24. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 866-915

Chapter 57: Esther's Narrative through Chapter 59: Esther's Narrative

Jarndyce wakes Esther to tell her that Bucket wants her to accompany him in the search for her mother. Bucket reads her the letter Lady Dedlock left behind, and she agrees to go with him.

She watches as Bucket makes inquiries of various policemen on the street, including a harrowing moment when he stops near the river where she sees on the wall a posted notice with "the words 'FOUND DROWNED'; and this, and an inscription about Drags, possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place." Bucket assures her that he is only being thorough in his investigation. And so they set out again into the night, following a lead that takes them on the road to Saint Albans and Bleak House.

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

Near Saint Albans, Bucket makes more inquiries and when he brings Esther a cup of tea he tells her that Lady Dedlock had been seen there, going on foot, at eight or nine that night. At Bleak House he tells her that she should ask if anyone has stopped there to ask for her or Jarndyce. As they climb the hill to the house, he "reminded me that I had come down it one night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor Jo: whom he called Toughey." She is surprised that he should know this, until Bucket explains that she had passed him on the road. Bucket had come there to look for Jo, on commission from Tulkinghorn to prevent Jo from talking any more about the veiled lady. His task was to make sure that Jo stayed his distance from London. "I was regularly turned on my back when I found him taken up by your establishment."

At the house, Bucket asks her, "Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room, when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" Esther realizes that he's talking about Skimpole. It was Skimpole, he tells her, who told him that Jo was staying at Bleak House, and who accepted five pounds for showing Bucket where Jo was sleeping. Esther observes, "I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr Skimpole towards my guardian, and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence." Bucket advises her, "Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after you own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can.... Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail."

None of the staff at Bleak House recalls anyone asking for Esther, so they proceed to the brickmakers' cottage. They are greeted with the usual suspicion, though Jenny, the mother of the dead child, is not there. Esther "became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not help bursting in tears." She begins to ask the other woman about Lady Dedlock, but Bucket interrupts to say that he knows she has been there, intimidating them into the truth. Esther asks where Jenny has gone, and the other woman's husband silences her with threats, but Jenny's husband tells them that Jenny has gone to London. The lady was there, and rested for a while. "Then she went -- it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time by, nor yet clocks." Then Jenny went to London, and the lady went in the opposite direction: "Nor'ard by the high road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so."

As they leave, Bucket tells Esther that the men in the cottage have Lady Dedlock's watch: "Else why should he talk about his 'twenty minutes past,' and about his having no watch to tell the time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as that. If he comes to half hours, it's as much as he does." But he wonders why Lady Dedlock would give him her watch. He suspects that Lady Dedlock sent Jenny to London with a message, and decides that they should continue in the northward direction the brickmaker indicated.

It begins snowing hard, and the roads are difficult. Bucket stops frequently to make inquiries, and is able to say that a woman, dressed like Lady Dedlock, has been spotted on the road, still on foot. But eventually he is surprised that he has lost track of the woman. They stop at an inn, and when Esther faints she is taken to a room to recover. Then they continue until Bucket realizes something and reverses course, to Esther's astonishment. He intends to follow Jenny's path back to London. He urges Esther to trust him, though she is distressed at the thought of abandoning the search for her mother.

In London rumors are already flying about Lady Dedlock's disappearance, though "It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently." Sir Leicester "can speak a little, though with difficulty and indistinctness," and although he has been advised to rest, he can't sleep, constantly asking if there is any news from Bucket.

Mrs Rouncewell stays by him, but she confides her fears to her son George: "When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me -- and I may say at me too -- as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked her down." George scoffs at the old legend, but Mrs Rouncewell is convinced that "it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is breaking up."

When Mrs Rouncewell goes to take care of things, such as keeping the fires lit in Lady Dedlock's room, Volumnia sits with Sir Leiceseter. It's a calculated move: "Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her there, there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else." When Mrs Rouncewell returns, Volumnia compliments her on the military bearing of her son, which confuses Sir Leicester until Mrs Rouncewell explains that Volumnia is referring to her son George. This causes Sir Leicester to break his silence: "George? You son George come home, Mrs Rouncewell?" He asks to see him, and is moved to tears when he enters. George helps Sir Leicester sit up straighter in the bed, and the baronet asks him to stay by his side. Under Sir Leicester's questioning, George expressed his desire to "remain unknown in general" because "I am not much to boast of." But when Sir Leicester comments that George has been a soldier "and a faithful one," George says, "I have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."

Now Sir Leicester wants to make it known that there has been only "a slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself" and that the circumstances of it are "important only to ourselves." So he calls Mrs Rouncewell, George, and Volumnia to witness a statement, "that I am on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever of complaint against her." And, particularly directing himself at Volumnia, "If you ever say less than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me." He continues to insist, "I revoke no disposition I have made in her favour." It is a "formal array of words" that "might have have at any other time, as it has often had, something ludicrous in it; but at this time it is serious and affecting." (Dickens knows that he has gone much too stagey here.)

As night comes on, Sir Leicester becomes "worse; restless, uneasy, and in great pain." But he refuses to let them light candles, and Mrs realizes "that he is striving to uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late." Through the night, Mrs Rouncewell and George keep vigil, having sent the servants to bed, though Volumnia makes her maid stay up with her as she busies herself doing nothing. "The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague; it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, 'Look what I am bringing you, who watch there! Who will tell him!'"

Esther and Bucket reach the outskirts of London about three a.m. and transfer to a hackney coach. Esther is soaked through, but Bucket praises her effusively. She notes that Bucket seems "to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in London," and he stops frequently to consult with police officers. At about five-thirty they reach Chancery Lane where they proceed on foot through the icy streets. Along the way they encounter Woodcourt, who is astonished to find Esther "out at this hour, and in such weather!" Woodcourt puts his cloak around Esther, and tells her that he has been sitting up with Richard since about ten last night. Richard is "not ill, but not quite well," but he was feeling "depressed and faint," so Ada sent for Woodcourt, who helped revive his spirits and get him to sleep some.

Bucket tells them that they are going to Snagsby's, where the servant, Guster, seems to have some new information that will help them. Unfortunately, Guster has also gone into one of her fits. Bucket asks Woodcourt, "Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want." Mr Snagsby leads them to the sitting room where Mrs Snagsby is waiting, "with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face." Bucket has Esther sit by the fire and puts her wet shoes to dry on the fender, then tries to smooth-talk Mrs Snagsby into cooperation, telling her, "Go and see Othello acted. That's the tragedy for you."

Mrs Snagsby doesn't get the reference to her jealousy, but Bucket persists, "you're what I call an intellectual woman -- with your soul too large for your body," and reminding her that they had seen each other earlier at the Dedlocks, informs Mrs Snagsby that Esther is the young lady who "was talked of in that circle." Esther observes, "Mrs Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the time." He tells Mrs Snagsby that Jo "was mixed up in the same business, and no other," and that she formed some mistaken impressions because of it.

"Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes her to-night, and is seen a speaking ot your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant -- knowing what she's subject to, and what a little thing will bring 'em on -- in that surprising manner, and with that severity, that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a Life may be hanging upon that girl's words!"

Woodcourt enters, having found the paper in question, which he gives to Bucket, who sends Mrs Snagsby in with Woodcourt to tend to Guster. Bucket hands the paper to Esther, who identifies the handwriting as her mother's. In it, Lady Dedlock explains that she went to Saint Albans on the hope of seeing Esther once more, though "not to speak to her, or let her know that I was near," and "to elude pursuit, and to be lost." She asks Esther not to blame Jenny for the part she played in the deception. Then there is a later addition to the letter, in which she says she knows she is going to die and that it is right "that I should die of terror and my conscience." In a final section, she adds, "The place where I shall lie down, if I can yet get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive."

Bucket tells Esther to get her shoes on and be ready to go out again, but first they need to find out how the letter came into Guster's hands. Guster, constantly appealing to Mrs Snagsby not to be angry, explains that she had been out on an errand and when she came back she found "a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house." The woman told Guster that she had lost her way and wanted directions to "the poor burying-ground ... where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate." Esther notices the look of alarm on Bucket's face when he hears that. Guster realized, "She meant the burying-ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping stuff -- that you came home and told us of, Mr Snagsby." And then the woman gave her the letter and asked her to deliver it to Esther at Mr Jarndyce's. But when Guster came inside, "Mrs Snagsby came behind me from somewhere, and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."

They hurry out, and Esther recalls the hallucinatory character of their walk to the burying-ground, "and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real." When they reach their destination, "On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying -- Jenny, the mother of the dead child." Woodcourt and Bucket stop Esther from rushing forward, and Bucket asks her to "think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage." Esther listens as he explains that Jenny and Lady Dedlock exchanged clothes, and that Lady Dedlock had returned to the city while Jenny "only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive, and then turned across country, and went home."

But Esther is not ready to process the truth of what Bucket is telling her, so they let her go on by herself, hearing one of them say, "Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours." And Esther discovers that the body is that of her mother.

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

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Phil Davis as Smallweed, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Richard Cant as Mercury, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare.

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)

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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.

22. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 791-816

Chapter 52: Obstinacy through Chapter 53: The Track

Woodcourt brings the news to Esther and Jarndyce that Tulkinghorn has been murdered. Esther immediately recalls Lady Dedlock's fear of him, but the real shock is George's arrest for the murder. Jarndyce is unable to believe him guilty, but Woodcourt carefully lays out the evidence: George is known to have expressed "animosity" toward Tulkinghorn, and to have done so in violent terms, and has admitted that he was at the scene of the crime at about the time it was committed. Jarndyce insists that murder is not what he expects of a man who gave shelter to both Gridley and Jo. They all agree to go visit George in the jail.

George is resigned to his fate: "a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as I have, gets on well enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes." He insists that his defense is that he's telling the truth, and adamantly refuses to hire a lawyer: "I don't take kindly to the breed."

"Say, I am innocent, and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether of not? Act as if I was; -- shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way -- if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?"

The group is joined by the Bagnets, who are introduced to them, and Mrs Bagnet speaks for her husband in scolding George for his passivity with regard to fighting his case: "I never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly, as I have been to hear you talk this day to the present company." George clings stubbornly to his permission, however, and Mrs Bagnet signals to Esther that she would like to talk with them outside. As Esther leaves, George tells Jarndyce that on "the dead man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark, that I had half a mind to speak to it." Hearing this, Esther feels "such a shudder as I never felt before or since, and hope I shall never feel again." The figure, George goes on, "crossed the moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to it."

Outside, Mrs Bagnet tells them that George is so stubborn that none of them will be able to persuade him to fight for his release, but that George has relatives that he hasn't mentioned: "They don't know of him, but he does know of them." His mother, she says, is "alive, and must be brought here straight!" She intends to go to Lincolnshire and bring her back, and she sets off on this mission.

Meanwhile, Bucket is still on the case, and he is there for Tulkinghorn's funeral, riding in one of the carriages that follow the procession. Afterward, he goes to the Dedlocks', where the footman tells him another letter has arrived for him: "he has received a round half dozen, within the last twenty-four hours," all containing the same two words: "LADY DEDLOCK." Surreptitiously he takes a look at the letters to Sir Leicester on the library table, but none of them has a handwriting that matches the one on the envelope sent to him.

Bucket puts on his best ingratiating manner, even flirting with Volumnia Dedlock, and persistently referring to the master of the house by full title: "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet." Sir Leicester remains outraged by Tulkinghorn's murder, and proclaims of the murderer -- whom everyone present assumes to have been George -- "If it were my brother who had committed it, I would not spare him." At this, Bucket "looks very grave." He addresses the gathering:

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this lady," -- meaning Volumnia -- "with our leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case -- a beautiful case -- and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to supply in a few hours." 

Sir Leicester is glad to hear it, but Bucket continues, "Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families." Sir Leicester dismisses him, "with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they must take the consequences." Bucket takes his leave but returns quickly to ask "who posted the Reward-bill on the staircase." Sir Leicester says he ordered it done, and when Bucket asks why, says that "it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment."

In the hall, Bucket encounters the footman, and begins to flatter him by commenting on his height and suggesting that he should pose for "a friend of mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy Sculptor." He begins to talk about Lady Dedlock, who is out to dinner, and has the footman confirm that she goes out frequently -- which, Bucket says, doesn't surprise him as she is "so handsome and so graceful and so elegant" that she "is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes." But he changes the subject to ask the footman whether his father was in service, too. Bucket says that his was, and "Said with his last breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career." His brother, Bucket says, is in service, and so is his brother-in-law. And then he switches back to the topic of Lady Dedlock, asking, "a little spoilt? A little capricious?"

Just then, as Bucket has gained the confidence of the footman, the lady herself enters, and the footman attending her identifies him to her. She asks if he is waiting to see Sir Leicester, and he says he has seen him already, and that he has nothing "at present" to ask her. He watches her ascend the stairs.

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

Bucket observes to the footman that Lady Dedlock "Doesn't look quite healthy," and the footman agrees: She suffers from headaches, he says. And she walks sometimes for two hours, even at night. Bucket slyly changes the subject again to the footman's height, and then back to Lady Dedlock's walks at night. Then Bucket observes, "she went out walking, the very night of this business." The footman takes the bait: "To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way." Bucket says, of course he did: "I saw you doing it." He claims that he was in a hurry, going to see an aunt of his in Chelsea, and "chanced to be passing at the time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten." The footman falls for it: "Half-past nine." That's right, Bucket says, "And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?" So she was, says the footman.

And Bucket takes his leave of the footman, urging him, when he has time to spare, to think of getting in touch with "that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Hugo Speer as Mr George, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock.

20. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 719-752

Chapter 47: Jo's Will through Chapter 48: Closing In

Woodcourt and Jo make their way through London, Jo sticking to the shadows while Woodcourt walks in the open. Woodcourt "revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. 'It surely is a strange fact,' he considers, 'that in the heart of a civilised world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog.'" The observation takes us back more than four hundred pages, to the passage in which Jo and a dog listen to music, and Dickens observes, "how far above the human listener is the brute!"

Jo is so ill that he can't even eat, and Woodcourt takes his pulse and listens to his chest, then, unable to find an apothecary, gives Jo some wine, which restores him enough that he can eat the bread he has been given. They talk, and Woodcourt hears of "the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its consequences." He decides to take Jo to Miss Flite, but when he reaches the old rag-and-bottle shop, he finds that she has moved. Judy Smallweed is there, and tells Woodcourt "that Miss Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs Blinder, in Bell Yard" -- the former home of Gridley and the Neckett children.

Miss Flite is of course delighted to see the heroic Woodcourt, and suggests that they take Jo to Mr George, who will know what to do with him. George welcomes them. Woodcourt explains, "I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many hours, if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a workhouse ... which is a system that I don't take kindly to." He tells George that Jo has a terror of a "person who ordered him to keep out of the way," and reveals that the man is Bucket, whom George of course knows, and describes as "a -- rum customer."

When Woodcourt mentions that he wants to tell Esther about Jo's plight, George immediately agrees to take Jo in himself: "I can assure you that I would willingly be knocked on the head at any time, if it would be at all agreeable to Miss Summerson; and consequently I esteem it a privilege to do that young lady any service, however small." Woodcourt assures him that Jo is not contagious, but he also adds, quietly, "the boy is deplorably low and reduced; and that he may be -- I do not say that he is -- too far gone to recover."

As George and Phil Squod take Jo in, Dickens comments,

He is not one of Mrs Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-born savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sorees are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish.

George, telling Jo that Phil Squod "was found, when a baby, in the gutter," sends the two of them off to get the boy a bath and some clean clothes. And then he talks to Woodcourt, revealing that the story about the lady in the veil took place in Tulkinghorn's offices. Woodcourt asks what sort of man Tulkinghorn is, and George replies, "a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood, than a rusty old carbine is."

When Jo and Phil return, Woodcourt goes to see Jarndyce, with whom he returns. Jo's condition is worsening, and as Jo keeps mentioning Mr Snagsby, who has been his benefactor, Woodcourt goes to his place of business. When Woodcourt mentions Jo, Snagsby gives a groan: "You couldn't name an individual human being -- except myself -- that my little woman is more set and determined against than Jo." But he can't explain why, when Woodcourt asks. Nevertheless, "being tender-hearted, and affected by the account he hears of Jo's condition, he readily engages to 'look round,' as early in the evening as he can manage it quietly."

Jo tells Snagsby that Esther has been to see him and that she doesn't blame him for making him sick. And then he asks Snagsby to write something for him:

"Wot I was a thinkin on then, Mr Sangsby, wos, that wen I was moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps, as to write out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to do it; and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd was Mr Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to forgiv me in his mind. If the writin could be made to say it wery large, he might."

Tearfully, Snagsby promises to do so, and, having already left three half-crowns for Jo, leaves another one.

At the end, Woodcourt asks Jo if he knows any prayers, and Jo says, as always, "Never know'd nothink, sir.... Mr Chadbands he wos a prayin wunst at Mr Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a speakin' to his-self, and not to me." And the people who used to come to Tom-all-Alone's to pray for the people there "all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a talking to theirsselves, or a passing blame on the t'others, and not a talkin to us." He says he would like to be buried next to "him as wos wery good to me," meaning Nemo. As Woodcourt says the Lord's Prayer, he dies, and Dickens makes his pronouncement:

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day. 

Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is the brilliant center of every social event, for "it is not in her nature, when envious eyes are looking on, to yield or to droop." But she is planning an act of defiance. She calls Rosa to her one morning, and prepares her for dismissal: "There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day." Rosa is distraught, and Lady Dedlock assures her that it gives her great pain as well.

When Mr Rouncewell is announced, she goes to the library, where she finds Sir Leicester in conference with Tulkinghorn. She tells her husband that Rouncewell is there because she has decided "that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am tired to death of the matter." So Sir Leicester tells the footman to show "the iron gentleman" -- his term for Rouncewell the factory owner -- in. Under Lady Dedlock's questioning, Rouncewell tells her that his son is still in love with Rosa. She says, "if you cannot give us the assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion that the girl had better leave me."

Sir Leicester protests that Rosa has had the "good fortune ... to have attracted the notice and favour of an eminent lady," and wonders whether she should be deprived of this advantage, and as he sees it, be punished just because she "has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son." Rouncewell, however, reminds him that it was his idea in the first place that she should be taken from service and educated to a higher station. Sir Leicester is, of course, affronted by what he sees as a challenge to the social order, that service to the Dedlocks should be ranked lower than marriage to the son of a man who has made his fortune in manufacturing.

Lady Dedlock intervenes: "The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever to say against her; but she is so far insensible to her many advantages and her good fortune, that she is in love -- or supposes she is, poor little fool -- and unable to appreciate them." Her calculated pose of indifference changes Sir Leicester's mind, so he decides that Rosa "had better go." She maintains this façade of coldness even when Rosa enters, still evidently in distress.

At this point, Tulkinghorn speaks up, "She seems after all ... as if she were crying at going away." Rouncewell says that is because "she is not well-bred," and accompanies her out, as Rosa "thanks my Lady over and over again." Lady Dedlock doesn't betray her true feelings even then. She "waves her off with indifference." Tulkinghorn knows she is acting, however. When Sir Leicester goes out, and Lady Dedlock is left to dine alone, he asks to see her. The dismissal of Rosa, he says, "is a violation of our agreement."

She replies that she has done what she can "to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame." And when he tells her that, since she has broken their agreement and that he now feels justified in taking his own course in the matter, she says, "I am quite prepared."

She asks if Tulkinghorn plans to reveal her secret to Sir Leicester that night, and he says no, but he can't promise that he won't do so tomorrow: "I would rather say no more." He takes his leave and heads for his home, as Dickens observes that there is nothing that tells Tulkinghorn, "Don't go home!"

As for Lady Dedlock, she asks a servant to open the garden gate and to give her the key. "She will walk there some time, to ease her aching head," she tells him. "She may be an hour; she may be more."

Tulkinghorn  reaches home and goes to his wine cellar, having to "cross a little prison-like yard." He "looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too."

After a little while the quiet is disturbed. "What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?"

In Tulkinghorn's office, the allegorical Roman painted on the ceiling is still pointing.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), A New Meaning in the Roman (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But, a little after the coming of the day, come people to clean the rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild; for, looking up at his outstretched hand, and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.... It happens surely, that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at these things, looks up at the roman, and that he is invested in all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.

Tulkinghorn has been shot through the heart.

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Harry Eden as Jo, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket.

18. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 638-686

Chapter 40: National and Domestic through Chapter 43: Esther's Narrative

There has been a change in government, necessitating new elections, so "the London season comes to a sudden end" so that the members of Parliament may campaign for re-election. This brings Sir Leicester home to Chesney Wold, which means the house has to be opened up. Dickens indulges here in a rather lovely but somewhat sinister description of the sun shining into the empty house, illuminating the portraits of Dedlocks past and bringing them to a kind of life.

But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age and death. And now, upon my lady's picture over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her.

As if the Ghost's Walk weren't enough haunting for one place.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Sunset in the Long Drawing-Room at Chesney Wold (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

A groom tells Mrs Rouncewell that Lady Dedlock has not been well since her last visit to the house, and now that she's there again she "takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and, being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day." There is much talk of politics, of course, in which she takes no interest.

She is sitting in a window looking out at the falling shadows in the park when the arrival of Mr Tulkinghorn is announced. This seems to attract her notice, but only for a moment. There is a gunshot that causes cousin Volumnia to give "her little withered scream," and ask what has happened. "'A rat,' says my Lady. 'And they have shot him.'" At this moment, Tulkinghorn enters. He announces that Sir Leicester's party has lost the seat for which the opposition wanted to put up Mrs Rouncewell's son. Sir Leicester was gratified that Mr Rouncewell chose not to run, but Tulkinghorn tells him that Rouncewell was active in the election -- "against you" and that his son, whom we know as Watt, was active also.

Sir Leicester turns to Lady Dedlock and says, "My Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman--" -- meaning Rosa, of course. But she cuts him off: "'I have no intention,' observes my Lady from her window, in a low but decided tone, 'of parting with her.'" Sir Leicester says he only wanted to ask that she "should exert your influence to keep her from these dangerous hands." Tulkinghorn observes "that these people are, in their way, very proud," and that he wouldn't be surprised if they "abandoned the girl ... supposing she remained at Chesney Wold." And then he proposes to tell a story.

"A townsman of this Mr Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great lady; not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your condition, Sir Leicester.... The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl, and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her. Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been engaged to marry a young rake -- he was a captain in the army -- nothing connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but she gave birth to a child of which he was the father."

Lady Dedlock remains "perfectly still" as Tulkinghorn tells this story, which ends with the lady betraying her secret through her "imprudence," causing not only "great domestic trouble and amazement," but also with the townsman removing his daughter from the lady's patronage, "as if the lady had been the commonest of commoners."

Perfectly aware why Tulkinghorn has told this story, Lady Dedlock sits through the conversation that follows, and when the other retire to bed, she does, too, "graceful" and "self-possessed." Tulkinghorn withdraws to his room, "sedately satisfied," because "To say of a man so severely and strictly self-repressed that he is triumphant, would be do to him as great an injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment, or any romantic weakness." His room is at the top of a turret, and he goes out onto its balcony. But he returns when he realizes that Lady Dedlock is at his door. She enters, and he sees "a wild disturbance -- is it fear or anger? -- in her eyes." She sits down and finally asks, "Why have you told my story to so many persons?" He says he did so to inform her that he knew it, and that he only learned it recently. She asks if it has become common gossip, and he it hasn't. As for the girl in the story, he says it was only a hypothetical case.

She volunteers to write or sign anything that would protect her husband, and he assures her that will not be necessary. And she tells him that she is prepared to leave Chesney Wold that night, and that all of her valuables, her jewels and dresses, will remain where they are. But he tells her not to do that: "before you reach the staircase I shall ring the alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out, before every guest and servant, every man and woman in it." She must not do anything so drastic because "The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester.... Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of." For the sake of Sir Leicester, the whole business must remain "hushed up, if it can be."

She replies, "I am to remain upon this gaudy platform, on which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the signal?" And all he can say is that he will give her warning. His only concern, he insists is "Sir Leicester's feelings and honour, and the family reputation." She returns to her room where she paces the floor in anguish.

Tulkinghorn goes back to London where he finds Mr Snagsby waiting for him outside his office. Snagsby has been bedeviled by Mademoiselle Hortense, who has been regularly turned away from Tulkinghorn's offices, so she had decided to haunt Snagsby's, thinking that he can persuade Tulkinghorn to see her. Her continued presence there has driven Guster into fits and Mrs Snagsby into a jealous rage. So Tulkinghorn agrees to see her.

She arrives sooner than he anticipated, surprising him as he goes down to his wine cellar. She is furious that she was used by him to get the truth out of Jo and then paid off with two sovereigns -- which she now flings at him -- but is still unemployed: "Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her." And she vows that she will keep coming back to annoy him until he does. He replies, "In this city, there are houses of correction (where the treadmills are, for women)" and that he has the power to see to it that she winds up in one if she continues to pester him or Snagsby. But she leaves angrily, making no promise not to keep bothering him.

Back at Bleak House, Esther is still worrying about Richard, and when she mentions to Jarndyce what a bad influence she thinks Skimpole is on Richard, Jarndyce doesn't take her seriously. "Who could be encouraged by Skimpole? .... Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature, is a relief to him, and an amusement." But when she mentions that it was Skimpole who "introduced Richard to Mr Vholes, for a present of five pounds," Jarndyce looks troubled. Still, he is certain Skimpole is unaware that he might have done any harm by it, and proposes that they pay a visit to Skimpole at his home to discuss it with him.

Skimpole's household is as disorderly as one might expect. He greets them cheerfully, but when Jarndyce tries to reason with him about Richard's involvement with the Chancery suit, Skimpole blithely insists that it's all beyond his understanding. "I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I thought Mr Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bell, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money." He is surprised when Ada tells him that Richard is poor.

Esther is of two minds about Skimpole: "The more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with anyone for whom I cared."

Skimpole presents his daughters, who are giddy young creatures, and his wife, "who had once been a beauty, but was now a delicate, high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of disorders." One of their daughters has been "married these three years. Now, I dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable."

Skimpole returns with them to Bleak House, where they have a surprise visit from Sir Leicester Dedlock.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Sir Leicester Dedlock (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

He is there, he says, because he is concerned that his dispute with Boythorn may "have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste, at my house, Chesney Wold." He had also heard that Skimpole had been with them, and was concerned that a man "who would appear to possess a cultivated taste for the Fine Arts, was likewise deterred, by some such cause, from examining the family pictures." As Skimpole is there, he is introduced and Sir Leicester extends his invitation in person.

When Sir Leicester has left, Esther decides that she has to tell Jarndyce the truth. "The possibility of my being brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, -- even of Mr Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband -- was so painful, that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance." So she goes to see him, and asks if he remembers the encounter with Lady Dedlock in which she spoke of Jarndyce's acquaintance with her sister. She asks him why the sisters went their separate ways.

Jarndyce is troubled by these questions, and replies, "Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty as she." Esther then says, "O guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!" He is puzzled by this response, but tells her that Lady Dedlock's sister was almost married to Mr Boythorn. It's her turn to be startled, and she asks why they didn't marry. Jarndyce says Boythorn conjectured that it had to do something with her quarrel with her sister.

Esther's characteristic response is to blame herself: "'O guardian, what have I done!' I cried, giving way to my grief; 'what sorrow have I innocently caused!'" Lady Dedlock's sister, she revealed, was the "godmother" who raised her. "And her sister is my mother!"

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Ian Richardson as Lord Chancellor, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Emma Williams as Rosa, Anna Maxwell Martin as Ether Summerson, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Sheila Hancock as Mrs Guppy, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole.

16. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 555-608

Chapter 35: Esther's Narrative through Chapter 37: Jarndyce and Jarndyce

Esther's blindness turns out to have been nothing but a cliffhanger: She has gotten over it by the time Dickens resumes her narrative. It seems to have been one of those pitfalls of serial publication, betraying Dickens into a discontinuity for the sake of melodrama. It would have been a challenge for him to continue the narrative in her voice if she had remained unable to see, but the introduction and casual withdrawal of the blindness seems to me a considerable flaw.

Instead of blindness, then, we get disfigurement of some vaguely specified sort. It seems to trouble Esther far more than it does any of the other characters -- except for one small child who burbles out that she isn't pretty anymore. We can take Esther's sensitivity to her disfigurement as either an inconsistency in one who has been presented as self-deprecating, or a deepening of the character, showing that she is more complex than she likes to admit. For all my sense that introducing Esther as a narrator was a mistake in the first place, I incline to the latter view: that Esther becomes more interesting because of these inconsistencies. But the "Esther problem" is something for another discussion.

There are some haunting touches in Esther's account of her delirium, in which she "laboured up colossal staircases, ever striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again." Or "that worse time when, strung together somewhere in great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my only prayer was to be taken off from the rest, and when it was such inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing." These are genuine fever dreams.

Meanwhile, Ada has been crying at the door, wanting to be let in to share in the nursing. Ada is a remarkably uninteresting character in herself, but she serves a dual function: First, as Esther's one true love, a same-sex relationship lacking any hint of sexuality -- a "safe" relationship for the Victorians, a more provocative one for us. But she is also Esther's idealization of herself: beautiful and loved, which Esther can never truly believe herself to be. And so this alter ego has to be kept from the sickroom, and then, for a long time afterward, even when Esther gets well, kept from seeing the "changed" and disfigured Esther, as if Ada should be kept from the truth that only Esther knows. In fact, the truth has been kept from Esther as long as possible by the well-meaning Charley and by Jarndyce: They have taken the precautions of removing the mirrors.

When she has recovered enough for Jarndyce to visit, he tells her that he and Ada have "been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has everyone about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has even poor Rick been writing -- to me too -- in his anxiety for you!" I'm not sure you want to tell someone that they've been making other people miserable by your own involuntary illness, but it doesn't seem to bother Esther. She is more interested in Richard's writing to Jarndyce. And once again, Ada has been kept out of the loop: "I have thought it better not to mention it to her." Is this the best policy, especially in a world where secrets have so much power to disorder and destroy as the world Dickens has created?

Richard, Jarndyce says, has written "coldly, haughtily, distantly, resentfully" to Jarndyce, only because he was unable to write directly to Esther with any expectation that she could answer him. "Jarndyce and Jarndyce has warped him out of himself, and perverted me in his eyes," Jarndyce says. Esther clings to a "hope that a little experience will teach him what a false and wretched thing" the Chancery suit is, but Jarndyce is more realistic, having seen its effects before.

Meanwhile, they agree that Ada needs to be kept from the truth about Esther's "altered self." And Jarndyce tells her that Boythorn has offered his place for her recuperation. Esther is glad to accept, "for of all the places I could have thought of, I should have liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold."

Now she receives a visit from Miss Flite, who had heard of her illness and walked the twenty miles from London "in a pair of dancing shoes" to inquire about her. They make arrangements for her to be brought by carriage. And chattering on, Miss Flite says something about a pocket-handkerchief, and then breaks off in embarrassment and looks at Charley, who had met the carriage, for a decision on whether she should continue to tell the story. Charley gives her the go-ahead, and Miss Flite says that they had been followed on the road by "a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet," whom Charley identifies as Jenny, the brickmaker's wife. Jenny told them that "a lady with a veil" had stopped at the brickmaker's cottage to ask if they had any information on Esther's health, and that the lady took "a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake," after learning that it had been Esther's.

Charley explains that it was the handkerchief that Esther had used to cover Jenny's dead baby on the evening of the Pardiggle invasion, and that Jenny had set it aside as a keepsake. "And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away with it herself for a heap of money, but that the lady took it, and left some money instead." Miss Flite is convinced that it was "the Lord Chancellor's wife," but Esther "did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an impression that it might be Caddy."

Miss Flite inevitably wanders back into her favorite subject, Chancery, about which she says, "There's a cruel attraction in the place. You can't leave it. And you must expect." Her own father and brother had been drawn by it into bankruptcy, and "drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what!" (I.e., prostitution.) Miss Flite "was ill, and in misery; and heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the Monster. And then I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there." And she warns about Richard: "Let some one hold him back. Or he'll b drawn to ruin."

Then she cheers up: "You have not congratulated me on my physician." Esther is puzzled, and then Miss Flite explains that she's talking about Allan Woodcourt, whose heroism during "a terrible shipwreck over in those East-Indian seas" has been in the news during Esther's illness. She has a clipping about the shipwreck that she gives Esther, who reads it over and over. Miss Flite proclaims, "my brave physician ought to have a Title bestowed upon him. And no doubt he will. You are of that opinion?" Esther says he should, but he won't be so honored:

I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great; unless occasionally, when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money.

Miss Flite is shocked at Esther's cynicism, insisting "that all the greatest ornaments of England, in knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every sort, are added to its nobility!" Esther reflects, "I am afraid she believed what she said; for there were moments when she was very mad indeed."  Once again, Dickens can't resist letting his own voice override Esther's.

All of this talk about Woodcourt leads Esther to a revelation of "the little secret I have thus far tried to keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr Woodcourt loved me." But now, she claims, she can be happy that they never avowed their love because "the poor face he had known as mine was quite gone from me," and she doesn't have to release him from the vows they never made to each other. (Dickens is clearly borrowing from Jane Austen's Persuasion, which hinges on the reunion of Anne Elliot with a former love after she has "lost her bloom.")

Esther and Charley take up lodgings at Boythorn's, and she delights in "everything in nature.... This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me." But now we learn that she still hasn't seen herself in the mirror, and she summons up her courage and does it: "I was very much changed -- O very, very much.... I had never been a beauty, and never had thought myself one; but I had been very different from this." And now she's "troubled" because she "had kept Mr Woodcourt's flowers. When they were withered I had dried them, and put them in a book that I was fond of. Nobody knew this, not even Ada." (Considering how much else Ada is being kept in the dark about, that's not surprising.) But she decides to keep them "only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to be looked back on any more, in any other light."

So then she and Charley set up a schedule of fresh air and exercise, leaving her "scarcely any time to think about that little loss of mine." And one day they are sitting in "a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold" that has a "picturesque" view of the "part of the Hall, called The Ghost's Walk." She has heard the legend and it "mingled with the view and gave it something of a mysterious interest." She has heard that the family is not at the mansion, so she is surprised when Lady Dedlock appears.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Lady Dedlock in the Wood (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

I was rendered motionless. Not so much by her quick advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in her manner, and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was a little child; something I had never seen in any face; something I had never seen in hers before.

Dickens is laboring mightily to indicate that the "something" is the look a mother gives her child. The scene that follows is inevitably mawkish, especially when Esther sees "in her hand my handkerchief, with which I had covered the dead baby," Esther being the baby that Lady Dedlock had thought dead. Lady Dedlock has her send Charley on ahead as she walks with Esther and reveals, "O my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy mother! O try to forgive me!"

She is possessed by a guilt -- over a child born out of wedlock -- that we find difficult to imagine. In a way, the muffling volume of Victorian dress, the layers and layers of cloth, in the Phiz illustration above best expresses the societal repressiveness under which Lady Dedlock and Esther labor. They have a secret that must be kept, partly, as Lady Dedlock exclaims, because "I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!"

This will have to be their only meeting, Lady Dedlock proclaims: "We could never associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time forth could interchange another word, on earth." She gives Esther a letter that she says must be destroyed: "I must evermore consider her as dead." And when Esther asks if their secret is safe, Lady Dedlock warns that "It may be lost by another accident -- tomorrow, any day." She is afraid of Tulkinghorn, "mechanically faithful without attachment, and very  jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.... He is indifferent to everything but his calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets, and the holding possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent in it." But, she says, "I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can." ("Outdie" is Dickens's strange and foreboding coinage: It's not in the OED.)

Esther suggests that she might tell Mr Jarndyce, and Lady Dedlock gives her consent -- "a small gift from such a mother to her injured child" -- as long as Esther doesn't tell her that she has done so. "Some pride is left in me, even yet." And as they part, she tells her, "If you hear of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered; think of your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask!"

When she returns to Boythorn's, Esther tells Charley that she has overtired herself from walking after Lady Dedlock left, and that she wants to lie down. She goes to her room and reads the letter:

I had not been abandoned by my mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead, had, in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I should live, reared me in rigid secrecy, and had never again beheld my mother's face from within a few hours of my birth.

As for Lady Dedlock's reaction on seeing Esther in the church, she had made her think of what her child might be like "if it had ever lived, and had lived on; but that was all, then."

The revelation makes Esther "heavily sorrowful to think that I had ever been reared.... I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for many people, if indeed I had never breathed.... I had a terror of myself, as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother, and of a proud family name." As evening comes on, she feels herself drawn toward Chesney Wold, and she goes out again, making her way toward The Ghost's Walk.

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

When she reaches it, "my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost's Walk; that it was I, who was to bring calamity upon the stately house; and that my warning feet were haunting it even then." She turns and runs back to Boythorn's.

But in the morning she is cheered by a letter announcing that Ada is coming to visit, and another from Jarndyce complaining that "the housekeeping was going to rack and ruin" at Bleak House.

I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I should never have lived: not to say should never have been reserved for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked together, for my welfare; and that if the sins of the fathers were sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I had in the morning feared it meant. 

In short, Esther experiences some of the optimism carried to an extreme by Skimpole.

Ada arrives, and the reunion is a flood of tears and kisses. Then one day Esther is summoned to meet "a gentleman" at the Dedlock Arms, the inn in the village. She goes there to find Richard, who is on leave. "I want to appear quietly in your country house  here, with you under my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?" He has made it clear to her that he is "not accountable to Mr Jarndyce, or Mr Anybody." She says he is welcome. When she asks how he likes his profession, however, he gives a familiar answer: "It does as well as anything else, for a time." Which causes her to reflect, "So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!" For he is more full than ever of the thought that Jarndyce and Jarndyce will be settled, and to his advantage.

Moreover, he has brought Skimpole along with him, and says, "He does me more good than anybody." In Esther's opinion, "Richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this," but she welcomes him anyway. So they go to Boythorn's and surprise Ada, whose love for Richard seems unchanged. On the other hand, Esther reflects, "I almost mistrusted myself, as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly." Richard tells Ada that he isn't there to change the terms between them that they had agreed on when they broke their engagement, but was just there to visit.

But inevitably he and Esther quarrel about Jarndyce, when she refers to his warnings about "the family curse," the Chancery suit: "My dear Esther, how can you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested party, and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?" He has grown suspicious that Jarndyce hopes to benefit at his expense from the suit. "I don't say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should he escape?" In fact, he says, from studying the conflicting wills, he has discovered that one of them gives him more money than it gives Jarndyce. That has aroused his suspicions about why Jarndyce wants him to stay out of the case. Esther continues to defend Jarndyce as kind and generous, but Richard is unpersuaded.

"I may find out, when it's over, that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say today. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it, and make him reparation."

Esther asks if he is in debt again, and he says, "Why of course I am." He claims that in order to pursue the will most favorable to him and to Ada, he has some expenses.

Esther decides that her only recourse is to try to get Ada on her side, so she "told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was losing himself, and scattering his whole life to the winds." It makes Ada unhappy, and she still believes he's capable of changing his ways, but she writes a letter to him saying, "You can do nothing for my sake that will make me half so happy, as for ever turning your back upon the shadow in which we both were born." It seems to have no effect on him, however.

Esther even tries to enlist Skimpole's help, but although he agrees that the suit is "nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns," he is too childishly self-involved to be of any help in persuading Richard of that.

And then Esther discovers that Richard has a new "legal adviser," a man named Vholes, to whom Skimpole introduced him. Vholes himself comes down to see Richard and is introduced to Esther. He is "a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner, and a slow fixed way he had of looking at Richard." Rather like a vulture, it would seem. Vholes has come to see Richard because he has been told to let him know whenever the case is being heard in Chancery, and that it will be tomorrow.

So Richard gets ready to go, but when Esther asks Vholes if Richard's presence in court will make any difference, "'No, miss,' Mr Vholes replied. 'I am not aware that it can.'"

I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's light; Richard, all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his hand; Mr Vholes, quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it.

And Ada tells Esther "that the more he needed love from one unchanging heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Phil Davis as Smallweed, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Anna Maxwell Martin as Ether Summerson, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Warren Clarke as Boythorn, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett.