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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_____

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tulkinghorn has been shot through the heart.

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

12. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 406-445

Chapter 25: Mrs Snagsby Sees It All through Chapter 27: More Old Soldiers Than One

Mr Snagsby has so far been on the periphery of something momentous, and Mrs Snagsby wants to know what it is, which gives him "much of the air of air of a dog who has a reservation from his master, and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye." And so Mrs Snagsby has enlisted Mr Chadband in uncovering her husband's secret. Having located Jo again, Chadband hauls him before an assembly that includes Mrs Chadband, the Snagsbys, Mr Snagsby's apprentices, and Guster. And observing the glances that pass between Snagsby and Jo, Mrs Snagsby suddenly has a revelation: "It is as clear as crystal that Mr Snagsby is that boy's father."

But Chadband takes charge of the meeting, and having wrestled into submission Jo, who is under the impression that the preacher wants to cut his hair, Chadband launches into a sermon about what he pronounces "Terewth."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Mr Chadband "Improving" a Tough Subject (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Jo, quite fittingly, falls asleep as Chadband maunders on, but when the preacher speaks of "the unnatural parents of this slumbering Heathen -- for parents he had ... beyond a doubt," it's too much for Mrs Snagsby, who shrieks and then, "becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano." In the commotion Jo makes his escape, only to be stopped by Guster, who gives him her supper of bread and cheese and "patted him on the shoulder; and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand has been so laid upon him." Mr Snagsby appears as well and gives him another half-crown with thanks for not telling his wife about the others. But from now on, "into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may pass, ... the watchful Mrs Snagsby is there too -- bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of his shadow."

At the Shooting Gallery, Mr George performs his morning ablutions and exercises and is conversing with Phil Squod when they are interrupted by the entrance of "a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers, and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask." It is Smallweed and his granddaughter, Judy.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Visitors at the Shooting Gallery (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Smallweed reveals that George's pupil, Richard, has also been in debt to his "friend in the city," but his debts were settled before he left for the army. Smallweed is certain, however, that this isn't the end of it: "He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and .... I think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for something yet!"

But what Smallweed has really come for is a sample of the handwriting of George's friend Captain Hawdon. Tulkinghorn has commissioned him to produce it: "He wants to see some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it. He only wants to see it, and compare it with a writing in his possession." George professes to have no such sample, "But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a cartridge, without knowing why." He agrees, however, to accompany Smallweed to Tulkinghorn's offices to discuss the request.

In the office, George notes the names of the clients on the file boxes: "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet" and "Manor of Chesney Wold." Tulkinghorn makes his entrance and bids George be seated, which he does, "bolt upright and profoundly silent -- very forward in his chair." Tulkinghorn asks, "You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, I am told." George agrees that this is so. And Tulkinghorn proceeds to ask George three questions: Whether he has any of Hawdon's writing, what he would take in compensation for producing it, and whether it resembles the writing on an affidavit that Tulkinghorn hands him. George repeats the three questions as each is asked, but doesn't even glance at the affidavit.

He stands up, "looking immense," and tells Tulkinghorn, "I would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this." Tulkinghorn asks why. "'Why, sir,' returns the trooper. 'Except on military compulsion, I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions." He puts the affidavit back on Tulkinghorn's desk and puts "his hands behind him as if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever."

Smallweed is furious, but Tulkinghorn retains "an appearance of perfect indifference." Then George asks why Tulkinghorn wants the sample of Hawdon's writing, and Tulkinghorn declines to answer. So George asks if he may consult with "a friend of mine, who has a better head for business than I have, and who is an old soldier." He will talk with the friend and give Tulkinghorn an answer by the end of the day.

Smallweed requests a conference with Tulkinghorn, and George withdraws. Whereupon Smallweed furiously whispers to the lawyer that George has the writing buttoned up in his tunic. "Judy saw him put it there. Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!" Tulkinghorn "coolly" says, "Violence will not do for me, my friend," as Smallweed threatens to commit it. But Smallweed is put back in the carriage with some difficulty, and George departs to see his friend.

He is met by his friend's wife, Mrs Bagnet, who tells him, "I never ... consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute when you're near him. You are that restless and that roving --." George admits that he is, but she allows him to wait until Mr Bagnet and his son come home. They are theatrical musicians: The father plays the bassoon and the son a fife. George accepts an invitation to stay for dinner, and Bagnet tells him that he'll consider what George wants to ask him, but the decision will have to be Mrs Bagnet's.

So after dinner, George lays out the case, and Bagnet asks his wife to "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is."

It is, that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep for him, and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not understand; that the plain rule is, to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing under-handed or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is Mr Bagnet's opinion as delivered through the old girl; and it so relieves Mr George's mind, by confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts, that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion, and to have a talk over old times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of experience. 

It is late when he returns to Tulkinghorn's to tell him of his decision, which Tulkinghorn already knows. But Tulkinghorn asks if he was the man who gave Gridley a hiding-place. George says he was, and Tulkinghorn says, "I don't like your associates. You should not have seen the inside of my door this morning, if I had thought of your being that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow." Tulkinghorn "goes into his rooms, and shuts the door with a thundering noise."

George leaves "in great dudgeon; the greater, because a clerk coming up the stars had heard the last words of all, and evidently applies them to him." So "for five minutes he is in an ill humour. But he whistles that off, like the rest of it; and marches home to the Shooting Gallery."

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Hugo Speer as Mr George, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Emma Williams as Rosa, Tim Dantay as Mr Rouncewell, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Burn Gorman as Guppy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 332-366

Chapter 21: The Smallweed Family through Chapter 22: Mr Bucket

Now it's time to introduce a whole lot of new characters. We've met Young Smallweed, whose name, it turns out, is Bartholomew, or Bart. Now we learn that he has a twin, Judith, and that they live with their grandparents. The grandmother is in "a childish state," which is unusual in the Smallweed family, in which even the children are never treated as children -- i.e., given toys or told stories or fairy tales. "With such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr Smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family."

It's probably worth remarking on the peculiar ways in which childhood and adulthood are tumbled about in Bleak House. We have childish adults (Skimpole, Grandmother Smallweed) and children deprived of childhood (Jo, Charley Neckett, even Esther Summerson). We have neglected children (the Jellybys) and exploited children (the Pardiggles). And we have childless adults (the Dedlocks, John Jarndyce, Tulkinghorn, Miss Flite, et al.). Given that one of the central mysteries of the novel centers on Esther's parentage, and that the question of inheritance (i.e., the passing down of property from one generation to another) is what makes Chancery the tangled morass it is, it's not surprising that parenting or its absence is so prominent a theme in the book.

Grandfather Smallweed, to continue, retains his wits, but is physically impaired. So he and his wife, confined to their chairs by the fireplace, face off against each other in a kind of ongoing Punch-and-Judy routine. He is provided with "a spare cushion ... in order that he may have something to throw at" her "whenever she makes an allusion to money -- a subject on which he is particularly sensitive." But when he flings the cushion, he not only knocks her over in her chair, but he also slumps down in his, so that he has to be "shaken up like a great bottle, and poked and punched like a great bolster" to get him upright again.

The person tasked with the shaking and poking and punching is their granddaughter, Judy. All of the Smallweeds "have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds." Judy has "never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at any game.... It is very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen the thing done." Her twin, Bart, at least goes out in the world, where he keeps company with Mr Guppy. Judy does have help, and it turns out to be Charley Neckett, the orphaned daughter of Skimpole's old nemesis he called "Coavinses." So the Smallweeds have another tie to the novel's central characters.

Young Smallweed -- Bart -- arrives home, and we learn that he never knew his father, who died "fifteen years ago." (We learned earlier that Bart is not quite fifteen.) But he lives in the grandfather's memory as "a good accountant" and as his former partner.The twins' mother, whom the grandfather describes as "as dry as a chip," died not long after they were born. Bart is, as we know, apprenticed in a law office, and Judy, we now learn, "apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making." 

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

A knock is heard at the door, and Charley returns to inform them that it's Mr George.

He is a swarthy browned man of fifty; well made, and good-looking; with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough life.... His step too is measured and heavy, and would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his broad brown hand upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether, one might guess Mr George to have been a trooper once upon a time.

The appearance of such a substantial, somewhat realistically drawn character at this point raises suspicions that he's more than just another comic foil, like Chadband or the Bayham Badgers. Dickens even stresses the point by comparing Mr George to the Smallweeds: "His developed figure, and their stunted forms; his large manner, filling any amount of room; and their little narrow pinched ways; his sounding voice, and their sharp spare tones; are in the strongest and the strangest opposition."

Mr George has evidently come to repay a loan from Old Smallweed: "Here's the new bill, and here's the two months' interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it together in my business." When George remarks that Smallweed will "sell me up at last I suppose, when I am a day in arrear," the old man assures him, "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in the city that I got to lend you the money -- he might!" George mutters, just below the old man's hearing, "The name of your friend in the city begins with a D." (I.e., the Devil.) Meanwhile, Grandmother Smallweed starts to chatter, "Twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money box, twenty guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty --" before her husband can fling the cushion at her and denounce her as "a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion -- a brimstone scorpion! Your a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick witch, that ought to be burnt!" He calls on George to shake him up in his chair again, which George is glad enough to do, "agitating him violently enugh to make his head roll like a harlequin's."

When the old man recovers from his shaking-up, he asks George if he has any relatives who could vouch for him so "I could persuade my friend in the city to make you a further advance." But George indicates that he is "a vagabond, who has wasted the best time of his life," and that he is reluctant "to go back then to decent people that he never was a credit to, and live upon them.... The best kind of amends then, for having gone away, is to keep away, in my opinion."

And then Smallweed observes, "If you could have traced out the Captain, Mr George, it would have been the making of you. If, when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisements in the newspapers -- when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance -- if, at that time, you could have helped us, Mr George, it would have been the making of you."

So we understand from this that Smallweed was in search of a certain Captain, whom George was unable to locate. He had responded to an advertisement asserting "that Mr Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying, Once a captain always a captain) was to hear of something to his advantage." George, a former trooper, had known this Captain Hawdon at one time, having"been at his right hand many a day, when he was charging upon ruin full gallop." And it was this that brought George into the money-lending orbit of Smallweed. The ad had been a ruse to ensnare the Captain, who "owed us immense sums, all round," Smallweed admits.

George had known the Captain "when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him, after he had run through everything and broken down everything beneath him -- when he held a pistol to his head." He should have fired it, Smallweed says, "and blow his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!" George says, "he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone by; and I am glad I never found him." He is convinced that the Captain "was drowned long before.... He went over a ship's side. Whether intentionally or accidentally, I don't know."

As he takes his leave, he asks again, "So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me, if I fail in a payment?" Old Smallweed says, "My dear friend, I am afraid he will." And so "Mr George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough face." He stops in at Astley's Theatre, the home of the circus in London, and watches the performers.

Astley's in 1808 (Source: Wikipedia)

And then he makes his way to his home and place of business, "a great brick building, composed of bare walls, floor, roof-rafters, and skylights; on the front of which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S SHOOTING GALLERY, &C." He is joined there by his custodian, a small man named Phil, who seems "to have been blown up, in the way of business, at some odd time or times." (We will later learn that Phil's last name is Squod.)

In Lincoln's Inn Fields, Tulkinghorn is sharing a very old port with Mr Snagsby, who is telling him the story of Jo's encounter with the veiled lady/servant. Suddenly, Snagsby realizes that he and Tulkinghorn are not alone: "at a little distance from the table, a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he himself came in, and has not since entered by the door or by either of the windows." Tulkinghorn reassures Snagsby, "This is only Mr Bucket." The unobtrusive Mr Bucket "is a stoutly-built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle age." He was modeled on Charles Frederick Field, a Scotland Yard detective and later private investigator, whose exploits Dickens also wrote about in several essays. When Snagsby begins to show reluctance to talk about Jo, Bucket assures him, "Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy."

After Snagsby concludes his story, Bucket says, "as far as I can understand it, there seems to be a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games respecting that property, don't you see!" Snagsby doesn't see, but he is persuaded by Bucket to accompany him to Tom-all-Alone's in search of Jo.

It turns out to be a harrowing journey for Snagsby, through filth and poverty and vice, and he "sickens in body and mind, and feels as if he were going, every moment deeper down, into the infernal gulf." Along the way they encounter a body being carried, and Snagsby learns that people there are dying from "the fever," as Bucket puts it, "like sheep with the rot." They finally get a lead that Jo might be known by the name of "Toughy, or the Tough Subject," and in their search they come upon two drunk men who have passed out and the two women with them, one of whom has a baby." The men, they learn, are brickmakers from Hertfordshire who have come to London in search of work but haven't found it. And when we learn that one of the women had a baby who died, we realize that these are the people who were the object of Mrs Pardiggle's "charity," and of Esther and Ada's subsequent attentions.

Then they come across Jo, "trembling to think that he has offended against the law in not having moved on far enough." He has come to deliver some medicine for the baby, and having delivered it agrees to go to Tulkinghorn's office to tell him the story of the veiled woman.

When they enter Tulkinghorn's chambers, however, Jo cries out, "There she is!" "A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room, where the light falls upon it. It is quite still, and silent." When Bucket prompts him, Jo says he recognizes the veil and the bonnet and the gown that the figure is wearing. He is certain of it. Then Bucket asks him about the rings that the woman wore, and the figure takes off her glove and shows him her hand. "Jo shakes his head. 'Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like that.... Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater and a deal smaller." Would Jo remember the lady's voice? He thinks he would.

The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this. I will speak as long as you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this voice?"

Jo looks aghast at Mr Bucket. "Not a bit!" 

So what, Bucket asks, made him think it was the lady?  It was the veil, the bonnet and the gown, he says, but it isn't her hand or her rings or her voice. So Bucket gives Jo five shillings and sends him on his way, leaving an uncomfortable Snagsby alone with the woman. But they are joined by Tulkinghorn, and the woman raises her veil, revealing Lady Dedlock's former maid, Hortense. "I will give you no further trouble regarding this little wager," Tulkinghorn tells her, but before she leaves she reminds him that she is now unemployed and needs him "to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished recommendation." He assures her he will.

Bucket confirms what Tulkinghorn already knows: "There an't a doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on." That is, Lady Dedlock in Hortense's clothes. Snagsby is then sent home, "doubtful of his being awake and out -- doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he goes -- doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him." He is soon, however, confronted with "the unchallengeable reality of Mrs Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and nightcap."

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features  Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Alun Armstrong as Inspector Bucket, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Harry Eden as Jo, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson.