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.

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.

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

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


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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

_____

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

8. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 254-280

Chapter 16: Tom-all-Alone's through Chapter 17: Esther's Narrative

"My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless." And her husband is laid up with gout, which runs in the family. So Lady Dedlock "has flitted away to town, with no intention of remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the fashionable intelligence." Dickens's omniscient narrator now indicates that there is some connection between Lady Dedlock's restlessness and the crossing-sweeper Jo. But of course he's not going to tell us what it is, because that would make the novel a lot shorter. (But also a lot less rich in detail and mystery and incident. Such is fiction.) 

Jo is homeless, dwelling wherever he can find in the abandoned houses of a section of London called Tom-all-Alone's, in "a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people." It is, "in Chancery, of course," and is so neglected that buildings in Tom-all-Alone's frequently collapse from decay. But it is inhabited by squatters like Jo, who are occasionally injured in these collapses. 

Jo is also profoundly ignorant, causing the narrator to observe, "It must be a strange state to be like Jo!" Wandering the streets of London, unable to read even the signs on the buildings, alienated from the people he meets, earning a few pennies at a time by clearing the sidewalks and street-crossings of mud and dung and filth. 

It must be a strange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human ... but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by me, and to know that in ignorance I belong to them, and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend.... Jo, and the other lower animals, get on in the unintelligible mess as they can.... A band of music comes, and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog -- a drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop.... He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute! Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark -- but not their bite. 

In this passage of sympathetic imagination, Dickens rises high above the facile sentimentality of which he is often accused. (And in which, admittedly, he too often indulges.)

Evening comes on, and Dickens does a brief but striking transition, giving us a glimpse of Tulkinghorn in his office, as the "foreshortened Allegory" painted on its ceiling, "in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively toward the window." But because the Roman is always pointing out the window, Tulkinghorn doesn't follow its instruction and look out the window to see a woman passing by. 

And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are women enough in the world, Mr Tulkinghorn thinks -- too many; they are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of that, they created business for lawyers. What would it be to see a woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all secret. Mr Tulkinghorn knows that, very well.

Tulkinghorn's misogyny is a new note in his character, but not an unexpected one, especially in the Dickensian world where sexuality is either sentimentalized into cozy affection or else treated as a power dynamic: e.g., the Jellybys, the Pardiggles, the Badgers, and in a very different way, Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop, and more to the point here, Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock.   

It's Lady Dedlock who is going by on the street, although the omniscient narrator isn't willing to tell us that: "Her face is veiled, and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her look round sharply." She is in search of Jo, and she finds him, though when he calls her "my lady," she insists, "I am not a lady. I am a servant." She establishes, with some difficulty, that he was the boy at the inquest and asks him to show her the places mentioned in the newspaper report on the inquest: "The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried." And she promises him "more money than you ever had in your life." 

Jo agrees, of course, and they make the rounds until they wind up at the burial place, "a scene of horror!" 

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

Through the gate, Jo points out the burial site -- "Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder!" He could uncover the body with his broom, he says, if the gate were open. And he points out a rat scurrying away. The lady -- uh, servant is sickened and disgusted, but she asks if the burial site is "consecrated ground." Jo has no idea what she means, so she asks if it has been blessed.

"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink."

She removes her glove to give him money, and "Jo silently notices how white and small her hand is, and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings." She asks him to point out the spot again, and as he does so she disappears silently. Jo bites the gold coin she has given him to see if it is real and returns to Tom-all-Alone's. 

Back at Chesney Wold it is raining again and Sir Leicester complains to Mrs Rouncewell "that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace, that he can't read the paper, even by the fireside in his own snug dressing room." Mrs Rouncewell observes later to Rosa that he should have moved to the other side of the house. "His dressing-room is on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon the Ghost's walk, more distinct than it is to-night!" 

We return to Esther, who is still in London, where they are visited often by Richard "(though he soon failed in his letter-writing)." She persists in feeling "more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of application and concentration." Her regrets are confirmed when Mr and Mrs Bayham Badger visit one afternoon, and Mrs Badger says, on Esther's asking them how Richard is getting along with his studies, "I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his profession advisedly." And she elaborates with a comparison: 

"Young men, like Mr Allan Woodcourt, who take to it from a strong interest in all that it can do, will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a very little money, and through years of considerable endurance and disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the case with Mr Carstone." 

Ada "timidly" asks Mr Badger to confirm his wife's opinion, and he does. 

Jarndyce isn't present for the Badgers' visit, so Esther and Ada decide not to tell him of their opinion until they've spoken to Richard, which they do. Richard's attitude is that "It's rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But it'll do as well as any thing else!" This isn't what Esther wants to hear, but Ada is satisfied with it. But Richard continues to hang himself: "After all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is -- I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit." Ada continues to be satisfied with this, but Esther persists in wanting to hear more of what he has to say, and tells him of the Badgers' opinion. He's surprised to hear of it, and admits, "The fact is, I don't care much about it.... it's monotonous, and to-day is too like yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day." Ada remains supportive, but Esther goes in for the kill: "life itself," she says, is like that, "except under some very uncommon circumstances." 

Richard tries to change the subject, but even Ada has begun to come around to Esther's point of view. And when Esther mentions that his decision affects not only him, but also Ada, he sees the point too. He admits, addressing Ada, "I was a little hasty, perhaps; or I misunderstood my own inclinations, perhaps. They don't seem to lie in that direction. I couldn't tell, till I tried." So now that medicine is out, he says, "I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me." The words "the law" shock Ada, "as if she were afraid of the name." But Richard has almost instantly come up with a new scheme: He will go to work in Kenge's office, where "I should have my eye on the -- hum! -- the forbidden ground -- and should be able to study it, and master it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected, and was being properly conducted." 

So the new proposal is presented to Jarndyce, who says that Richard can "retreat with honour" from his medical studies, but advises a "good trial" of the law before making a decision. After Richard leaves, however, Esther notices "a shadow on [Jarndyce's] benevolent expression ... and even the silent look of confidence in me  ... was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally been." 

Unable to sleep, Esther goes down to "the temporary Growlery" where she has left some thread for her embroidery, and finds Jarndyce there, staring into the ashes in the fireplace. He admits that he was thinking about her, and that it's time to tell her what he knows about her family history. She tells him, "One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words. 'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'"

He tells her that nine years ago he received a letter from her aunt. "It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your remembrance," and that it was "the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for the child to expiate an offence on which she was quite innocent." As a result of the letter, he decided to do what he could for Esther, so he commissioned Kenge as an agreed-on "confidential agent" to visit her aunt: "The lady said, of her own accord, and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. That more than this she would never ... for any human consideration, disclose." And that is as much as Jarndyce knows of the matter. Esther thanks him, but when she says he has been "a Father to her," she "saw his former trouble come into his face," as if her words "had given him a shock." 

The next day, Allan Woodcourt pays a visit to tell them that "He was going to China, and to India, as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a long, long time." In passing, Esther observes, "He was seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything." Before he leaves, he brings his mother to visit. "She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes, but she seemed proud." She tells them of her eminent ancestor in Wales and her hopes that "wherever her son Allan went, he would remember his pedigree, and on no account form an alliance below it.... She talked so much about birth that, for a moment, I half fancied, and with pain -- but, what an idle fancy to suppose that she could think or care what mine was!" 

The coyness about the relationship between Esther and Woodcourt continues after Mrs Woodcourt and her son leave. Caddy Jellyby shows up with a beautiful little bouquet of flowers. 

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

Esther assumes that the flowers must have been given to Caddy by Prince, but Caddy tells Esther they are for her: "They were left behind by Somebody.... At poor Miss Flite's.... Somebody who has been very good to her, was hurrying away an hour ago, to join a ship, and left these flowers behind.... I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if Somebody left them on purpose!" Ada agrees. 

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Richard Griffiths as Bayham Badger, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone,  Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Harry Eden as Jo, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Warren Clarke as Boythorn.

6. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 181-214

Chapter 12: On the Watch through Chapter 13: Esther's Narrative


The rain has stopped at Chesney Wold and the Dedlocks are returning from Paris, where Lady Dedlock has been as bored as ever. In the carriage she notices that Sir Leicester is reading some papers sent him by Tulkinghorn, which reminds him that the lawyer sent her a message in one of them:  "I have something to tell her on her return, in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen him." Although she betrays no special emotion to Sir Leicester, she asks him to stop the carriage so she can walk for a while. After a quarter of a mile, she returns to the carriage.

When they reach home and are greeted by Mrs Rouncewell, Lady Dedlock notices the new maid, Rosa, and comments on how pretty she is. She asks Rosa how old she is, and Rosa replies "Nineteen, my Lady." Lady Dedlock repeats the age, "thoughtfully."

That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so elegant.... Mrs Rouncewell confirms all this, not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of that excellent family; ... but if my lady would only be "a little more free," not quite so cold and distant, Mrs Rouncewell thinks she would be more affable.

Lady Dedlock's attentions to Rosa have drawn the notice of Hortense, Lady Dedlock's maid, "a Frenchwoman of two-and-thirty, from somewhere in the Southern country about Avignon and Marseilles -- a large-eyed brown woman with black hair; who would be handsome, but for a certain feline mouth, and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager, and the skull too prominent.... she seems to go about like a very neat She-Wolf imperfectly tamed." Hortense is offended that she, who has been in Lady Dedlock's service for five years, has never been fussed over by her mistress the way Rosa was.

The Dedlocks then entertain, "this January week, some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion," whom Dickens proceeds to ridicule for their vapidity and "dandyism." The house is full, except for one room set aside for Mr Tulkinghorn, after whom Lady Dedlock inquires every evening whether he has arrived yet. Finally one evening he appears in order to discuss with Sir Leicester his ongoing quarrel with Boythorn over rights-of-way. "A man of a very low character of mind," Sir Leicster says of Boythorn, "An exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished -- if not ... if not hanged, drawn, and quartered."

Lady Dedlock intervenes in the aristocrat's denunciation of the upstart Boythorn and suggests that they go inside. She also takes the opportunity to ask Tulkinghorn about his discovery of the person whose handwriting she recognized. Yes, Tulkinghorn says, he identified the man and went to his lodgings where "I found him dead." Sir Leicester speaks first, worrying about Lady Dedlock's reaction and suggesting "the less said --." But she interrupts and asks Tulkinghorn to go on: "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?" Tulkinghorn continues, "Whether by his own hand --" and again Sir Leicester protests and is overruled by his wife, "though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really -- really --."

Apparently Lady Dedlock finds it really interesting, for she continues to draw Tulkinghorn out. He tells her that the coroner's inquest brought back a verdict of accidental death.

"He had lived so wretchedly, and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour, and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition."

Lady Dedlock asks what he was called, but Tulkinghorn reports that no one knew his name. And when she asks if he left any clues to his identity, Tulkinghorn says that there was only "an old portmanteau; but -- No, there were no papers."

Considering that Lady Dedlock nearly fainted when she first recognized the handwriting, she behaves with remarkable calm during this narration. In fact, Sir Leicester seems far more upset by the news and wants "to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's station." She refers to it as "a collection of horrors," as she gathers "up her mantles and furs" and asks Tulkinghorn to open the door for her. Tulkinghorn remains at Chesney Wold for several days, during which "Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine." She and Tulkinghorn

appear to take as little note of one another, as any two people, enclosed within the same walls, could. But, whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows -- all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.

So we go back to Bleak House, where the discussion of what profession Richard is to follow continues. To Esther, Jarndyce acknowledges Richard's "indecision of character" and wonders how much of it "is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth" -- i.e., the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. Esther has her own diagnosis of the cause of Richard's character flaws, which is his traditional English public school education, in which he "had learnt, I understood, to make Latin Verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him."

When Jarndyce asks if Richard has any inclination toward the law, Richard replies, "I am fond of boating. Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It's a capital profession!" Jarndyce then suggests medicine, and Richard immediately imagines himself as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. And "the more he thought of it, the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was the art of all others for him." Because as a ward of chancery the decision can't be Richard's alone, they decide to consult the attorney Kenge, who endorses it as "a very good profession." Jarndyce clearly has some reservations: "'The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently pursued,' observed my Guardian, with a glance at Richard." But the matter seems to have been settled and now there's the question, as Kenge puts it, of "placing Mr Richard with some sufficiently eminent practitioner" for training. Kenge, as it turns out, has "a cousin in the medical profession."

So Jarndyce, Richard, Ada and Esther decide to spend a few weeks in London while Richard makes the acquaintance of Kenge's cousin. And it is at a theater in London that Esther once again encounters Mr Guppy.

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

Esther is in a box at the theater when she looks down and beholds "Mr Guppy, with his hair flattened down upon his head, and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me." And "from that time forth, we never went to the play, without my seeing Mr Guppy in the pit -- always with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a general feebleness about him." His gaze "put such a constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing naturally." She thinks about telling Jarndyce, but she's afraid he'll report it and Guppy will get fired. "Sometimes, I thought, should I frown at him, or shake my head. then I felt I could not do it." She thinks of writing to his mother, but she's afraid "that to open a correspondence would be to make the matter worse."

But they have come to town to get Richard started on his medical training, and that includes a visit to Kenge's cousin, Mr Bayham Badger, "who had a good practice at Chelsea." Mr Badger is "a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking gentleman, with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised eyes." And like so many of the men in Bleak House, he has a wife who predominates over him. Mrs Bayham Badger is several years older, and has been married twice before to "most remarkable men!" as her husband proclaims: "Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs Badger's first husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European reputation." Moreover, Mrs Badger proclaims, she married Mr Badger on the same day of the year that she married the first two: "'So that Mrs Badger has been married to three husbands -- two of them highly distinguished men,' said Mr Badger, summing up the facts; 'and, each time, upon the twenty-first of March at Eleven in the forenoon!'"

Mr Badger then proceeds to display the portraits of his wife's late husbands with considerable pride.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Family Portraits at Mr Bayham Badger's (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

And during dinner, they are urged to use "the Professor's goblet" and to drink "a wine that was imported by the Captain" and to listen to the life stories of the captain and the professor.

That evening, when they have returned to their rooms, Ada tells Esther her "secret" -- that she and Richard are in love. She also gives Esther permission to break the news to Jarndyce, though Esther assures her it will be no surprise to him either. In the morning, Esther visits him "in the room that was our town-substitute for the Growlery, and gives him the news. He has her fetch Richard and Ada to give them his blessing. It is not unmixed with a little foreshadowing, however:

"Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every effort. If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do nothing well, without sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here, or leave your cousin Ada here." 

This is not just a bit of Victorian moralizing, but an ironic glance at the future. But for now, Richard and Ada are, as Esther sees them, "So young, so beautiful, so full of promise" as they walk away from her and Jarndyce through a sun-filled room. And then, "they passed away into the shadow, and were gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over."

Then Esther remembers something she had forgotten to mention about the dinner at the Badgers': There was another guest, "a gentleman of dark complexion -- a young surgeon. He was rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone,  Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Emma Williams as Rosa, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Warren Clarke as Boythorn, Richard Griffiths as Bayham Badger, Joanna David as Mrs Bayham Badger, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Johnny Vegas as Krook.