21. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 752-791

Chapter 49: Dutiful Friendship through Chapter 51: Enlightened

It's Mrs Bagnet's birthday, and we're going to spend a lot of time on that fact until Mr George arrives for the celebration. As the Bagnets go through their business, which is not particularly relevant to any of the major story-lines of the novel, Mr Bagnet does mention that George is "extra-drilled.... By a lawyer. Who would put the devil out." Since we know that lawyer is dead, we have all the more reason to await George's arrival. And when it comes, the Bagnets notice that he is "white" and "shocked." But he tries to brave it out, giving Mrs Bagnet a brooch for her present.

There is some talk of Jo's death, and then a surprise arrives in the form of Mr Bucket, who claims that he saw the musical instruments in the Bagnets' shop-window and is in the market for a second-hand cello -- or "wiolinceller." George introduces him to the Bagnets, who welcome him into their party, and Bagnet manages to ingratiate himself by making much of the Bagnet children.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Friendly Behaviour of Mr Bucket (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But when Mrs Bucket tells him that "George has not been in his usual spirits" that evening, Bucket asks, "What should you be out of spirits for? You haven't got anything on your mind, you know." And after some chat about the children and how he and Mrs Bucket don't have any, Bucket repeats himself: "And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George; what could you have on your mind!"

Finally, it is time to go, and Bucket leaves with George. He conducts him into a room in a public house, closes the door behind himself, and says, "You must consider yourself in custody, George." He informs George that he is a suspect in the murder of Tulkinghorn. George expresses surprise: "Bucket! It's not possible that Mr Tulkinghorn has been killed, and that you suspect me?" But when Bucket tells him the murder took place at Tulkinghorn's office at ten o'clock the night before, George admits, "Why great Heaven, I was there, last night!"

Bucket says yes, he knows, and that George has "been seen hanging about the place" and that Tulkinghorn "may have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow." Sir Leicester Dedlock, he tells George, has offered a reward of a hundred guineas for the apprehension of the murderer. Bucket produces handcuffs and tells George he has to use them. "The trooper flushes angrily, and hesitates a moment; but holds out his two hands, clasped together, and says, 'There! Put them on!'" And, letting George pull down his hat so he doesn't have to meet the eyes of anyone, Bucket conducts him to jail.

And now back to Esther, and in fact back in time several weeks. Caddy Jellyby has been in poor health since giving birth to a baby, "a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little, lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin." Though it is her godchild and is named for her, Esther regards it as "quite a piteous little sight." Caddy and Prince have begged Esther to come help nurse Caddy back to health, and after she makes some exhausting day-trips into London, Jarndyce suggests that they move into their lodgings in the city for the duration. He also suggests that they persuade Woodcourt to look in on Caddy, which occasions some embarrassment on Esther's part. She recalls how much Ada and Caddy made of the flowers that Woodcourt sent her, and which she has now burned. 

Since Esther has still not told Ada of her engagement to Jarndyce -- or as she still puts it, "that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House" -- she now feels more pressure than ever to do so. Ada is celebrating her twenty-first birthday, and Esther goes to her room at the stroke of midnight to be the first to wish her happy birthday. She also takes the opportunity to share the news with Ada, who is happy to hear it. Esther is "so comforted by the sense of having one right, in casting this last idle reservation away, that I was ten times happier than I was before. I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago; but now that it was gone, I felt as if I understood its nature better." The "as if" in that sentence is a very large one.

Once they get to London, Esther spends most of her time with Caddy, so she sees less of Ada. Mrs Jellyby visits her daughter and granddaughter "occasionally, with her usual distraught manner," taking little notice of the baby, "as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan on its native shores." Mr Turveydrop is as demanding as ever: "If the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him uncomfortable." But he has taken a fancy to Peepy "and would take the child out walking with great pomp," though Peepy has to be expensively dressed, with the cost borne by Caddy and Prince. And because Woodcourt is often there to tend to Caddy, Esther inevitably sees a great deal of him.

But it seems to her that "Ada was not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be," and "it came into my head that she was a little grieved -- for me -- by what I had told her about Bleak House." Notice that it's always Bleak House that Esther speaks of -- not Jarndyce, and never about being married to him. And how much of her sense that Ada was "grieved -- for me" is Esther's projection of her own feelings?

Finally, Jarndyce asks if "Woodcourt has restored Caddy Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?" Esther is pleased to be able to say yes, "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers, is to be made rich, guardian." That she still calls her husband-to-be "guardian," may be one reason that Jarndyce says, "We would make him as rich as a Jew, if we knew how. Would we not, little woman?" The phrase he uses, with its strong whiff for us of antisemitism, was commonplace well into the twentieth century. It doesn't bother Esther, however, who laughs and says that "it might spoil him" to be rich. And Jarndyce continues this dance on a precipice by commenting, "Rich enough to have his own happy home, and his own household gods -- and household goddess too, perhaps?" He continues to say, "I have been sounding him delicately about his plans" and to observe that "he seems half inclined for another voyage."

Esther, who is holding so tightly on to her emotions that she doesn't betray them even to us, says, "It might open a new world to him."

"So it might," my guardian assented. "I doubt if he expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he sometimes feels some particular disappointment, or misfortune, encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?"

Esther shakes her head, and Jarndyce continues by saying, "I should say it was likely at present that he will give a long trail to another country." She responds with something politely noncommittal.

This whole scene is fraught with tensions that Dickens unfortunately doesn't know how to express or exploit. Jane Austen or George Eliot or Henry James could have handled it skillfully. But in part because he has trapped himself into Esther's point of view, Dickens can't bring out the ironies in this dialogue as effectively as he might. It ends with Ada, who is listening in, in tears, which when Esther notices, she comments, "I felt that I had only to be placid and merry, once for all to undeceive my dear, and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but be myself." But does Esther really know herself?

Esther takes Ada upstairs, where Ada says, "if I could only make up my mind to speak to you and my cousin John, when you are together!" Esther doesn't pry into the source of this outburst, even when Ada continues, "O when I think of all these years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do?" Esther has noticed that Ada has been working on something that she puts away when Esther enters, and that the drawer in which she puts it is partly open, but she doesn't take the opportunity to find out what it is. And when she checks to see if Ada is asleep, she notices "that she lay with one hand under her pillow so that it was hidden."

When Woodcourt arrived in London, he sought out Richard, and found him lodging on the second floor of Symonds Inn, in which Vholes has his office. Vholes is full of warnings about Richard's finances, and the necessity of taking what he's owed out of the estate, if it's ever settled. Esther tells us that Woodcourt found Richard "in a dull room, fadedly furnished, "and he told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face, and the dejection of his manner." He is sunk in self pity, telling Woodcourt, "you can pursue your art for its own sake; and can put your hand upon the plough, and never turn; and can strike a purpose out of anything. You, and I, are very different." He tells Woodcourt that his concern is for Ada as much as for himself.

When Woodcourt tells this to Esther, "It revived a fear I had had before, that my dear girl's property would be absorbed by Mr Vholes, and that Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this." Now that Caddy has recovered, she proposes to Ada that they visit Richard and is surprised when she hesitates. But once they set out, on "a sombre day" on which "I thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements, than I had ever seen before," Esther is surprised that Ada knows exactly where Richard is lodging. His name is "in great white letters on a hearse-like panel" in the door.

Ada opens the door without knocking, and they find Richard surrounded by "dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked, I saw the ominous words that ran in it, repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce." His obsession is visible, and he is open about expressing it: "Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, the suit, my dear girl!"

His hopefulness had long beenmore painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable, that it had long touched me to the heart.

And now Ada reveals her secret: She and Richard have been married for more than two months. She will not be going home with Esther, but will stay with Richard. "And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me."

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

They married because Richard would not accept her money, and Richard claims that they didn't tell Esther because she was so busy nursing Caddy at the time. So Esther gives them her blessing, and puts on a façade of cheerfulness. But when she goes downstairs she bursts into tears and "walked up and down in a dim corner, sobbing and crying." When she reaches home, Jarndyce is out: "The poor boy whom I had found at St Albans had reappeared a short time before, and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to inquire about him, and did not return to dinner." So Esther goes out, taking Charley with her, just to look at the lights in the window of the room where Ada and Richard are living. She even goes up to the second floor and kisses "the hearse-like panel of the door, as a kiss for my dear, and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit."

When she gets home, Jarndyce is there. He has already guessed, from her tears and Ada's empty chair, that she and Richard are married. "Bleak House is thinning fast," he says, twice. Which causes her to renew her vow to remain there with him. But she thinks, "I feared I might not quite have been all I had meant to be, since the letter and the answer."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Brian Pettifer as Mr Growler, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Lilo Baur as Hortense.

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.

_____

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.

11. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 366-406

Chapter 23: Esther's Narrative through Chapter 24: An Appeal Case

Jarndyce, Esther and Ada have returned to Bleak House after six weeks at Boythorn's, having had no more contact with Lady Dedlock, though they saw her in church. "I had a fancy," Esther says, "on more than one of those Sundays, that what this lady so curiously was to me, I was to her -- I mean that I disturbed her thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way."

One day, she is told that a person has come to see her, and is surprised to find that it's Mademoiselle Hortense. She tells Esther that she has left Lady Dedlock's service and pleads to be allowed to serve as Esther's maid. "I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful," and Esther fills the bill. Esther tries to persuade her that she doesn't want or need a maid, but Hortense says she'll work for her for free. She "seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of terror." Esther stands firm, however.

Before she leaves, Hortense says that her behavior on the day they encountered her at the keeper's lodge during the storm must have have surprised them. Esther admits that it did. "'I took an oath, mademoiselle,' she said, smiling, 'and I wanted to stamp it on my mind, so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will! Adieu, mademoiselle!'" They didn't see her again during their stay.

Meanwhile, Richard has been haunting Chancery and studying the Jarndyce and Jarndyce files and tells them that "nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he and Ada were to take, I don't know how many thousands of pounds, must finally be established, if there were any sense or justice in the Court of Chancery -- but O what a great if that sounded in my ears." He has become friends with Miss Flite, and Esther realizes "what a fatal link was riveting between his fresh youth and her faded age; between his free hopes and her caged birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind."

One day, Esther goes into the city to meet Caddy Jellyby, who has asked her to come, and is met by Richard at the coach-office. He admits that he is not cut out for legal studies either, and that he is in debt: "I have taken rather too much to billiards, and that sort of thing." Finally he bursts into tears while talking about Ada: "I love her most devotedly; and yet I do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour." But he persists in his belief that the suit will be settled in their favor, "and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!" This disturbs Esther even more than his tears. Now, he says, he has decided that his real career should be the army. Esther accedes to this latest whim, but once again, "implored him, for Ada's sake, not to put any trust in Chancery."

Richard accompanies her to the meeting with Caddy and then takes his leave. Caddy announces that she and Prince Turveydrop are ready to announce their engagement, but they want Esther to be there when they approach by Mr Turveydrop and Mrs Jellyby. Esther agrees, so they go first to the dancing school. Mr Turveydrop is at first astonished when Caddy and Prince kneel before him and ask his blessing. He groans and sobs, "reclining on the sofa, and shutting out the sight with his hand, but when Prince vows, "with your approval and consent, father, we will devote ourselves to making your life agreeable." Esther notices that his attitude begins to change at this declaration, and when Prince says, "we shall always make you -- of course -- our first consideration," Mr Turveydrop gives in.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), A Model of Parental Deportment (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

"My son and daughter, your happiness shall be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with me"; meaning, of course, I will always live with you; "this house is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long live to share it with me!"

Leaving Prince in attendance on his father, Esther and Caddy then go to the Jellyby residence, which "looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever," owing in part to the fact that Mr Jellyby has been forced to declare bankruptcy. Mrs Jellyby, of course, is unaffected by this turn of events: "He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and is a little out of spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to think about it." She turns her scorn on Caddy, however: "She has almost deserted her old employment, and in fact obliges me to employ a boy." Caddy protests, "surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my life," which raises her mother's ire: "A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea." Caddy only adds fuel to the fire by saying that as concerns Africa she has no sympathies at all.

It takes Esther to prod Caddy into telling her mother the news that she is engaged. "'O, you ridiculous child!' observed Mrs Jellyby, with an abstracted air, as she looked over the dispatch last opened, 'what a goose you are!'" Caddy sobs out the truth, that she and Prince have obtained Mr Turveydrop's consent, "and I beg and pray you'll give us yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never could!" Mrs Jellyby is not happy, however, that Caddy should be "engaged to a dancing-master's son" when she could have had "Mr Quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time." But in the end, she decides that she can't "permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose between me and the great African continent." And calling Caddy "a nonsensical child" and "a degenerate child," she decides that "the step is taken, and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said," so she allows herself to be kissed so she can "clear off this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!"

Esther cheers up Caddy as much as she can, by observing how much Caddy "would do for her unfortunate father, and for Peepy, when she had a home of her own," and then returns to Bleak House, where she has a surprise: Mr Jarndyce has hired Charley Neckett as her maid, and the other children are being taken care of: "Tom's at school, if you please, and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs Blinder, miss, a being took such care of!" Esther tells her never to forget who was their benefactor, and Charley says she won't: "It was all you, miss." Esther corrects her, "It was Mr Jarndyce, Charley." But Charley insists, "I am a little present with his love, and it was all done for love of you."

Meanwhile, Mr Jarndyce has has hands full with the mess Richard has made, extricating him from the arrangements with Mr Kenge. As ward of Chancery, Richard has to go before the Lord Chancellor to effect this latest revision in his career plans, and the Lord Chancellor is not pleased: He "described him, in open court, as a vexatious and capricious infant," and in chambers "very seriously reproved him for trifling with time, and not knowing his mind." But finally things are arranged for his entering the Horse Guards, applying for an Ensign's commission. He begins his military studies and in time "the commission was obtained, and Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland."

But before his departure, Jarndyce feels it necessary to have a serious talk with Richard and Ada about their future. He tells Ada, "Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He has exhausted his resources, and is bound henceforward to the tree he has planted." But Richard persists in qualifying what Jarndyce has said: "I have exhausted my present resources," he insists, still clinging to the hope that a settlement will be reached. Jarndyce is appalled at this stubborn clinging to the Chancery case, and "with a sudden terror in his manner, and in an altered voice," pleads, "for the love of God, don't found a hope or expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us to manyh years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!"

They are all shocked by Jarndyce's intensity. But he goes on further to propose that Richard and Ada release themselves of their commitment to each other, their engagement: "I ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.... Ada, it is better for him that he should be free, and that there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for her, much better; you owe it to her." He says that his experience with both of them has caused him to change his mind about the fitness of their engagement: "It is not right, and I must not recognise it."

Ada submits to the decision, and tells Richard, "I don't think you will fall in love with anybody else," and she is "not at all changeable," but she thinks Jarndyce is right in believing their engagement premature: "we are only cousins again, Richard -- for the time perhaps."

As Richard's departure for Ireland nears, he, Jarndyce, and Esther go to London to prepare. Ada remains behind at Bleak House. In London, Esther meets the man who has been training Richard with firearms and swords: Mr George. Jarndyce asks George how Richard's training has been going. "'Pretty good, sir,' he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest, and looking very large. 'If Mr Carstone was to give his full mind to it, he would come out very good.... He did at first, sir, but not afterwards." It's a pattern Esther and Jarndyce have seen before in Richard. Then George suggests that perhaps he has "some young lady" on his mind, and looks at Esther. She hastens to assure him that she's not the young lady on Richard's mind.

Then Jarndyce tells George that she is Miss Summerson, and the look he gives her makes Esther ask if he has heard the name before. "No, miss. To my knowledge, I never heard it. I thought I had seen you somewhere." But both of them claim to remember faces well and that they've never seen each other before. Still, there is a moment of confusion before Jarndyce changes the subject, asking about the other pupils that George has trained. George mentions that one of them was, like Mr Jarndyce, a Chancery suitor. The man, "a small Shropshire farmer," he says, was so angry at how he had been treated by the law that George was afraid he intended to shoot someone and suggested he fine some other outlet for his anger.

"Was his name Gridley?" Jarndyce asks, and he and Esther are surprised at the coincidence when George says yes. Jarndyce says that he understands Gridley has gone too far in his protests about mistreatment by the court and is in hiding from the law. George admits as much, but adds that he's afraid Gridley "will be worn out soon," though he claims to know nothing about Gridley's whereabouts.

On the day of Richard's departure, everything having been taken care of, Richard proposes to Esther that they go watch the proceedings in the Court of Chancery. She has never been there, so she agrees. The scene is confusing and depressing, and "there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene, except poor little Miss Flite, the mad woman, standing on a bench, and nodding at us." She joins them, and they watch as "Jarndyce and Jarndyce" is called. "I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs, who said they were 'in it'; and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I." There is an hour of so of ineffectual business until the "huge volumes of affidavits" are bundled up and taken away again. "I glanced at Richard, on the termination of these hopeless proceedings, and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome face."

Then Mr Guppy appears, and says that "there's a lady here, a friend of mine," who knows Esther. "As he spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from my remembrance, Mrs Rachael of my godmother's house." She asks if Esther remembers her, and when Esther assures her she does, says, "'I am glad to see you, and glad you are not too proud to know me.' But indeed she seemed disappointed that I was not." When Esther calls her "Mrs Rachael," she "coldly" corrects her: She is now Mrs Chadband. Guppy and Mrs Chadband depart, but now Mr George makes his way through the crowd. He is looking for "a little cracked old woman," he says, unaware that Miss Flite is standing there beside Esther.

George asks Esther, "in a low whisper," if she recalls the conversation they had about Gridley. When she says yes, he tells her, "He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his authority." But now Gridley is dying, and he wants to see Miss Flite. So Esther informs Miss Flite and they leave. On the way, Esther stops to write a note to Jarndyce about what's happening and sends it to him.

When they reach George's Shooting Gallery, "a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair" stops them and says that he is a physician who was sent for to attend a sick man at George's. Phil opens the door to admit them, and when they have entered, "the physician stopped, and, taking off his hat, appeared to vanish by magic, and to leave another and quite a different man in his place." It is Inspector Bucket, who has a warrant to arrest Gridley.

Bucket agrees to let George and Miss Flite go in to see Gridley first. As they wait, Mr Jarndyce arrives as well, and they all visit the dying man, who is no longer angry. Even Bucket speaks to him like an old friend:

"Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again, for contempt? Haven't I come into Court, twen-ty afternoons, for no other purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bulldog? Do you remember, when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace was sworn against you two or three times a week?" 

Quietly, George asks Bucket what he's going to do, and Bucket admits he doesn't know. "I only want to rouse him. I don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this." But a scream from Miss Flite announces that Gridley is dead: "'O no, Gridley!' she cried, as he fell heavily and calmly back from before her. 'Not without my blessing. After so many years!'"

The shadow of Gridley's death falls over Richard's departure, and as he leaves, Esther remembers what Gridley had said to Mr Jarndyce about Miss Flite: "There is a tie of many suffering year between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!"

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Tony Haygarth as Gridley, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Alun Armstrong as Inspector Bucket.

7. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 214-254

Chapter 14: Deportment through Chapter 15: Bell Yard

Richard goes off to his medical studies with Bayham Badger, vowing that when he is settled in his profession and he and Ada are married, Esther should come live with them and be their housekeeper. "I was to be made happy for ever and a day," Esther reports, not without, I suspect, a touch of irony. He adds, "And if the suit should make us rich, Esther -- which it may you know!" but is met with disapproval from Ada, who quite sensibly worries about the consequences of Richard's expectations of wealth -- "it may be better to forget all about it," she warns. He ignores the warning. 

One day, Caddy Jellyby comes to call, bringing Peepy with her, both of them dressed in such an odd assemblages of castoffs that Mr Jarndyce immediately feels the wind shift to the east and retires to "the temporary Growlery" as soon as he can. Things are still as chaotic as ever at the Jellybys: "Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied.... His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down-stairs, confusion and wretchedness." Moreover, Mrs Jellyby still has hopes of marrying Caddy off to Mr Quale: "A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a Philanthropist. As if I hadn't had quite enough of that!" 

But Caddy has thwarted that expectation: "I am engaged." Her parents know nothing of it however. She tells Esther that her visits to the house made her determined to improve herself, so she started taking dancing lessons at Mr Turveydrop's Academy. There are two Mr Turveydrops, she explains, father and son, and it's the son, who gives the lessons, to whom she is engaged. And thanks to that, she proclaims, "I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr Turveydrop hates it for my sake; and if old Mr Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does." 

Caddy also tells her that she has "improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady; and that she frequently went there early in the morning, and met her lover for a few minutes before breakfast." The younger Turveydrop, she tells her, is named Prince -- "I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr Turveydrop had him christened Prince, in remembrance of the Prince Regent." 

Esther has been planning to visit Miss Flite, so she suggests that she go with Caddy and Peepy to the Academy and meet Prince Turveydrop, then join up with Ada and Jarndyce at Miss Flite's later. 

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

Prince turns out to be "a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance, with flaxen hair parted in the middle, and curling at the ends all round his head.... His little dancing shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine manner, which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me: that I received the impression that he was like his mother, and that his mother had not been much considered or well used." 

The elder Turveydrop is "a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig.... He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly  bear.... He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was like nothing in the world but a model of Deportment." 

That Esther feels a sympathy for the effeminate fiancé of her friend, but none for the falsity and affectation of his father is significant. Prince Turveydrop is no sexual threat, of course, and so Esther regards him as "safe." As for the elder Turveydrop, Esther's opinions are influenced in part by those of "an old lady of censorious countenance," who sits next to her in the dancing school and expresses her distaste for him. She informs Esther that the senior Turveydrop "had married a meek little dancing-mistress, ... (having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had worked her to death." He is now doing the same to Prince, who "now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a-day, and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle." Esther imbibes enough of this story to find Mr Turveydrop's salutation to "his sainted mother" as "a devoted creature" as filled with a "very disagreeable gallantry." 

As for Prince, "The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish character." Childishness in Bleak House is a double-edged characteristic. In Skimpole, it is irresponsible; in Prince Turveydrop, who is diligent and devoted, it becomes a virtue. Moreover, he is made for Caddy in the sense that she now has someone to whom she can devote herself: "You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried." So she has taken Miss Flite as a project, helping clean her room and take care of her birds and learning to make coffee. "And since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma." 

In Esther's world-view there are two cardinal virtues: diligence and selflessness. Esther herself is the perfect embodiment of them. And their opposites are the corresponding vices: negligence and selfishness. Her do-gooders, like Mrs Jellyby and Mrs Pardiggle, think themselves diligent, dutiful to the needs of others, but that is because they neglect the duties close at hand: their own families. And their pride in what they see as doing good is selfish. Skimpole, of course, is the epitome of negligence and selfishness, although his conduct is mitigated by the amusement he provides others -- until, of course, it begins to do harm. 

This simple Victorian morality prevails only in Esther's part of the narrative. The omniscient narrator's account of what lies outside of Esther's point of view is far more morally complex, and in the end it brings much of Esther's moral vision into question. That is the point, of course, the whole reason for the narrative schism at the heart of Bleak House. 

So now Esther and Caddy go to Krook's, which is a portal between Esther's world and the omniscient narrator's world. As they ascend the stairs, they notice that the room on the second floor is to let. Caddy tells Esther that there has been a death there, and they can't help looking in on the room as they pass by. "A sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. 'You look pale,' said Caddy, when we came out, 'and cold!' I felt as if the room had chilled me." 

But Miss Flite greets them warmly. Ada and Jarndyce have already arrived, as has "a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion." And so Allan Woodcourt sidles into the narrative again. The obliqueness with which Dickens introduces, and reintroduces, Woodcourt is coy and somewhat gratuitous, but it is meant to suggest Esther's diffidence about the man who is to play an increasingly significant role in her life. He is introduced to them by Miss Flite, and we finally learn the reason for his initial mysterious appearance at the deathbed of Nemo: Miss Flite "brought me here, in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man." Why it was necessary to summon the other physician as well -- and then to drop him almost immediately from the narrative -- remains one of those curious anomalies of Dickens's storytelling. 

Woodcourt tells them that Miss Flite has had a stroke of good fortune: Every Saturday, Kenge or his clerk Guppy brings her a sum of money. Miss Flite thinks it come from the Lord Chancellor himself, but Esther suspects that the benefactor is Jarndyce, who is studiously contemplating Miss Flite's birds. He asks if they have names, but at that moment they are interrupted by the appearance of Krook and his cat, whom Miss Flite anxiously asks him to remove. Krook says that the cat would never harm "the birds when I was here, unless I told her to it." Krook proceeds to name the birds: 

"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach." 

The recitation causes Jarndyce to feel the east wind. And when Krook proclaims that if Miss Flite were ever to receive her judgment and release the birds, "if that ever was to happen -- which it won't -- the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em." Jarndyce feels the wind more sharply.

As they begin to leave Krook's, he latches onto Jarndyce, who notices in the shop that there are several alphabets pasted on the wall. Krook explains that he is trying to teach himself to read and write, but is not getting very far with it. Jarndyce suggests that having someone teach him might be more efficient. "'Aye, but they might teach me wrong!' returned the old man, with a wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye." 

Finally, they escape from Krook's and send Caddy and Peepy home. And then Esther adds a coda: "I have forgotten to mention -- at least I have not mentioned -- that Mr Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr Badger's. Or, that Mr Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or, that he came." And then there is a coy little bit suggesting, but not stating outright, that Ada made reference to an attachment between Esther and Woodcourt. 

During their stay, Jarndyce is beset by "the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen" seeking donations to their various causes. Mrs Pardiggle and Mr Quale provide an introduction to their friend Mr Gusher, "a flabby gentleman with a moist surface, and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else." Esther's voice is being overridden by Dickens's own here. Mr Gusher tells Jarndyce of his success in persuading the boys and girls of two charity schools to donate what little money they had to his causes. Esther notes, "I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks." 

This kind of hypocrisy makes Jarndyce welcome the return of Skimpole, who, whatever else he may be, is no hypocrite. Skimpole has seen Boythorn, who Esther observes is almost Skimpole's antithesis: "Mr Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things, and Mr Skimpole caring so little for anything." Boythorn has told him that Jarndyce and Ada and Esther promised to visit him in Lincolnshire, and that he had invited Skimpole as well, even volunteering to pay Skimpole's way. 

And then Skimpole remembers to tell Esther something: "You remember our old friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?" "Coavinses" was Skimpole's name for the debt collector who had pursued him to Bleak House. "Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff," Skimpole says. Esther is a little shocked at the flippancy with which Skimpole delivers this news of the man's death, but she is more shocked when Skimpole tells them that the debt collector left three motherless children. 

Esther and Jarndyce decide to check on the condition in which the collector -- also known as a "follower" -- had left the children, so Skimpole directs them to his home. They find "a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a child of eighteen months." They have been left alone, locked in a room, while the oldest child, a girl named Charley (for Charlotte), goes out to find work to earn food for them. She turns up while they are there: "a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face -- pretty-faced too -- wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much to large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron." She has been working in a laundry and has come to check on the others. 

Jarndyce asks her age, and she replies "Over thirteen, sir." She tells him, "Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing to-day." Their mother had died after the baby was born. The landlady, Mrs Blinder, and the downstairs neighbor, Mr Gridley, look in on them while Charley is at work. The other neighbors disapproved of what Neckett, the children's father, did for a living, but people have been kind to them, though, Mrs Blinder says, "certainly not so many as would have been, if their father's calling had been different." Some people won't hire Charley because of her father, and some "perhaps pay her less and put upon her more." 

Mr Gridley, the choleric downstairs neighbor, now enters to chide them for what he assumes to be idle curiosity, and stays to reveal that he, too, is a victim of Chancery, having been dragged into a lawsuit over an estate that has been eaten up by legal costs. When Jarndyce mentions that he was hardly the only one to be "unjustly treated by this monstrous system," Gridley angrily replies, "The system! I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system." But he is so furious at having been victimized by it that he continues to appear at court to "shame them. To the last, I'll shew myself in that court to its shame." But for now, he is there only to take the boy, Tom, and the baby, Emma, down to his room for a while. 

Skimpole's reaction is a Candide-like optimism: "He said, Well, it was really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr Gridley, a man of a robust will, and surprising energy ... and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon ... when the Court of Chancery came in his way, and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted.... Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns." And Skimpole observes of himself, "That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses; that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these social virtues!" 

There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my Guardian smile even as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs Blinder.  

They bid goodbye to Charley as she runs off to work again. 

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone,  Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Natalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Ian Richardson as the Chancellor, Tony Haygarth as Gridley, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Billy Hill as Tom Neckett, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Harry Eden as Jo, Richard Griffiths as Bayham Badger, Joanna David as Mrs Bayham Badger.