3. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 63-103

Chapter 5: A Morning Adventure through Chapter 6: Quite at Home


Caddy Jellyby suggests to Esther that they take a walk, which Ester, "sufficiently curious about London," readily agrees to. Ada joins them, and on the street they meet Richard, who has already gone out. So they stroll in pairs, with Caddy and Esther taking the lead and Ada and Richard following, but Caddy walks on so fast that the other two are obliged to ask her to slow down.

Caddy is eager to complain some more to Esther, this time about Mr Quale, who had visited after dinner the night before. Caddy is convinced that her parents are trying to marry her off to Quale. She complains equally about her mother's neglect: "where's Ma's duty as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose!"

They find themselves once again in the environs of Chancery, and there they encounter Miss Flite, who is waiting for the court to open. She suggests that the four of them come see her lodgings, which are nearby: "It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty, are very seldom there." They find themselves in front of a shop with a number of signs: KROOK, BAG AND BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE STORES. BONES BOUGHT. KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT. OLD IRON BOUGHT. WASTE PAPER BOUGHT. LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT.

Everything seemed to be bought, and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the window, were quantities of dirty bottles: blacking bottles, medicines bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles.

There is also a sign advertising the copying services provided by a man named Nemo. Copyists were in demand before the advent of typewriters and carbon paper and of course long before Xerox machines. We have already seen Lady Dedlock express surprise at the handwriting of a copyist in the documents brought to her by Tulkinghorn. Nemo (the name means "no one," of course) resides at Krook's, as does Miss Flite.

The shop is a jumble of papers and rusty old keys, and rags and bones.

One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.

Krook himself is in the shop, "an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap ... short, cadaverous and withered; with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders, and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth, as if he were on fire within." That last detail is worth remembering. "His throat, chin, and eyebrows, were so frosted with white hairs, and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin, that he looked, from his breast upward, like some old root in a fall of snow."

Miss Flite urges them in, though none of them are too eager to enter, and introduces them to Krook. "He is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery." Krook takes a particular interest in Ada's hair: "I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!" Richard intervenes indignantly when Krook takes a strand of Ada's hair in his hand. Krook confesses that he can't bear to part with the "old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs." He is joined by a large gray cat named Lady Jane, and informs them that he also deals in cat skin, but couldn't bear to skin Lady Jane.

He is startled when Miss Flite tells him that these are "the wards in Jarndyce," and when he hears Richard's name, he says, "Carstone.... Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think," among the names he recalls from the case. And he tells them rather gruesomely about the suicide of Tom Jarndyce, who visited the shops when the case was being heard, and said that Chancery was like "being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains." The story of Tom Jarndyce makes Ada and Richard turn pale.

Miss Flite intervenes and ushers them upstairs to her room "at the top of the house, ... from which she had a glimpse of the roof of Lincoln's Inn Hall." Esther notes that there is no sign of any food or any clothes other than the ones she is wearing in the room, but in the garret window there are "a number of bird-cages hanging there; some containing birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches -- I thought think at least twenty." Miss Flite tells them that she intends to set them free "When my judgment should be given." But that "Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again." And that she wonders if "I may not one day be found lying stark and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"

Richard, prompted by Ada, leaves some money on the mantel for Miss Flite, who goes on to say that she can't open the windows because Krook's cat crouches outside looking at the birds, and that "her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty." As they go back downstairs, she points to the second-floor door to another room, which is Nemo's:

"The only other lodger," she now whispered, in explanation; "a law-writer. The children in the lanes here, say he has sold himself to the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money."

Downstairs, they find Krook putting some papers "in a kind of well in the floor." Esther brings up the rear as they start to leave, and is accosted by him. He begins writing the letter J on the wall with a piece of chalk. And one by one, erasing each letter when it is finished, he spells out the name "Jarndyce." When Esther confirms that that is indeed the word he has spelled, he proceeds to do the same with "the letters forming the words BLEAK HOUSE." He then explains to her, "I have a turn for copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor write."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Lord Chancellor Copies From Memory, (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

 They take their leave of Miss Flite and return to Mrs Jellyby's. Along the way, Richard remarks to Ada on how depressing he finds the Chancery business. She agrees, and also agrees to let him call her Ada. He tells her, "We have been happily brought together, thanks to our good kinsman, and it [Chancery] can't divide us now!" Caddy gives Esther's arm a squeeze, acknowledging this developing relationship between Richard and Ada.

They reach Mrs Jellyby's to find that Peepy has been "lost for an hour and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman." Esther has a pang of regret when she realizes that he must have been searching for her. Fortunately, he is asleep when the coach arrives that will take her away.

On the road, their coach is met by a wagon headed to London, which stops them and delivers welcoming messages for Esther, Richard and Ada from Mr John Jarndyce. In his message, he proposes "that we meet as old friends, and take the past for granted, which confirms in Ada and Richard an impression "that their cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he performed, and that, sooner than receive any, he would resort to the most singular expedients and evasions, or would even run away." This characteristic bothers Esther, who wonders how she can possibly thank "one who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many years."

Finally, they reach Bleak House and are greeted "in a fatherly way" by Mr Jarndyce, who has "a handsome, lively, quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust." Then Esther realizes that "a pleasant expression in his eyes, recalled the gentleman in the stage-coach, six years ago, on the memorable day of my journey to Reading. I was certain it was he," but, "appearing to read my thoughts, [he] gave such a look at the door that I thought we had lost him."

There is a moment of awkwardness when Jarndyce asks what they thought of Mrs Jellyby. Richard and Ada are evasive, so Jarndyce confronts Esther. "'We rather thought,' said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who entreated me with their eyes to speak, 'that perhaps she was a little unmindful of her home.'" Jarndyce claims to be "Floored!" but continues to draw out Esther's real opinion. "I may have sent you there on purpose," he tells her. So Esther opines that Mrs Jellyby neglects her domestic duties and subordinates them to her African cause. And Richard blurts out, "The little Jellybys ... are really -- I can't help expressing myself strongly, sir -- in a devil of a state."

Jarndyce then puzzles them by observing, "The wind's in the east." Richard says it was in the north when they were on their way, but Jarndyce insists, "I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east." This is one of Jarndyce's identifying Dickensian characteristics, blaming a discomfiting situation on an east wind. But Ada praises Esther for taking charge of the children and for making a friend of Caddy, so that Jarndyce asks Richard again about the wind, and when told that it was from the north agrees, "You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine." And he shows them around the house, which turns out to be one of those cozy and complicated dwellings that Dickens takes such delight in.

It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passage, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places, with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them.... The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as pleasantly irregular.

After they have settled in their rooms and explored the place some more, Jarndyce tells them there is a guest there, "the finest creature upon earth -- a child." But not "literally a child.... He is grown up -- he is at least as old as I am -- but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child." This is Harold Skimpole, whom Dickens modeled on the essayist and poet Leigh Hunt, a friend of Keats and Shelley whose fecklessness resembled Skimpole's.

Although Jarndyce begins cheerfully praising Skimpole's childlike innocence, when Richard asks questions about Skimpole's children, Jarndyce admits that "Harold Skimpole's children have tumbled up somehow or other," and then begins to admit the truth about his friend. "The wind's getting round again, I am afraid. I feel it rather!" Richard then notes that Bleak House is rather exposed to the elements -- it is on a hilltop. And thus Dickens works in the metaphorical significance of his titular house: Its coziness and charm are threatened by the cold realities of the outside world. It is a retreat, but not an escape.

(A side note on "Skimpole's" children. One of Leigh Hunt's children was Thornton Leigh Hunt, who fathered three children by Agnes Lewes, the wife of George Henry Lewes. When Lewes fell in love with Marian Evans (George Eliot), he was unable to divorce Agnes because he had condoned her adultery with Hunt.)

When they return to their rooms to unpack their luggage, a maid brings the keys to the household to Esther, who is surprised to receive them. They then go downstairs and meet Skimpole, "a little bright creature, with a rather large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him.... Indeed, he had more the appearance, in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one." Esther sees in him "a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation."

Skimpole rattles on insouciantly about his unfitness for the real world, confessing "that he had no idea of time [and] no idea of money." His advice to others is to "go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only -- let Harold Skimpole live!" He also prides himself on allowing others to express their generous impulses by helping him: "I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity." Esther shrewdly perceives that this explains the affection Jarndyce feels for Skimpole, who will never be tempted to embarrass Jarndyce by expressing his gratitude. They are charmed by Skimpole themselves, "and especially Richard."

Jarndyce is pleased by the way things are proceeding, though he is alert to nuances. When Skimpole praises Ada as a "child of the universe," for example, Jarndyce observes, "The universe ... makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid." He also notices the growing closeness of Ada and Richard -- and Esther notices his noticing: "His look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again: which has long been engraven on my heart." And as Ada plays the piano and sings softly, with Richard bending over her, Esther notices:

Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady fire, though reflected from motionless objects. Ada touched the notes so softly, and sang so low, that the wind, sighing away to the distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future, and the little clue added to it by the voice of the present, seemed expressed in the whole picture.

As with the remark earlier about the exposure of Bleak House to the elements, there's a sinister element haunting this cozy scene.

Some while later, after first Skimpole and then Richard have left the room, the maid who had brought the keys to Esther asks her to come to Skimpole's room: "He has been took, miss!" Esther assumes that she means Skimpole is ill, but it turns out, as Richard explains to her when she enters, that Skimpole has been "arrested for debt." A man in a white great-coat is there to take him away to jail or, as the man says, to "Coavinses." (The note explains that this would be a house of detention run by a man named Coavins. Skimpole applies the name to the man arresting him, and "Coavins's house" becomes "Coavinses.")

Skimpole is unperturbed, even delighted, by the situation, for although he knows that Jarndyce would readily bail him out of the situation by paying the money owed, "'I have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help; that I would rather,' and he looked at Richard and me, 'develop generosity in a new soil, and in a new form of flower.'" He can't even remember how much he owes, and when the man says "twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," Skimpole says it sounds "like a small sum?" Esther and Richard scrape together the amount, Esther reflecting, "It was a most singular thing that the arrest was our embarrassement, and not Mr Skimpole's."

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

 Skimpole observes, "The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"

The matter settled, they return downstairs, where Esther takes a lesson in playing backgammon from Jarndyce, although "Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having been arrested since dinner, and that it was very curious altogether." Finally, Skimpole goes to bed, and Ada, Richard and Esther are sitting by the fire when Jarndyce returns, very upset:

"What's this, they tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? -- The wind's round again. I feel it all over me!"

He has learned of their bailing out Skimpole. Esther reminds him that he has characterized Skimpole as a child, and so they treated him as one, which mollifies Jarndyce a bit: "Nobody but a child would have thought of singling you two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have thought of your having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds, it would have been just the same!" But he makes them promise never to let Skimpole have money -- "Not even sixpences!" -- again. That done, he reports, "I find it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!"

Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction; and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it, or disparage or depreciate any one.

But it's a dangerous form of transference.

Left alone, Esther reflects on the developing relationship of Ada and Richard, and then to her own situation, particularly the "shadowy speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark, as to what knowledge Mr Jarndyce had of my earliest history -- even as to the possibility of his being my father -- though that idle dream was quite gone now."

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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, Nathanial Parker as Harold Skimpole, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, John Lynch as Nemo, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Natalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Lisa Hammond as Harriet, Burn Gorman as Guppy.

2. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 27-63

Chapter 3: A Progress through Chapter 4: Telescopic Philanthropy


Esther Summerson begins her part of the narrative. The self-effacement -- "I know I am not clever," etc. -- quickly grows cloying, but fortunately Dickens has a story to tell that distracts us from it. We learn that Esther is an orphan being raised by her "godmother," a Miss Barbary, who is her aunt "in fact, though not in law" -- a curious distinction. And that her childhood is a lonely one, made more so by her godmother's piety: "She was so good herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown all her life."

Esther is raised with no mention of her parents: "I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa either, but I felt more interested about my mama." And when she broaches the subject to the servant, Mrs Rachael, "another very good woman, but austere to me"), the topic is quickly closed. Birthdays are particularly trying: At school she hears reports of other girls' birthday celebrations but hers "was the most melancholy day at home, in the whole year."

Finally, she thinks she may have guessed the reason for the particular gloominess surrounding her birthdays, and asks her godmother, "did mama die on my birthday?" When the question is rejected -- "Ask me no more, child!" -- Esther becomes upset and demands to know, "Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault, godmother?" She receives a terrible answer: "Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers." And the godmother/aunt lashes out cruelly because of "the wrong she did to me," meaning Esther's mother.

"I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever know -- than any one will ever know, but I, the sufferer. For yourself, unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil anniversaries, pray daily that the since of others be not visited upon your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother, and leave all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that greatest kindness. Now, go!" 

No wonder Esther is self-effacing, and strives "to repair the fault I had been born with," about which she feels, in a nice Dickensian insight, "confusedly" both "guilty and yet innocent." It is this spark of recognition that maybe there's a truth beyond that which is proclaimed by others that gives Esther some backbone and more complexity than just the stereotypical virtuous waif.

And then one day they are visited by "A portly important-looking gentleman," to whom Esther is presented by her godmother for inspection and then dismissed. Two years pass, and one evening Esther is reading to her godmother from the Bible and comes across the passage in the gospel of John about the woman taken in adultery. Jesus proclaims, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her!" Suddenly the godmother arises, puts her hand to her head and cries out, "Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!" It's from the gospel of Mark about the second coming. She falls down unconscious, presumably from a stroke, and dies a week or so later.

The "portly important-looking gentleman" returns on the day after the godmother's funeral, introduces himself as Kenge, of the firm "Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn," and asks if Esther has heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He's astonished that she hasn't, because, after all, "the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce ... amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty THOUSAND POUNDS!" He informs Esther that he is there to renew "an offer which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago, and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable" in the event of the godmother/aunt's death. The offer comes from a Mr Jarndyce who wants "to place her at a first-rate establishment; where her education shall be completed, where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated," and so on. As Esther notes here, she later learned "that he was generally called Conversation Kenge."

And so a week later, Esther leaves Windsor, where she has spent her whole life, for a school in Reading. She shares the coach with a man who "looked very large in a quantity of wrappings" but who takes no notice of her until she starts to cry quietly. He demands, "What the de-vil are you crying for?" And she admits that she wasn't aware that she had been, but "that I thought I must have been crying, because of my godmother's death, and because of Mrs Rachael's not being sorry to part with me." He denounces Mrs Rachael and mutters "to himself in an angry manner, ... calling Mrs Rachael names." He opens one of his voluminous cloaks and takes out a plum cake and a pie made from foie gras and offers them to her. She declines them as too rich for her, so he throws them out of the window and doesn't speak to her again until they near Reading, where he takes his leave and tells her to be a good girl and to study.

We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it afterwards, and never, for a long time, without thinking of him, and half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on, he passed out of my mind.

At the school she is met by Miss Donny, who assures her that everything "has been arranged in exact accordance with the wishes of your guardian, Mr Jarndyce." She is taken to Greenleaf, the home of the two Misses Donny, who are twins, and learns that she is to be trained to become a governess. So in addition to her lessons, she also is "very soon engaged in helping to instruct others" among the school's twelve boarders. "I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face there, thank Heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better if I had never been born."

So Esther is almost twenty when she receives a letter from Mr Kenge informing her that Mr Jarndyce wants her to become the companion for a ward of the court in the matter of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She goes to London, where she is met by a young man from the firm of Kenge and Carboy. We'll soon learn that his name is Guppy. Esther is shocked by the choking fog of London and by the ride "through the dirtiest and darkest streets in the world (I thought)."

At Kenge and Carboy, Mr Kenge informs her that she is going to meet with the Lord Chancellor, and is taken to a room where she meets the wards of the court, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. Richard is "a handsome youth, with an ingenuous face, and a most engaging laugh." Ada has "such rich golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, trusting face!" (Esther's infatuation with Ada grows thicker as the novel progresses.) Richard is not quite nineteen and Ada is two years younger. They are ushered into the presence of the Lord Chancellor, who is informed by Kenge that Mr Jarndyce is "Jarndyce of Bleak House," which is in Hertfordshire, and that Mr Jarndyce is unmarried. It's then that Esther learns that she is to be the companion for Ada, the Lord Chancellor being assured that "Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the case."

After the Lord Chancellor departs, Esther, Ada and Richard are left to wait in the colonnade outside of Kenge's office while he goes inside to check on something. While they are waiting to be taken to their next destination, "a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet, and carrying a reticule, came curtseying and smiling up to us, with an air of great ceremony." We saw her in the first chapter, and we'll later learn that she is Miss Flite and that she is, as Richard observes at this moment, "Mad!" She accepts the designation, which she has overheard, and informs them that she was once a ward of the court, too. "I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mention in the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray accept my blessing." Then Kenge arrives and shoos her away.

She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still with a curtsey and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!"

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

It is too late in the day to go straight to Bleak House, so arrangements have been made for Esther, Ada and Richard to spend the night at Mrs Jellyby's. Kenge is astonished that none of them have heard of Mrs Jellyby, who he tells them "is a lady of very remarkable strength of character, who devotes herself entirely to the public," and especially to "the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population." Richard asks about Mr Jellyby, but Kenge has nothing to say about him. "'A nonentity, sir?' said Richard with a droll look." But Kenge is not willing to say even that about Mr Jellyby.

Mr Guppy accompanies them to Mrs Jellyby's, along the way taking the opportunity to say to Esther that the fog "seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance." Esther doesn't know what to say in reply. When they reach the Jellybys they discover a great commotion outside, and Guppy goes to investigate. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!" he reports. Esther, whose schooling has given her some experience with younger children, goes to investigate and discovers that the boy is being attended to by a milkman and a beadle who, "with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means." There, Dickens's usual narrative voice substitutes for the one he has been trying to craft for Esther, who doesn't characteristically take such a distant and ironic attitude toward someone else's misfortune. This confusion of voice continues throughout the visit to the Jellybys.

Esther persuades them that it would be better to push the boy through the railings: "I thought that, perhaps, where his head could go, his body could follow." They manage to extricate him this way. A servant, "who had been poking at the child from below with a broom," goes to inform Mrs Jellyby that her guests had arrived, and as another child tumbles down the stairs with a great noise, they are ushered into her presence. To Esther's astonishment, Mrs Jellyby takes no account of any of the accidents of the many children in her household.

She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if -- I am quoting Richard again -- they could see nothing nearer than Africa!

"Quoting Richard" is a convenient way for Dickens to introduce a sarcastic tone into Esther's narrative.

For her part, Esther is struck by how "not only untidy, but very dirty" the Jellyby household is, but particularly by "a jaded, and unhealthy-looking, though by no means plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen, and staring at us." This is Caddy Jellyby, the oldest child, who acts as her mother's amanuensis. Mrs Jellyby informs them, "We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger." She introduces them to Caddy, but is interrupted by "the unfortunate child who had fallen down-stairs," and who is called Peepy. (Neither "peepee" nor "pee" seem to have had their current urinary connotations at the time, at least as far as I can tell from the OED, so maybe Dickens isn't going there. But I still wonder.)

Esther's maternal instincts take over and she scoops up the dirty little child, whom Mrs Jellyby tries to dismiss, and he falls asleep in her arms. Mrs Jellyby orders Caddy to show Esther and Ada their rooms, and tells Esther to put Peepy down, but she pleads that he's no problem, which seems to satisfy Mrs Jellyby. The rooms are as messy and dirty as the rest of the house, but Caddy offers them some hot water to freshen up, then returns to say that there isn't any and "they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order."

They go down the treacherous staircase, whose carpet is missing "stair-wires" (we call them "stair rods") and is full of holes, to dinner with is "a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding," all of which is "almost raw." It is as chaotic as the rest of the house, because during it Mrs Jellyby "received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once." (Richard proves useful again.) During the meal, "a mild bald gentleman in spectacles" joins them but "never spoke a word." He turns out to be Mr Jellyby. They are joined after dinner by a Mr Quale who tells Ada that he is "a philanthropist," and informs her that the marriage of Mrs Jellyby and Mr Jellyby is "the union of mind and matter." Quale keeps the conversation focused on Africa, where he has plans for "the coffee colonists to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade." Throughout it all, "Mr Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall, as if he were subject to low spirits," though Richard says he would sometimes open his mouth as if he had something to say but "always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without saying anything."

While Mrs Jellyby and Mr Quale discuss "the Brotherhood of Humanity," and she dictates letters to Caddy, the other children enter and Esther and Ada quietly entertain them by telling them stories "until Mrs Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed." Peepy asks Esther to take him to bed, and after she does she goes to her room to stoke the fire. "On my return downstairs, I felt that Mrs Jellyby looked down upon me rather, for being so frivolous; and I was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher pretensions." But Ada is impressed with how kind and thoughtful Esther is, which pleases Esther no end.

Esther learns from Ada that she has never seen her cousin Jarndyce, but that her mother used to speak "of the noble generosity of his character. Richard, she says, had seen him once and "recollected him as 'a bluff, rosy fellow.'"  Ada goes to bed and Esther is sitting by the fire when there is a knock at the door. It is Caddy Jellyby, who has come to talk and to pour out her grievances: "'I wish Africa was dead!' she said, on a sudden." She admits "I can't do anything hardly, except write. I'm always writing for Ma." She turns her resentment on Ada and Esther, "You think yourselves very fine, I dare say!" But Esther realizes that she is only expressing her embarrassment and frustration and lets her vent them: "'I wish I was dead!' she broke out. 'I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us." Finally, she falls asleep from exhaustion and Esther lays Caddy's head in her lap and sits up while the girl slumbers.

I began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now, it was Ada; now, one of my old Reading friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now, it was the little mad woman worn out with curtseying and smiling; now, some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.

In the morning she wakes to find Peepy staring at her, "so cold that his teeth were chattering."

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

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Ian Richardson as the Chancellor, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Burn Gorman as Guppy, John Lynch as Nemo, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Natalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Liza Tarbuck as Mrs Jellyby.