; I do carry it out." Esther can only reflect that she "well understood Mr Vholes's scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability."

She observes of Richard, "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." Richard sees Mr Vholes out. "On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it, that it struck me he had begun to doubt Mr Vholes."

Woodcourt arrives, and takes Richard out for a walk, leaving Esther alone with Ada, who tells her she is perfectly aware of Richard's condition and their financial plight. "But when I married Richard I as quite determined, Esther, if Heaven would help me, never to show him that I grieved for what he did, and so to make him unhappy." And then she adds, "And something else supports me, Esther." She is pregnant. (Dickens doesn't say so in those words, of course, and the way in which Ada delivers the news is curiously oblique, as if designed to avoid shocking the most squeamish of Victorian readers.) But she can't help feeling dread when she looks at Richard: "That he may not live to see his child."

On one of Esther's visits Skimpole is there, and realizing what a potential drain on Richard and Ada's meager resources he can be, Esther decides to pay him a visit. She informs him that Richard is "in very embarrassed circumstance," which only delights Skimpole because he is, too. She hesitates to ask him outright not to go there anymore, but Skimpole anticipates the request: "Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly not. Why should I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure." Esther is "disconcerted" by Skimpole's backward logic, and then emboldened to bring up the matter of his ratting on Jo. He blithely falls back into the old "I'm just a child" routine, cheerfully admitting his irresponsibility. So Esther says "that it was not right to betray my guardian's confidence for a bribe." Skimpole retorts, "I can't be bribed." He doesn't understand money, so he has no idea of its value, therefore, he argues, bribing him is impossible. And he weaves an airy justification for turning Jo over to Bucket that is perfectly logical if based on the premise that Skimpole is a child and therefore by nature incapable of responsibility.

After Skimpole accompanies her home, Esther says, she never saw him again. Jarndyce broke with him, and he died five years later, leaving a diary and letters from which a biography was constructed. "It was considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It was this. 'Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is the Incarnation of Selfishness.'"

The months pass, and one day after visiting Richard and Ada, Esther goes to the place where she usually meets Jarndyce for the return home. She is accompanied by Woodcourt, but Jarndyce is late, and after half an hour Woodcourt walks her home. When they get there, both Jarndyce and Mrs Woodcourt are out. Woodcourt takes the opportunity of being alone with Esther to declare his love for her. She reflects, "O, too late to know it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I had. Too late." She tells him that she is not free to accept him, but "never believe ... that while my heart beats, it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been beloved by you." Esther also learns that he has accepted the position in Yorkshire, which Jarndyce helped him obtain. When she wishes him "Good night" and "good-bye," he understands her meaning: "The first, until we meet to-morrow; the second, as a farewell to this theme between us for ever."

Yeah, well, we'll see about that. Again, having locked himself into Esther's point of view, Dickens shows his uncertainty about how to handle the Woodcourt-Esther-Jarndyce triangle. The omniscient narrator could have presented the irony of Esther's situation -- love vs. respect, duty vs. passion -- without some of the mawkishness attendant on Esther's self-consciousness, as well as the awkwardness of her withholding an outcome she knows too well. We feel a genuine sympathy for Elizabeth when she thinks she has lost Darcy or Emma when she thinks she has lost Mr Knightley, but that's because Jane Austen has been able to view the situation with some measure of objectivity. Esther's emotion here seems false and sentimental by contrast.

So of course what Esther does is go to her room and cry and then take out Jarndyce's proposal letter, which, she says, she knows by heart. And then the next day to keep "as busy as possible," repressing her emotions. (Though still crabbing about Charley's inability to learn grammar.) Jarndyce congratulates her on how well she handles the household finances: In fact, he does it twice, repeating the sentence "There never was such a Dame Durden ... for making money last." His praise reminds us that Esther is not marrying Jarndyce so much as she is marrying Bleak House -- which becomes a key point later. Finally, she announces, "I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please." She leaves the decision up to him, and when he proposes "Next month?" she agrees.

They are interrupted by the appearance of Mr Bucket, who brings with him "an old man in a black skull-cap, unable to walk" and therefore carried in a chair. They are introduced to Smallweed, and are informed that in rummaging through the papers at Krook's Smallweed has discovered another Jarndyce will. Jarndyce refuses to examine it, however, holding to his refusal to become involved in the case, but promises Smallweed that he will be remunerated for discovering it. Jarndyce and Esther go to Kenge's office, where the lawyer tells them that "it is a Will of later date than any in the suit. It appears to be all in the Testator's handwriting. It is duly executed and attested." It is "a perfect instrument!" Its effect would be to reduce Jarndyce's share of the estate in the favor of Richard and Ada. Vholes is summoned, and he agrees that it is "a very remarkable document" and "a very important document," and that it should be introduced in court when the term begins next month.

Meanwhile, Mr George, who has been at Chesney Wold tending to the recuperating Sir Leicester, goes to "the iron country farther north" to see his brother, and learns how prominent a name Rouncewell is there, which almost makes him back off from the encounter. But at the factory, which is "a place to make a man's head ache," in his opinion, he encounters his nephew, who is "devilish like me!" George thinks. He asks his nephew to take him to see Mr Rouncewell, and when the nephew asks what name he should tell his father, "George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers, 'Steel.'"

Presented to Rouncewell, George claims to have been in the army with Rouncewell's brother, but the ironmaster recognizes him and embraces him. Rouncewell tells George that he has come on an auspicious day: He is about to announce Watt's engagement to Rosa, who is leaving for Germany as part of her education tomorrow: The wedding will be in a year. George is astonished by his swift acceptance into the family, but balks when Rouncewell proposes to find a job for him in the business. He is also concerned that his return will disadvantage Rouncewell's children: He wants their mother to "scratch" him out of her will. Rouncewell assures him that their mother would never do such a thing, but if he feels so strongly about it, he can dispose of any inheritance however he sees fit, which George accepts. As for a job in the business, "I am a kind of a Weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular garden.... But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold -- where there's more room for a Weed than there is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides."

George also asks his brother to send a letter he has written to Esther, but didn't want to mail to her from Chesney Wold because he was afraid the associations with the place would pain her. In it he apologizes for turning over to Tulkinghorn the paper in Hawdon's handwriting. Finally, the brothers part, "the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country."

Jarndyce has given Esther two hundred pounds for the wedding preparations, with the understanding that the wedding would not take place until after the court hearing on the new will. Jarndyce goes to Yorkshire "on Mr Woodcourt's business," and sends for Esther. When she arrives, he tells her that he had wanted to do something to thank Woodcourt for "his humanity to poor unfortunate Jo, his inestimable service to my young cousins, and his value to us all," so he has found a house for him and he wants Esther to look it over, since she is so experienced as a housekeeper. Esther is so touched by the generosity, she tells us, that she starts to cry. Jarndyce tells her "I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress of Bleak House."

She cries again that night, she tells us, "but I hope it was with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure," and she repeats the words of Jarndyce's proposal letter twice, as a reminder of her duty. In the morning they tour the house, which is a perfect replica of "all the pretty objects, my little tastes and fancies, my little methods and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them, my odd ways everywhere." She is a little disturbed, she says, at the thought that it might remind Woodcourt of her, and "what he believed he had lost." Finally, Jarndyce tells her, there's the name of the house: "We went out of the porch; and he showed me written over it, BLEAK HOUSE."

He tells her, "I had no doubt of your being contented and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with whom you would be happier." Woodcourt had confided in him, but he hadn't confided in Woodcourt until yesterday. He had also taken Mrs Woodcourt "into a separate confidence," and had invited her to stay with them so she would get to know and appreciate Esther. And when Woodcourt made his declaration of love to Esther, "he spoke with my knowledge and consent -- but I gave him no encouragement, not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too miserly to part with a scrap of it." So now Woodcourt enters. "My husband -- I have called him by that name full seven happy years now -- stood at my side."

Jarndyce's renunciation is barely credible, and only because we have never really known Jarndyce: We have seen him only through Esther's eyes. It exists as a plot device, and what satisfactions we may derive from it are from the outcome of a story, the resolution of a prickly dilemma.

From here on out, the novel largely consists of tying up loose ends. Guppy is one of those loose ends: a character so prominent in the narrative that he needs to be disposed of one way or another. So when Esther returns to London, she finds that he has called on her during her absence. She agrees to receive him, and he arrives with his mother and his "particular friend, Mr Weevle. that is to say, my friend has gone by the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling." Guppy informs them that his apprenticeship is over and he is now "admitted ... on the roll of attorneys," and that he is setting up housekeeping in Lambeth, where Jobling, his clerk, and his mother will also reside. And so now he wants to renew his proposal to Esther.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Magnanimous Conduct of Mr Guppy (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Jarndyce has been listening and responding to all of this on Esther's behalf.

"I take it upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, "to reply to your proposals on the part of Miss Summerson. She is very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good evening, and wishes you well." 

Guppy is uncertain whether this signifies "acceptance, or rejection, or consideration," and Jarndyce says, "decided rejection." Whereupon Mrs Guppy indignantly orders Jarndyce out of his own house, and has to be bodily ushered out by Guppy and Jobling.

Court resumes, and Esther and Woodcourt decide to be present at the hearing on the new will. "Richard was extremely agitated, and was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported." But on the way, Esther and Woodcourt are stopped by Caddy Jellyby, who is on her way to one of her dancing classes, so they are late arriving at the court. They find, to their amazement, that there is a great crowd that seems to be amused at something. They find that Jarndyce and Jarndyce is "over for good." They assume that this means there has been a ruling in favor of the new will, but then they meet Kenge and Vholes, who tell them that the will hasn't even been discussed. Finally Woodcourt figures out what they're saying: the estate has been found to be entirely absorbed by the costs of litigating it, and "thus the suit lapses and melts away."

Woodcourt realizes, too, what this will mean to Richard. Vholes tells them that he left Richard still in the courtroom, and then "gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of this client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away." Woodcourt sends Esther to Jarndyce with the news, and then goes to find Richard. In the afternoon, Jarndyce accompanies Esther to Richard and Ada's, where Ada tells her that Woodcourt had found Richard "sitting in a corner of the court ... like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away, and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home."

Richard is week but looks "handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day." He welcomes Esther, and promises to be at her wedding if he can stand. He dozes for a while, and then notices Jarndyce waiting in the hall and asks who it is. Richard admits him and Jarndyce comes in and puts his hand on Richard's. "'O sir,' said Richard, 'you are a good man, you are good man!' and burst into tears for the first time." He tells Jarndyce that he would like to see Esther and Woodcourt's house. "If I could be moved there when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there, sooner than anywhere." He talks of visiting the old Bleak House as well, and then of starting a new life: "'I will begin the world!' said Richard, with a light in his eyes." Esther notices that Woodcourt "drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly life up his hand to warn my guardian." He speaks of being "a guide to my unborn child," and asks Ada to forgive him. She kisses him and he dies.

When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to me, and told me that she had given her birds their liberty.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Mausoleum at Chesney Wold (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

At Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester is "invalided, bent, and almost blind, but of a worthy presence yet -- riding with a stalwart man beside him, constant to his bridle-rein." He still carries on his feud with Boythorn, but Boythorn is really humoring the old baronet, who doesn't know "how near together he and his antagonist have suffered, in the fortunes of two sisters; and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him."

Mr George has taken up lodging in the keeper's house where Esther took shelter from the rain and had her first encounter with her mother, and Phil Squod stays busy polishing "anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish." The house is mostly shut up, and is not open to visitors anymore. "Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her face and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the long evenings," fighting off yawns; "passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have died away from the place in Lincolnshire, and yielded it to dull repose."

Ada gives birth to a boy who is named Richard, and goes to live at the old Bleak House. Esther and Woodcourt have two daughters. Charley marries a miller, and her little sister, Emma, takes over as Esther's maid. Their brother, Tom, is apprenticed to the miller. Caddy gives the dancing lessons now, because Prince is lame. Their daughter is deaf and dumb. Mrs Jellyby has turned against Africa because the King of Borrioboola tried "to sell everybody -- who survived the climate -- for Rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament."

Esther is still in love with Ada: Richard, Ada's son, "says that he has two mamas, and I am one."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Sheila Hancock as Mrs Guppy, Ian Richardson as the Lord Chancellor, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite.

23. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 816-865

Chapter 54: Springing a Mine through Chapter 56: Pursuit

Sir Leicester agrees to meet with Bucket in the library, excusing himself because he is "not well.... I am subject to -- gout." Sir Leicester hesitates about specifying the illness but realizes that "Mr Bucket palpably knows all about it." He suggests that Volumnia wishes to join them, too, but Bucket quickly puts an end to that idea. After checking that the door is locked, and that the key prevents anyone from peeking in, Bucket gets to the point: "I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed it, and collected proof against the person who did this crime." And it wasn't George: "It was a woman." Then he ceases to be so direct, preparing Sir Leicester for the revelations to come. But when he mentions Lady Dedlock, "Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat, and stares at him fiercely."

Bucket presses on, however, telling Sir Leicester, "She is the pivot it all turns on." Sir Leicester's anger continues: "My Lady's name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!" Still Bucket proceeds, telling Sir Leicester that Tulkinghorn "long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of Lady Dedlock." Sir Leicester says he would have killed Tulkinghorn himself if he had "dared to breathe them to me." But Bucket continues, telling him that Tulkinghorn's suspicions grew from Lady Dedlock's awareness of "the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person, who had been her lover before you courted her, and who ought to have been her husband." The man subsequently died, Bucket continued, and Tulkinghorn "suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging, and his wretcheder grave, alone and in secret."

He then tells of the trick played on Jo in Tulkinghorn's office, in which Hortense appeared in the clothes that Lady Dedlock had borrowed from her, confirming Tulkinghorn's suspicions. He then suggests that Sir Leicester ask his wife whether, after Tulkinghorn left their house on the night of his murder, "she didn't go down to his chambers with the intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it." If she denies it, he tells the baronet, "tell her that it's no use; that Inspector Bucket knows it, and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though he's not in the army now) , and knows that she knows she passed him, on the staircase."

Sir Leicester has turned pale, "and Mr Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds." He informs Sir Leicester of his suspicion that Tulkinghorn was holding this information over Lady Dedlock, threatening to reveal it to her husband.

But then Bucket is interrupted by the sound of a commotion in the hall. He listens, and recognizing what it's all about, suggests that they "let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen," urging him to remain silent while he deals with them. Sir Leicester agrees, and admits two footmen carrying a man in a chair, accompanied by another man and two women. Bucket identifies the man in the chair as Smallweed, who identifies the others as Mr and Mrs Chadband and Mrs Snagsby. Smallweed proceeds to tell Sir Leicester that he found letters at Krook's "from the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed Honoria" -- the implication being that that's Lady Dedlock's name. Smallweed is there because he wants the letters, and asks if Sir Leicester isn't concerned about them, "Not with Captain Hawdon and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain?" And he implies that Lady Dedlock murdered Tulkinghorn for them.

But Bucket is a match for Smallweed, and produces the letters "from a mysterious part of his coat." Smallweed lays claim to them, and says he wants five hundred pounds for them. "'No you don't; you mean fifty,' says Mr Bucket, humorously." They proceed to bargain a little, until Bucket turns his attention to Chadband, who launches into one of his perorations until Bucket makes him come to the point and introduce his wife, who tells them, "I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her Ladyship's daughter. I was in the service of her Ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her Ladyship brought upon her" -- Mrs Chadband lays "a bitter stress on the word 'Ladyship.'"

Then Bucket turns to Mrs Snagsby, whose presence there is at best tangential, except that she is convinced that the whole affair has something to do with her husband deceiving her and that he was the father of Jo. Bucket "has seen through the transparency of Mrs Snagsby's vinegar at a glance," so he ignores her and turns his attentions again to Smallweed and the Chadbands. He chides them for making a racket in the hall, rings for the footmen, and has them escorted out.

He turns to Sir Leicester and says that the letters in question can "be bought pretty cheap," if he wishes, but first there's the matter of apprehending the murderer, who "is now in this house." He rings for the footman who escorts Mademoiselle Hortense into the room. He informs Sir Leicester that Hortense has been a lodger in Bucket's for several weeks, and he informs her that he's taking her into custody for Tulkinghorn's murder. He then tells Sir Leicester about Hortense's hatred of Lady Dedlock for discharging her -- which Hortense disputes, as she does everything Bucket says, claiming, "I discharge myself." He cautions her to be silent, that anything she says can be used against her, but she's incapable of that. He continues to tell of her claim on Tulkinghorn for her participation in the masquerade in Tulkinghorn's chamber that revealed Lady Dedlock as the woman whom Jo showed to Hawdon's grave. And that while she was Bucket's lodger, she persisted in harassing Tulkinghorn and, to get to him, Snagsby.

After the murder, Bucket says, he arrested George because there was enough evidence for him to do so, but he was not convinced of the man's guilt. Then he went home, where Hortense was having supper with Mrs Bucket, and was persuaded by Hortense's exaggerated "respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn" and when he "saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!" Hortense claimed that she had been to the theater that night, and Bucket says that he has discovered that she was there "both before the deed and after it." So realizing that she was very calculating, he set a trap for her. Mrs Bucket was to continue to tell Hortense that he was convinced that George was the murderer.

But Hortense, he says, went too far. She began trying to manipulate the evidence to show that Lady Dedlock had killed Tulkinghorn. "Sir Leicester rises from his chair, and staggers down again." Hortense began writing letters to Bucket indicating that Lady Dedlock was the murderer, but Mrs Bucket was spying on her as she wrote them, and now has the letter paper and the ink as evidence.

Both Lady Dedlock and George were at Tulkinghorn's the night of the murder, and Bucket is certain that Hortense saw them from where she was waiting. "I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold." Mrs Bucket has the rest of the paper that Hortense tore up to make the wadding. Mrs Bucket had also accompanied Hortense to the funeral procession for Tulkinghorn, and afterward, Hortense suggested that they go to tea at a place on the edge of London. Near the tea house, there is a small body of water, and Hortense left Mrs Bucket for a short while on the pretense of finding her pocket-handkerchief; "she was rather a long time gone, and came back a little out of wind." Bucket had the pond dragged, and the gun was retrieved from it.

So Bucket puts the handcuffs on her, and although she struggles, raging all the while about Bucket and his wife, he manages to take her away. When they are gone, Sir Leicester collapses, his thoughts on his wife. "And, even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and compassion rather than reproach."

Meanwhile, Mrs Bagnet is returning by chaise from Lincolnshire with Mr George's mother. "Railroads shall soon traverse this country," Dickens observes, which the note tells us puts the date of the events in Bleak House somewhere in the late 1830s.  George's mother is Mrs Rouncewell, and he is the wayward son who left to join the army and hasn't been heard from since. George had seen Mrs Rouncewell at Tulkinghorn's office, and in talking about her has made Mrs Bagnet realize that she is his mother. Mrs Bagnet tells her that George is determined not to have a lawyer, but "'It won't do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers,' exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter form a separate establishment, and have dissolved partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day." (Dickens can do irony when he puts his mind to it and has the right voice for it.)

When they reach London, they enter George's cell quietly. He "is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone [and] does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Mrs Bagnet Returns From Her Expedition (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Finally, Mrs Rouncewell speaks: "George Rouncewell! O my dear child, turn and look at me!" And the usual reconciliation scene proceeds. George expresses his regret for not contacting her over the years, saying that he had put it off so long that it no longer seemed to matter, and that when he heard about his brother's success he was ashamed of his own lack of it. He was afraid that they would try to "set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of you feel sure of me, when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?" Mrs Rouncewell wants to send for his brother now, but he asks her not to: He wants to be the one to make contact with his brother and to see his reaction for himself.

Mrs Rouncewell takes her leave and goes to the Dedlocks' town house, where she proceeds to Lady Dedlock's room. She tells her that she has found her lost son in prison for murdering Tulkinghorn. "Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear." Mrs Rouncewell also tells her that last night "the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so solemn that I never heard the like in all these years." And then, she says, "I got this letter." She gives it to Lady Dedlock with a plea to help free her son.

When she is gone, Lady Dedlock reads it: "a printed account of the discovery of the body, as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the heart, and underneath is written her own name, with the word Murderess attached." She drops the letter. Then a servant announces that Mr Guppy is there to see her. She admits him. In his roundabout way, Guppy finally gets to the point that he is there to warn her that Smallweed and the Chadbands have been there this morning, and he is certain that "those letters I was to have brought to your Ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were.... That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or making."

After he leaves, she rings for a servant who confirms Guppy's story of the visitors. "So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published -- may be spreading while she thinks about it -- and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy." Tulkinghorn's death was "the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal!" She is convinced "there is no escape but in death," and she sits down and writes a letter to her husband in which she tells him she went to Tulkinghorn's that night to plead with him. "I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but there was no reply, and I came home." She "writes this last adieu!" then dresses, leaving her jewels and her money and goes out "in the shrill frosty wind."

Volumnia is the one who discovers the unconscious Sir Leicester on the floor of the library. "He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman; somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself." When he regains consciousness he is unable to speak, but Mrs Rouncewell realizes that he wants a slate to write on. He asks about Lady Dedlock and they tell him she has gone out. He wants to know where, and they bring him her letter, which causes him to fall unconscious again. When he awakes, he writes the letter B on the slate, which Mrs Rouncewell interprets as a summons for Bucket.

Sir Leicester gives the letter to Bucket to read, and then writes, "Full forgiveness. Find--." Bucket agrees, and Sir Leicester has him open a box and take out money for expenses. Before he leaves, Bucket tells Mrs Rouncewell that George has been freed, and urges her to turn her attention to Sir Leicester. He then goes to Lady Dedlock's room to search for clues, and finds Esther's handkerchief in the inner drawer of a little chest. He then goes to George's Shooting Gallery, where George gives him Esther's address in town. He is admitted there by Jarndyce, and tells him that Sir Leicester has suffered "apoplexy or paralysis" and that Lady Dedlock has disappeared: "It looks like suicide." He asks for Esther's help in following Lady Dedlock, thinking that "if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for," it will be easier to find her.

As he waits for Esther to join him in the search, Bucket tries to imagine where she might go.

On the waste, where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare; where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made, are being scattered by the wind; where the clay and water are hard frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day, looks like an instrument of human torture; -- traversing this deserted blighted spot, there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall, and out at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Lonely Figure (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

 _____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Richard Cant as Mercury, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Burn Gorman as Guppy.

17. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 609-637

Chapter 38: A Struggle through Chapter 39: Attorney and Client

Esther returns to Bleak House and her housekeeping duties, but she has some business in London to take care of once she gets things in order. She stops to see Caddy as a "pretext for this visit," and finds her supervising the apprentices in the dancing school -- "it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of dancing," Esther observes. She doesn't seem to notice that this attitude resembles that of Caddy's mother, who, Caddy says, "thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing master." But Esther does find her way through a kind of moral approbation: "I conscientiously believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course of industry that was quite as good as a Mission." (And perhaps just as useful as being housekeeper to an eccentric bachelor? I sometimes feel the urge to smack Esther.)

She also finds that Mr Jellyby and the elder Turveydrop have taken up with each other, Mr Jellyby being at the least a good listener. "That old Mr Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, have come to the rescue of Mr Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha, appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities."

But now we come to her real mission in London: She is there to see Guppy. "I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have turned so red, or changed so much, as Mr Guppy did when I now put up my veil." And having used her disfigurement to dissuade Guppy from any further pursuit of her, she now also asks him to cease any efforts to discover her parentage: "I am acquainted with my personal history; and I have it in my power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means."

Guppy is thoroughly abashed, but he is not above dragging Caddy in to witness that there has never been any "proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever" between him and Esther, and as they leave he nervously lingers to make sure there is no question of any binding engagement to her.

 The omniscient narrator now takes us to the office of Mr Vholes behind a "jet black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning, and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellerage staircase, against which civilians generally strike their brows." Mr Vholes, we are told several times, "is a very respectable man." And we are informed, "The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other  principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings." It is Mr Vholes's respectability, and the fact that he is the supporter of three daughters and has "a father in the Vale of Taunton," that causes his profession to look out for him, especially when there is talk of reforming the practice of law to put such a man at a disadvantage.

We see Mr Vholes in his office as he "takes off his close black gloves as if he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were scalping himself, and sits down at his desk," on the other side of which is his client, who "rests his aching head upon his hand, and looks the portrait of Young Despair" -- Richard Carstone. Richard is bemoaning the fact that nothing has been done in his case, and the long vacation is about to start, during which nothing can be done. But Vholes assures him, "I am to be found here, day by  day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr C; and term time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don't."

Richard is appreciative (if perhaps unaware that this means more billable time for Vholes), but he is depressed nonetheless, "dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in myself, and of no change for the better in anything else."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Attorney and Client, Fortitude and Impatience (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Richard is still nursing his grievance against Jarndyce, proclaiming that he is "anything but the disinterested friend he seemed," that he has become "to me he embodiment of the suit," and "that every new delay, and every new disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand." He tries to get Vholes to concur in his opinion, but the lawyer is cagey: "I wish to say no more of any third party than is necessary." Richard's interests, he says, "are now paramount in this office." And then Vholes assures Richard, "you will owe me nothing, beyond whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client, not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate." This, unfortunately, sounds just fine to Richard.

As Richard leaves Vholes's office, he is observed, "biting his nails and brooding," by Mr Guppy and Mr Weevle/Jobling. The latter comments, "there's combustion going on there! It's not a case of Spontaneous, but it's smouldering combustion it is." Guppy notes, "he wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I suppose he's over head and ears in debt."

They are on their way to Weevle's former lodgings at Krook's, where their friend Young Smallweed has joined his twin sister and his grandfather in combing through the detritus of the establishment. Guppy has made arrangements for Weevle to clear his belongings out of his old room, and he asks Weevle if it was likely that the letters of Captain Hawdon that Krook was to hand over had survived the fire. Weevle thinks not, but Guppy, mindful of his promise to Esther, tells him that if he should spot "any papers that so much as looked like the papers in question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own responsibility."

The quest of the Smallweeds, which lasts from "every morning at eight ... until nine at night," has attracted so much interest in the neighborhood that "when the dustman is called in to carry off a cart-load of old paper, ashes, and broken bottles the whole court assembles and pries into the baskets as they come forth."

Guppy is surprised to find Tulkinghorn there, overseeing the Smallweeds' search. They ascend to the second floor room, followed by Krook's cat. After a while, as they are removing the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty from the walls, Tulkinghorn enters as well, stumbling over the cat, which snarls at him. Tulkinghorn observes, "You are to be congratulated, Mr Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir.... High friends, free admission to great houses, and access to elegant ladies." He is referring, of course, to their encounter at Lady Dedlock's when Guppy was forced to tell her that he was unable to obtain Hawdon's letters. As he looks around the room, Tulkinghorn notices the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel, and comments, "A very good likeness in its way, but it wants force of character." And he departs, leaving Guppy to tell his friend "that between myself and one of the members of a swanlike aristocracy whom I now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and association," but that it is now at an end.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Emma Williams as Rosa, Anna Maxwell Martin as Ether Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Warren Clarke as Boythorn, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Patrick Monckton as Mr Grubble, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb.

15. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 520-554

Chapter 33: Interlopers through Chapter 34: A Turn of the Screw


Another coroner's inquest concerning a death at Krook's takes place at the Sol's Arms, with the usual gawping neighbors. Miss Flite, we learn "has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the Sol's Arms." Mr Guppy and Weevle/Jobling are there, too, and are joined by Snagsby with Mrs Snagsby in close pursuit. She has become so watchful of her husband's every move that Snagsby asks her, "Good lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?" She replies, "I can't say." Finally, she takes him off home: "I think you may be safer there, Mr Snagsby, than anywhere else."

Guppy tries to persuade Jobling not to give up his room at "that place" -- meaning Krook's -- but Jobling vows, "I wouldn't pass another night there, for any consideration that you could offer me." Guppy is persuaded that although the secrets that went up in flames with Krook may have been lost, there are others that can be found among the papers that are left.

Then a hackney-coach arrives bearing Mr and Mrs Smallweed and their grandchildren. They reveal that Krook was Mrs Smallweed's brother. Mr Smallweed proclaims, "Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take our letters of administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up; it must be protected." Tulkinghorn holds the title to the property.

The inquest is addressed by "men of science and philosophy," who affirm that it is a verifiable case of spontaneous combustion. Afterward, Guppy "can only haunt the secret house on the outside; where he has the mortification of seeing Mr Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out." And then he has to deliver the news to Lady Dedlock that he has failed to obtain the letters he promised her. She is dressed to go out, and receives him impatiently.


"And the letters are destroyed with the person?" she asks him. And he is forced to say that he believes they were. "If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, and if he were not looking beyond it and about it." She dismisses him with "You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me; this being the last time you will have the opportunity."


As he is going out, Guppy encounters Tulkinghorn on the way in.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Old Man of the Name of Tulkinghorn (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

"Mr Guppy sneaks away. Mr Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening."


Mr George has received a letter from Smallweed informing him that his debt, of "ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence," has been called in, and if he fails to pay, the debt will fall on his guarantor, Matthew Bagnet. George tells Phil, "Do you know what would become of the Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores?" And just then the Bagnets themselves appear. When she learns of the letter, Mrs Bagnet urges George, "on account of the children," not to let the debt fall on them.


George is crushed by the situation, but he holds out hope that something can be done. "Give the word," he says, and he'll sell everything he has. Unfortunately, "If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, I'd have sold all long ago." Mr Bagnet proposes "that George and he should immediately wait on Mr Smallweed in person; and that the primary object is to save and hold harmless Mr Bagnet, who had none of the money." But as the narrator observes, "Whether there are two people in England less likely to come satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr Smallweed than Mr George and Mr Matthew Bagnet, may be very reasonably questioned."


Sure enough, Smallweed greets them with "an Ogreish kind of jocularity," and threatens, "I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Mr Smallweed Breaks the Pipe of Peace (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

So George decides to try a last resort: He goes to Tulkinghorn. He and Bagnet are told that "Mr Tulkinghorn is engaged, and not to be seen." They wait an hour and are told "that Mr Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them, and they had better not wait." But they continue to wait, and finally the client comes out of Tulkinghorn's office: It is Mrs Rouncewell. Seeing them, she inquires if they are military men, and tells them that she "had a son once who went for a soldier."

Finally, Tulkinghorn agrees to see them. He disavows any involvement in the Smallweed debt, but George tells him that his chief concern is with the Bagnets, "And if I could bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration, what you wanted of me the other day" -- that is, his sample of Captain Hawdon's handwriting.

Tulkinghorn keeps up his façade of indifference, but tells George "In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you -- I can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost -- that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to him."

George agrees to these terms, and hands over the paper with Hawdon's writing. Tulkinghorn betrays no change of emotion as he reads it. "He re-folds it, and lays it in his desk, with a countenance as imperturbable as Death." They are dismissed, and George returns to the Bagnets for dinner.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Phil Davis as Smallweed, Peter Guinness as the Coroner, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Anna Maxwell Martin as Ether Summerson, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Tom Georgeson as Clamb.

14. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 486-519

Chapter 31: Nurse and Patient through Chapter 32: The Appointed Time

The brickmaker's family that Mrs Pardiggle belabored with charity early in the novel has returned to the vicinity of Bleak House, and Charley, Esther's maid, tells her that they need her help. As they leave for their visit to the brickmaker's hovel, Esther has a moment of heightened consciousness:

I had no thought, that night -- none, I am quite sure -- of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since, that when we had stopped at the garden gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then, and there, that I had it. I have every since connected the feeling with that spot and time, and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.

Not quite a Proustian moment or a Joycean epiphany, but also something more than a conventional Victorian novel premonition.

They enter the cottage, which "was closer than before, and had an unhealthy, and a very peculiar smell." In it, in addition to the women we met earlier (and have seen since in London) is Jo, who "staggered up instantly, and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror." He has mistaken her for Lady Dedlock, of course, and can hardly be persuaded that it isn't she.

The women explain that they had known Jo in London, in Tom-all-Alone's, and that he had ust turned up that morning in the town. Evidently, he has been hounded out of London by Mrs Snagsby, who's "always a watching, and a driving of me." He is clearly quite ill, but the women can't give him lodging because their husbands will disapprove of it. So Esther and Charley take him to Bleak House. Along the way, Jo whispers to Charley: "If she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there three of 'em then?"

They leave Jo in the hall and fetch Mr Jarndyce, who is accompanied by Skimpole, a recent arrival. Skimpole, who once studied medicine, says, "You had better turn him out.... He's not safe, you know. There's a bad sort of fever about him." Esther protests that "he is getting worse," and Skimpole argues that this is all the more reason for turning him out. Jarndyce comes up with a solution: "There is a bed in the wholesome loft-room in the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed."

But in the morning Jo is gone. Skimpole suggests "that it had occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him; and that he had, with great natural politeness, taken himself off." They search for him, but after five days Charley becomes sick too. Esther has her moved to her own room, and quarantines the two of them there.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Nurse and Patient (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But when Charley recovers, Esther herself falls ill, and nurse and patient exchange roles. Esther asks Charley to sit beside her, "and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind."

Cliffhangers come thick and fast now. We are back in the hands of the omniscient narrator, who is hanging about Krook's, where Jobling has taken Nemo's (i.e., Captain Hawdon's) room under the pseudonym Weevle. He is particularly on edge tonight, and Mr Snagsby finds him at the door of Krook's shop. He asks if Jobling is taking the air before going to bed, and Jobling observes, "Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening." Snagsby agrees "that you're -- not to put too fine a point on it -- that you're rather greasy here." Jobling blames it on the "chops at the Sol's Arms," and Snagsby says the cook must have burnt them, and that they must not have been fresh to start with.

After some rather gloomy conversation, Snagsby moves on, leaving Jobling impatiently waiting for someone. That someone is Guppy, to whom he complains, "here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail." Guppy goes to Jobling's room, where he admires the portrait of Lady Dedlock that Jobling has cut from "the Galaxy gallery of British beauty." And now we realize the reason for Guppy's visit and Jobling's impatience: At midnight, Krook has promised to give Jobling the bundle of letters that he filched from the portmanteau in Nemo/Hawdon's room.

Jobling says he last saw Krook about eight, when he helped shut up the shop, and "He has been as quiet, since, as an old rat asleep in his hole." They discuss the letters, and whether Krook has read them -- Jobling insisting that Krook can't read -- and whether they came from a man or a woman. It is Jobling's opinion, from what he has seen of the letters, that they are in a woman's hand.

And then Guppy ";happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast." It is covered in soot. "Confound the stuff, it won't blow off -- smears, like black fat." Jobling repeats what he told Snagsby about the chops at the Sol's Arms, and they try to change the subject. Guppy says, "You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" Guppy proposes that they make a packet of dummy letters and swap them for the originals, but Jobling argues that Krook is too smart to fall for that. So then Guppy says they'll tell Krook that the letters aren't legally his anyway and that he put them in the hands of his "legal friend" -- i.e. Guppy.

The bell of Saint Paul's strikes eleven, and the other bells in the city follow suit. Then Jobling complains about the soot also, and opens the window. They go and sit on the window-sill and talk some more about Krook and the letters.

Mr Guppy sitting on the window-sill ... continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.
"What, in the Devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight, and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
....
And yet look here -- and look here! When he brings the candle, here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks; here, likes in a little thick nauseous pool
"This is a horrible house," says Mr Guppy, shutting down the window. "Give me some water, or I shall cut my hand off."

It is one of Dickens's most memorable and horrifying scenes. The ghastly residue of the spontaneously combusted Krook, defiling everything.

When Guppy's equanimity is restored by scrubbing and brandy, the bells strike midnight, and it is time for Jobling to go down and retrieve the letters. But he returns, terrified, only a minute or two later: "I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there -- and the soot is there, and the oil is there -- and he is not there!"

Guppy goes down with him to see, and they find Krook's cat "snarling -- not at them; at something on the ground, before the fire." Jobling remembers that when he last saw Krook, at eight that evening, "I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumpled black thing is upon the floor." The cat is snarling at the something on the floor.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Appointed Time (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here it is -- is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he is here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.... Call the death by any name Your Higness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say that it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally -- inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only -- Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Sean McGinley as Mr Snagsby, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Peter Guinness as the Coroner.

13. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 445-486

Chapter 28: The Ironmaster through Chapter 30: Esther's Narrative

Dickens indulges in a little attack on class snobbery. Various family hangers-on are staying at Chesney Wold, including cousin Volumnia Dedlock, "a young lady (of sixty), who is doubly highly related; having the honour to be a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family," and now lives in retirement in Bath; where she lives slenderly on an annual present from Sir Leicester."

The talk turns to Rosa, whom Volumnia calls "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw in my life," and whom Lady Dedlock describes as her "pet -- secretary -- messenger -- I don't know what." They also speak highly of Mrs Rouncewell, who discovered Rosa. But then Sir Leicester gloomily announces "that I have been informed, by Mr Tulkinghorn, that Mrs Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliament," whereupon Volumnia "utters a little sharp scream." In the circles of the landed gentry, no matter how idle and useless they may be, it is unthinkable that a housekeeper's son, even one who has made his fortune in industry, should be afforded such an honor.

"'He is called, I believe -- an -- Ironmaster.' Sir Leicester says it slowly, and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is called a Lead-mistress; or that the right word may be some other word expressive of some other relationship to some other metal. Volumnia utters another little scream." But Sir Leicester is gratified to report that Mr Rouncewell turned down the offer.

However, the man himself is there, and has requested an audience with Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock on the subject of the very young woman Volumnia has just praised, Rosa. And so Mr Rouncewell enters, a man "a little over fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother," with "a clear voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd, though open face." Rouncewell tells them, "I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence in my son's good sense -- even in love. I find her what he represents her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with great commendation."

His son wants to marry Rosa, but before Mr Rouncewell gives his consent, he wants to make it a condition that Rosa no longer be a servant at Chesney Wold. (In other words, he would consider his son to be marrying down if Rosa remained there.) But "if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time, and leave it precisely where it is."

That this "Ironmaster" should even presume to impose "conditions" is a challenge to Sir Leicester's sense of the order of things. Lady Dedlock (for good reason) is not so hidebound, and she hears him out when he says, "I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a century, and will die here I have no doubt." He is not "ashamed of my mother's position here," he says, and he admits that he has been "an apprentice, and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up." But, he adds, they have raised their children "to make them worthy of any station." So he suggests that Rosa should be educated to the same level as his daughters before she marries his son.

Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly. "Mr Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester, with his right hand in the breast of his blue coat -- the attitude of state in which he is painted in the gallery:  "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold, and a --" here he resists a disposition to choke -- "a factory?"

Well, yes, Mr Rouncewell says, "I think a parallel may be justly drawn between them." The village school is all very well, "and handsomely supported by this family," he says, but "I do not regard the village-school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's wife."

These ideas are, Sir Leicester proclaims, "so diametrically opposed" to his own, "that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your feelings, and repellent to my own." Lady Dedlock says nothing, and Mr Rouncewell withdraws, saying, "I shall recommend my son to conquer his present inclinations," and bids them good night. But later in her room Lady Dedlock speaks to Rosa herself, and says, "I wish you to be happy, and will make you so -- if I can make anybody happy on this earth." There is something in Rosa's situation that has spoken to her. "Some melancholy influence is upon her; or why should so proud a lady close the doors, and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate?"

Next day the Dedlock cousins are "amazed to hear from Sir Leicester, at breakfast time, of the obliteration of landmarks, and opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through Mrs Rouncewell's son."

Winter comes to Chesney Wold, and the house is shut up and the Dedlocks move to their house in town. Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are sitting together when a footman announces "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy." Sir Leicester, who has never heard of such a person, is astonished, but he learns that Lady Dedlock is familiar with "The young man of the name of Guppy" and has given instructions that he be admitted.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Young Man of the Name of Guppy (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Sir Leicester withdraws and Guppy, who has come armed with notes for the speech he is about to deliver, but hasn't fully mastered his abbreviations, finally stumbles onto his point: "whether your ladyship ever happene to hear of, or to see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson." This gets Lady Dedlock's full attention. Did it strike Lady Dedlock that Esther bore a resemblance to anyone she knew? asks Guppy. No, she says, insisting, "I remember the young lady very well." And Guppy tells her that on his own visit to Chesney Wold, he was struck by "such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's own portrait. So, after stumbling over his notes again, Guppy forges ahead:

"Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact, because -- which I mention in confidence -- I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss Summerson's image is imprinted on my art. If I could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more decided favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet.... I have encountered the person, who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up, before Mr Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship." 

A "dreadful paleness" falls on Lady Dedlock. And when Guppy tells her that Miss Barbary's servant (i.e., Mrs Chadband, the former Mrs Rachael) was told that Esther's "real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon," Lady Dedlock says, "My God!"

Guppy goes on to tell her that a "law-writer" was found dead at Krook's, and that Guppy has "discovered, very lately, that that law-writer's name was Hawdon." And that a disguised lady had hired "a crossing-sweeping boy" to show her the law-writer's grave. That the boy had mentioned "the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off." And that "It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could possibly be identified. But he did. He left a bundle of old letters." And tomorrow, Guppy claims, he will take possession of those letters.

Lady Dedlock maintains her calm, and when Guppy proposes to bring those letters to her, she says he may. And Guppy takes his leave.

No one else in the house hears the cry "from a wild figure on its knees."

"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me; but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!" 

Dickensian melodrama at its ripest, though we may prefer the cold, stoically impassive Lady Dedlock who listened with as little impression as possible to Guppy's revelations.

Esther meanwhile remains ignorant of these revelations about her parentage. At Bleak House, they have spent "nearly three weeks" entertaining Allan Woodcourt's mother, who was invited to visit by Mr Jarndyce. "She took very kindly to me," Esther reports, "and what extremely confidential: so much so that sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable." Which is Mrs Woodcourt's aim: She wants to discourage Esther and her son from marrying. She goes on and on about the Welsh nobility from which the Woodcourts are descended. ("Welsh nobility" being a kind of oxymoron to the English.) She asserts that her "son's choice of a wife, for instance, is limited by it; but the matrimonial choice of the Royal family is limited, in much the same manner." Moreover, on the father's side, Allan is "descended from a great Highland family," making him "one of the last representatives of two old families. With the blessing of Heaven he will set them up again, and unite them with another old family." She also claims that Allan "is fickleness itself ... always paying trivial attentions to young ladies ... ever since he was eighteen." And she administers the coup de grace by saying that Allan "has gone to seek his fortune, and to find a wife -- when do you mean to seek your fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson?" She predicts that Esther "will marry some one, very rich and very worthy, much older -- five and twenty years, perhaps -- than yourself."

"It is curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it did," Esther reflects. "I know it did." But she's still willing to give Mrs Woodcourt the benefit of the doubt: "Now, I suspected that she was very cunning; next moment, I believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple." Esther has a great capacity for denial.

But for the time being there are the preparations for the wedding of Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop to occupy her. She and Ada are to be the bridesmaids. Mr Jellyby is out of the shadow of bankruptcy, having liquidated everything possible, and the Jellybys have "removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting the horsehair out of the seats of the chairs, and choking themselves with it)." Caddy says her father called the children "Wild Indians" and "the best thing that could happen to them was, their being all Tomahawked together," by which, she explains, he means "they are very unfortunate in being Ma's children, and that he is very unfortunate in being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems unnatural to say so." As for Mrs Jellyby, Caddy is unsure whether she really knows her daughter is getting married, even though she has been told so repeatedly.

Clearly something has to be done to get the wedding taken care of, so Esther takes charge. And things go off reasonably well, all things considered. The wedding guests are drawn from Mrs Jellyby's circle of activists, one of whom, Miss Wisk, is an unfortunate Dickensian caricature feminist who objects to weddings in general because "the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man." Mrs Pardiggle is there, still proclaiming "that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat."

And so Dickens has brought us straight up to a denouement, and postponed its resolution to wander off into a tangent.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Burn Gorman as Guppy, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Emma Williams as Rosa, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Di Botcher as Mrs Woodcourt, Harry Eden as Jo, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole.

9. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 281-331

Chapter 18: Lady Dedlock through Chapter 20: A New Lodger


Richard is so indecisive that it takes several weeks for him finally to settle on an "experimental course" in the law at Kenge and Carboy. Meanwhile, Ada, Esther and Jarndyce return to Bleak House, Jarndyce having located lodgings for Richard in London. Richard "immediately began to spend all the money he had, in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging." He also continues with his odd habit of believing that if he has saved money on one thing, that allows him to spend the amount he has saved on something else, making "out that to spend anything less on something else was to save the difference."

He has postponed his decision so long, that he is unable to accompany the others to Lincolnshire for their visit to Boythorn. But Skimpole takes his place -- in more ways than one. For here Dickens makes clear the resemblance of Richard to Skimpole, by placing Richard's curious confusion about money in close proximity to Skimpole's absolute indifference to it. Skimpole has leased some furniture that is being repossessed, causing Jarndyce, who stood security for the lease, to have to pay for them. Skimpole is not in the least embarrassed by that fact, and the others continue to humor him in his "childishness."

Boythorn meets them at an inn near his house and explains, "I am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. But, our direct road lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock's park; and, in that fellow's property, I have sworn never to set foot of mine." He tells them that "Sir Arrogant Numskull" -- his name for Sir Leicester -- is in residence and that Lady Dedlock is expected to return soon: "Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head of a baronet, is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry."

Esther gets her first glimpse of Chesney Wold -- "a picturesque old house, in a fine park richly wooded" -- as they drive past on the road. In the village, at the Dedlock Arms, Boythorn greets Watt Rouncewell, and tells them that Watt is the son of the housekeeper at Chesney Wold and in love with "a pretty girl up at the House" -- i.e., Rosa. Boythorn's own house is sunny and pleasant, and "everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance." It's one of those Dickensian Gardens of Eden, with its own snake -- the hostility between Boythorn and Dedlock, so that the side of the house that borders Dedlock property is guarded by "a sentry in a smock-frock, day and night, whose duty was supposed to be, in case of aggression, immediately to ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal destruction on the enemy."

On Sunday morning they attend services at a little church, where Esther gets her first glimpse of the Dedlocks and their household, including Mrs Rouncewell, Rosa, and Hortense: "One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of everyone and everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Little Church in the Park (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But it is the arrival of Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock that has the most powerful and peculiar effect on Esther:

Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the look I met, as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor, and to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down -- released again, if I may say so -- on my book; but, I knew the beautiful face quite well, in that short space of time. And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, associated with the lonely days at my godmother's ... although I had never seen this lady's face before in all my life -- I was quite sure of it -- absolutely certain.

For Esther, Lady Dedlock's face is, "in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of old remembrances." As this characteristic Victorian recognition scene continues, Esther tries to decide if Lady Dedlock somehow resembles her godmother/aunt, "but, the expression was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me."

And yet I -- I, little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart, and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing -- seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly well know I had never seen until that hour.

We have pages and pages to go before this particular mystery is finally solved, and perhaps it is because so much narrative is yet to come that Dickens lays it on so thick in this scene.

Meanwhile, Boythorn and Skimpole have one of their skirmishes of Duty vs. Irresponsibility, ending with Skimpole asserting that though "the Slaves on American plantations ... are worked hard" and "don't altogether like it" and "theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but, they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence." Dickens, ardently anti-slavery, is here giving a strong hint that Skimpole may yet prove to be a villain in the novel. But on the other hand, Skimpole's sentimentalized, "picturesque" attitude toward slavery in the antebellum United States would persist for another century in novels and movies.

The following Saturday, Jarndyce, Ada and Esther are out for a walk when a storm comes up, with lightning and thunder. They take refuge in a keeper's lodge on the Dedlock property. As they are waiting in the doorway, watching the storm, someone asks, "Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?" Ada thinks Esther has spoken, but it's Lady Dedlock, who has also "taken shelter in the lodge, before our arrival there, and had come out of the gloom within." Esther has also reacted to the surprise voice, but in a different way from Ada: "The beating at my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice, as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable pictures of myself."

It turns out that Lady Dedlock and Jarndyce have met, a long time before. She mentions the letter he had written to Sir Leicester requesting his aid in helping Richard, and asks to be introduced first to Ada and then to Esther. Learning that Esther is his ward, she asks, "Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" He says that she has. Lady Dedlock and Esther look at each other, and then Lady Dedlock turns away "with a hasty air, almost expressive of displeasure or dislike." She and Jarndyce, we learn, had met when they were "abroad," and she observes that Jarndyce had been better acquainted with her sister, with whom she had become estranged: "'We went our several ways,' said Lady Dedlock, 'and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.'"

Pony phaeton (Source)

Then "a little pony phaeton" carrying Hortense and Rosa arrives. Lady Dedlock had sent for it, asking her maid to come -- meaning Rosa, though Hortense had apparently insisted that she was the one sent for.  "The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking on with her lips tightly set," as Lady Dedlock offers to send the carriage back for Ada and Esther. Jarndyce declines, and Lady Dedlock "took a graceful leave of Ada -- none of me," Esther notes, and bids Rosa get into the carriage with her. As for Hortense,

She remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction, through the wettest of the wet grass.

"'Is that young woman mad?' said my guardian." The keeper says that she's just "mortal high and passionate -- powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others put above her, she don't take kindly to it." And as Jarndyce, Ada and Esther return home, they see Hortense still striding through the wet grass.

In London, the omniscient narrator tells us, the courts have shut down for the long vacation, leaving all of the clerks idle, as well as the businesses that support the law, such as Mr Snagsby, the stationer. He and Mrs Snagsby are entertaining the Chadbands. Mr Chadband is a minister "attached to no particular denomination," who includes among his followers Mrs Snagsby. "'My little woman,' says Mr Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn, 'like to have her religion rather sharp, you see!'"

Mr Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, and he wanted to grovel; is very much in a perspiration about the head; and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is going to edify them.

Chadband's "edification," however, typically consists of platitudes delivered in the most pompous and verbose manner possible. Still, as the narrator observes, "the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired."

As the Snagsbys are entertaining the Chadbands, however, the servant, Guster, informs Mr Snagsby that he is wanted in the shop downstairs, where he finds a constable with Jo in his custody. The constable has ordered Jo to "move on," and Jo insists that there's nowhere for him to move on to. Jo has apparently indicated to the constable that Mr Snagsby can vouch for him, and although Mrs Snagsby has appeared at the top of the stairs to proclaim that he doesn't know the boy, Snagsby admits that he does.

Then Mr Guppy appears, and confirms Snagsby's acquaintance with Jo. The constable is still convinced that Jo is up to no good, partly because he lives in Tom-all-Alone's.  Moreover, Jo has money upon him, which is enough to convince the constable that Jo has been stealing. So Jo tells the story of being approached "by a lady in a wale" (i.e., veil) who gave him a sovereign to show her where Nemo lived, died, and was buried. The constable agrees to leave Snagsby in charge of Jo's moving on -- over Mrs Snagsby's protests -- and departs.

Intrigued by Jo's story of the veiled lady, Guppy begins asking questions, raising the curiosity of the others, so that Guppy and Jo are ushered upstairs to continue the interrogation. Guppy opines that "there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's," which is enough to have Mrs Chadband eager to hear more: She happens to be acquainted with Kenge and Carboy's. Before she married the Rev. Mr Chadband, she says, she "was left in charge of a child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs Kenge and Carboy's."

It's Guppy's turn to be astonished, though when he gasps, "Miss Summerson, ma'am!" he is rebuked by Mrs Chadband, who is apparently the Mrs Rachael who was servant to Esther's godmother/aunt. "'I call her Esther Summerson,' says Mrs Chadband, with austerity. 'There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. "Esther, do this! Esther, do that!" and she was made to do it.'"


The Rev. Chadband seizes upon this moment of astonishment to take the floor and sermonize on the topic of ... Jo, who is bewildered by everything that's going on, and "whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms." Guppy gives him a penny and Mr Snagsby loads him up with some of the table leftovers, and off he goes into the night.

Guppy, of course, is not going to let all these revelations go. He has been vexed by the arrival in the offices of Kenge and Carboy of Richard Carstone, but gratified "to find the new comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that." So he gathers his friends, fellow law-clerks Young Smallweed and Tony Jobling, and invites them to dine with him.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Mr Guppy's Entertainment (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

After much Dickensian business about these swaggering striplings, during which we learn that Jobling was the one who accompanied Guppy to Chesney Wold, Guppy announces "a plan I have lately thought of proposing." It may, he stammers, "have some reference to a subject, which may -- or may not -- have cast its shadow on my existence" -- that is, of course, his failed proposal to Esther. He tells Jobling that in his duties at Kenge and Carboy's he has been delivering a weekly allowance to Miss Flite at Krook's, and that Krook has a room to let. Krook "must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender -- all of which I have thought likely at different times -- it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him."

Jobling is game, even when he learns that the room is where Krook's last lodger died. So they proceed to Krook's, where he is dead drunk. They manage to get him awake, and after treating him to a better quality of gin than he is used to, "Mr Guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr Weevle, and states the object of their visit." The result is that Jobling/Weevle is installed in the second-floor room, which he adorns with "copper-plate impressions from that truly national work, The Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing." And in time the neighbor ladies are gossiping, "don't you be surprised Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!"

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Burn Gorman as Guppy, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Sally Leonard as Polly, Warren Clarke as Boythorn, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Emma Williams as Rosa, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Robert Pugh as Mr Chadband, Catherine Tate as Mrs Chadband, Michelle Tate as Guster, Harry Eden as Jo, Dominic Coleman as Policeman, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb.