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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tulkinghorn has been shot through the heart.

_____

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

19. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 687-718

Chapter 44: The Letter and the Answer through Chapter 46: Stop Him!

Esther and Jarndyce continue their discussion of the secret she has revealed to him and what they should do to keep it secret. She tells him that she has tried to prevent Guppy from pursuing the matter, but that she is also concerned about Mademoiselle Hortense after her eager offer to become her maid. Jarndyce tells her he will be aware from now on of any possible ways the secret might leak out.

And then he tells her, "You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stage coach. First and last you have done me a world of good, since that time." He then says that he has something he would like to ask her, but he would like to do it in the form of a letter. Esther is no fool, and has already guessed what he's up to, so she agrees that a week from today she will send Charley to him "for the letter." This curious courtship ritual seems silly to us, but it is entirely coherent with the shyness and reticence -- as well as the sexlessness -- of both Jarndyce and Esther. So on the appointed night she sends for the letter:

I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read much at a time. But I read it through three times, before I laid it down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It asked me if would I be the mistress of Bleak House.

She's not marrying a man, she's marrying a house. What decides it for her is that "he could love me just as well as in my fairer days," and that the secret of her parentage is no problem for him. So she accepts the proposal, not without a lot of private tears. And then she performs a kind of symbolic self-immolation: She burns the flowers that Woodcourt had given her. But significantly, after she says yes, "it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it." The "precious pet" is Ada, of course, her true love, and the fact that she withholds the information of this engagement from her speaks volumes about her awareness that it is entirely unsuitable.

One morning, she spots Mr Vholes arriving at the house. She "inquired of Charley, as we went in, whether there was not a gentleman with Mr Jarndyce? To which Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit to my educational powers, replied, 'Yes, miss. Him as come down in the country with Mr Richard.'" (Dickens's essentially conservative attitude toward class is revealed when he locks some of his characters into their lower-class state, as he does with Charley's supposed ineducability.) Esther enters to find Jarndyce and Vholes in conversation about Richard, who is not only deeply in debt but has also decided to resign his commission. This will leave him with no income whatever, of course.

Esther volunteers to "go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst." Vholes, who of course is protecting his own interests where Richard is concerned, takes his leave.

Mr Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the seed in the ground as it glided along.

Charley goes with Esther to Deal, a port and garrison town on the Channel near Dover. There they notice that a ship has just arrived from India, and just in case we don't get the significance of that, Esther tells Charley that "people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and  humanity of one man." First, however, they have to meet with Richard, who "was ever the same to me. Down to -- ah, poor fellow! -- to the end, he never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner." (If we haven't already guessed that Richard is doomed, we know it now.)

He is resolved on leaving the army, having been pretty much written off by his superior officers anyway, and observes, "I only want to have been in the church, to have made the round of all the professions." He is still bitter about what he sees as mistreatment from Jarndyce however, and he tells Esther that Ada has offered him "the little inheritance she is certain of so soon -- just as little and as much as I have wasted -- and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service." And he lashes out at Jarndyce for trying to separate him from Ada, stirring Esther's anger, if only for a moment. But he says he can't accept Ada's money if it involves staying in the army, "retaining me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary of."

So Esther's mission has been fruitless. Besides learning that his departure from the army is a fait accompli, "and having been the bearer of Ada's letter, and being (as I was going to be) Richard's companion back to London, I had done no good by coming down." But on the way back to her hotel she spots a familiar face, and surprises Charley by urging her to hurry.

It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room, and I had had time to take breath, that I began to think why I had made such haste. In one of the sun-burnt faces I had recognised Mr Allan Woodcourt, and I had been afraid of his recognising me. I had been unwilling that he should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed me.

But she pulls herself together, and when Woodcourt and his friends show up at the hotel, she sends a card to him. "He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw that he was very sorry for me." She tells him that she sees Miss Flite often, and when he stammers in replying she reflects again, "He was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak." The reiteration of this point suggests that some of Woodcourt's emotion is a projection of Esther's: She is feeling sorry for herself. He tells her that he will probably not return to India: "He had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He had gone out a poor ship's surgeon, and had come home nothing better."

And speaking of misfortune, Richard enters. "I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of Richard's career, Mr Woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face, as if there were something in it that gave him pain; and more than once he looked towards me, as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was." The suggestion of shared consciousness between Woodcourt and Esther is one of the signals that their relationship will continue to develop.

Woodcourt has to stay with his ship a while longer, so he's forced to decline the offer to accompany them to London, but Esther steals a moment while Richard is looking after the luggage to clue Woodcourt in on Richard's "estrangement from Mr Jarndyce, and to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit." Woodcourt remarks that Richard is changed: "I  never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety, or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair." Esther asks if Woodcourt will be going to London, and when he says he will be there in a day or two she asks him to befriend Richard and try to help him. He vows to do so: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!" Esther accepts this at face value, not recognizing (or at least not admitting) that Woodcourt wouldn't make quite so emotional a vow if it were not for her sake.

And as they leave, Esther once again repeats the motif: "I saw that he was very sorry for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten." Does anyone feel glad to be pitied, even "gently?"

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Tom-all-Alone's (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

We are back to the decaying slum that is Tom-all-Alone's, and Dickens is writing about the social and political inertia that afflicts the place, which he now personifies as "Tom."

Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind, or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise, there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.

As with any great problem -- down to such contemporary ones as immigration or drug trafficking or global climate change -- there is an abundance of "somebody's theory" and of "nobody's practice." And as a result, the problem persists until it reaches a flashpoint, which in the case of Tom-all-Alone's has arrived in the form of communicable disease: "There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere." So grave is the problem that Dickens actually sets it against imperial British pride: "The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the British dominions, than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom."

Enter "A brown sunburnt gentleman," i.e., Woodcourt, who has turned his back upon "the British dominions" and is investigating the problems he has seen abroad in his own land. He looks around Tom-all-Alone's and "seems to understand such wretchedness, and to have studied it before." He finds a woman dozing on a doorstep, and speaks to her.

A habit in him of speaking to the poor, and of avoiding patronage or condescension, or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books), has put him on good terms with the woman easily.

(Perhaps Esther should take this approach with Charley, instead of criticizing her grammar.)

The woman has a bruise on her forehead, and he cleans and binds it. He deduces from the dust on her clothes that her husband is a brickmaker, and we recognize Jenny once again. When she mentions that they have journeyed here from Saint Albans, he betrays the surprise of recognition -- she is from the neighborhood of Bleak House. Woodcourt offers her money, but she says she has some, and is only waiting for her husband to arrive so they can go to their lodgings.

He walks away but then "a ragged figure" approaches, heading in the direction where Woodcourt has left Jenny. Woodcourt has "a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before." After the boy passes him by, Woodcourt hears a sound of running and turns to see the boy, pursued by Jenny, coming toward him. She calls out for Woodcourt to stop him, which he finally does after giving chase and cornering him. When Jenny calls him "Jo," Woodcourt realizes that he saw him at the coroner's inquest after Nemo/Hawdon's death.

He asks Jenny if Jo had robbed her, and she says, "He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that's the wonder of it." She tells him that he was ill at her home in Saint Albans, and a young woman "took pity on him ... and took him home" to nurse him. "Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror," realizing the connection between Jo's illness and Esther's, which he has heard about from Richard. Jenny continues, "And that young lady that was such a pretty dear, caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now, if it wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice."

Woodcourt questions Jo, who reveals that he has been on the road since then, and has finally returned to Tom-all-Alone's because he's penniless and ill, and thinks he might get some money from Mr Snagsby. Woodcourt asks why Jo left Bleak House. Jo is reluctant to answer, having promised someone not to tell, but he finally admits that he was taken away in the night. Woodcourt asks who took him away. "'I dustn't name him,' says Jo. 'I dustn't do it, sir.'" He is clearly terrified, for even when Woodcourt says the person isn't here, Jo doesn't believe it: "He's in all manner of places, all at wunst." He says the man took him to a hospital, and when he was discharged gave him money and told him never to return to London.

Woodcourt says goodbye to Jenny and takes Jo with him, promising to find him "a better place than this to lie down and hide in."

_____

The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Emma Williams as Rosa, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Harry Eden as Jo, Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Tim Dantay as Mr Rouncewell, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Tom Georgeson as Clamb.

14. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 486-519

Chapter 31: Nurse and Patient through Chapter 32: The Appointed Time

The brickmaker's family that Mrs Pardiggle belabored with charity early in the novel has returned to the vicinity of Bleak House, and Charley, Esther's maid, tells her that they need her help. As they leave for their visit to the brickmaker's hovel, Esther has a moment of heightened consciousness:

I had no thought, that night -- none, I am quite sure -- of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since, that when we had stopped at the garden gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then, and there, that I had it. I have every since connected the feeling with that spot and time, and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.

Not quite a Proustian moment or a Joycean epiphany, but also something more than a conventional Victorian novel premonition.

They enter the cottage, which "was closer than before, and had an unhealthy, and a very peculiar smell." In it, in addition to the women we met earlier (and have seen since in London) is Jo, who "staggered up instantly, and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror." He has mistaken her for Lady Dedlock, of course, and can hardly be persuaded that it isn't she.

The women explain that they had known Jo in London, in Tom-all-Alone's, and that he had ust turned up that morning in the town. Evidently, he has been hounded out of London by Mrs Snagsby, who's "always a watching, and a driving of me." He is clearly quite ill, but the women can't give him lodging because their husbands will disapprove of it. So Esther and Charley take him to Bleak House. Along the way, Jo whispers to Charley: "If she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there three of 'em then?"

They leave Jo in the hall and fetch Mr Jarndyce, who is accompanied by Skimpole, a recent arrival. Skimpole, who once studied medicine, says, "You had better turn him out.... He's not safe, you know. There's a bad sort of fever about him." Esther protests that "he is getting worse," and Skimpole argues that this is all the more reason for turning him out. Jarndyce comes up with a solution: "There is a bed in the wholesome loft-room in the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed."

But in the morning Jo is gone. Skimpole suggests "that it had occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him; and that he had, with great natural politeness, taken himself off." They search for him, but after five days Charley becomes sick too. Esther has her moved to her own room, and quarantines the two of them there.

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

But when Charley recovers, Esther herself falls ill, and nurse and patient exchange roles. Esther asks Charley to sit beside her, "and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind."

Cliffhangers come thick and fast now. We are back in the hands of the omniscient narrator, who is hanging about Krook's, where Jobling has taken Nemo's (i.e., Captain Hawdon's) room under the pseudonym Weevle. He is particularly on edge tonight, and Mr Snagsby finds him at the door of Krook's shop. He asks if Jobling is taking the air before going to bed, and Jobling observes, "Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening." Snagsby agrees "that you're -- not to put too fine a point on it -- that you're rather greasy here." Jobling blames it on the "chops at the Sol's Arms," and Snagsby says the cook must have burnt them, and that they must not have been fresh to start with.

After some rather gloomy conversation, Snagsby moves on, leaving Jobling impatiently waiting for someone. That someone is Guppy, to whom he complains, "here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail." Guppy goes to Jobling's room, where he admires the portrait of Lady Dedlock that Jobling has cut from "the Galaxy gallery of British beauty." And now we realize the reason for Guppy's visit and Jobling's impatience: At midnight, Krook has promised to give Jobling the bundle of letters that he filched from the portmanteau in Nemo/Hawdon's room.

Jobling says he last saw Krook about eight, when he helped shut up the shop, and "He has been as quiet, since, as an old rat asleep in his hole." They discuss the letters, and whether Krook has read them -- Jobling insisting that Krook can't read -- and whether they came from a man or a woman. It is Jobling's opinion, from what he has seen of the letters, that they are in a woman's hand.

And then Guppy ";happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast." It is covered in soot. "Confound the stuff, it won't blow off -- smears, like black fat." Jobling repeats what he told Snagsby about the chops at the Sol's Arms, and they try to change the subject. Guppy says, "You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" Guppy proposes that they make a packet of dummy letters and swap them for the originals, but Jobling argues that Krook is too smart to fall for that. So then Guppy says they'll tell Krook that the letters aren't legally his anyway and that he put them in the hands of his "legal friend" -- i.e. Guppy.

The bell of Saint Paul's strikes eleven, and the other bells in the city follow suit. Then Jobling complains about the soot also, and opens the window. They go and sit on the window-sill and talk some more about Krook and the letters.

Mr Guppy sitting on the window-sill ... continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.
"What, in the Devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight, and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
....
And yet look here -- and look here! When he brings the candle, here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks; here, likes in a little thick nauseous pool
"This is a horrible house," says Mr Guppy, shutting down the window. "Give me some water, or I shall cut my hand off."

It is one of Dickens's most memorable and horrifying scenes. The ghastly residue of the spontaneously combusted Krook, defiling everything.

When Guppy's equanimity is restored by scrubbing and brandy, the bells strike midnight, and it is time for Jobling to go down and retrieve the letters. But he returns, terrified, only a minute or two later: "I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there -- and the soot is there, and the oil is there -- and he is not there!"

Guppy goes down with him to see, and they find Krook's cat "snarling -- not at them; at something on the ground, before the fire." Jobling remembers that when he last saw Krook, at eight that evening, "I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumpled black thing is upon the floor." The cat is snarling at the something on the floor.

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

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here it is -- is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he is here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.... Call the death by any name Your Higness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say that it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally -- inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only -- Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Sean McGinley as Mr Snagsby, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Peter Guinness as the Coroner.

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.

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.

9. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 281-331

Chapter 18: Lady Dedlock through Chapter 20: A New Lodger


Richard is so indecisive that it takes several weeks for him finally to settle on an "experimental course" in the law at Kenge and Carboy. Meanwhile, Ada, Esther and Jarndyce return to Bleak House, Jarndyce having located lodgings for Richard in London. Richard "immediately began to spend all the money he had, in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging." He also continues with his odd habit of believing that if he has saved money on one thing, that allows him to spend the amount he has saved on something else, making "out that to spend anything less on something else was to save the difference."

He has postponed his decision so long, that he is unable to accompany the others to Lincolnshire for their visit to Boythorn. But Skimpole takes his place -- in more ways than one. For here Dickens makes clear the resemblance of Richard to Skimpole, by placing Richard's curious confusion about money in close proximity to Skimpole's absolute indifference to it. Skimpole has leased some furniture that is being repossessed, causing Jarndyce, who stood security for the lease, to have to pay for them. Skimpole is not in the least embarrassed by that fact, and the others continue to humor him in his "childishness."

Boythorn meets them at an inn near his house and explains, "I am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. But, our direct road lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock's park; and, in that fellow's property, I have sworn never to set foot of mine." He tells them that "Sir Arrogant Numskull" -- his name for Sir Leicester -- is in residence and that Lady Dedlock is expected to return soon: "Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head of a baronet, is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry."

Esther gets her first glimpse of Chesney Wold -- "a picturesque old house, in a fine park richly wooded" -- as they drive past on the road. In the village, at the Dedlock Arms, Boythorn greets Watt Rouncewell, and tells them that Watt is the son of the housekeeper at Chesney Wold and in love with "a pretty girl up at the House" -- i.e., Rosa. Boythorn's own house is sunny and pleasant, and "everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance." It's one of those Dickensian Gardens of Eden, with its own snake -- the hostility between Boythorn and Dedlock, so that the side of the house that borders Dedlock property is guarded by "a sentry in a smock-frock, day and night, whose duty was supposed to be, in case of aggression, immediately to ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal destruction on the enemy."

On Sunday morning they attend services at a little church, where Esther gets her first glimpse of the Dedlocks and their household, including Mrs Rouncewell, Rosa, and Hortense: "One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of everyone and everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Little Church in the Park (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But it is the arrival of Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock that has the most powerful and peculiar effect on Esther:

Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the look I met, as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor, and to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down -- released again, if I may say so -- on my book; but, I knew the beautiful face quite well, in that short space of time. And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, associated with the lonely days at my godmother's ... although I had never seen this lady's face before in all my life -- I was quite sure of it -- absolutely certain.

For Esther, Lady Dedlock's face is, "in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of old remembrances." As this characteristic Victorian recognition scene continues, Esther tries to decide if Lady Dedlock somehow resembles her godmother/aunt, "but, the expression was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me."

And yet I -- I, little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart, and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing -- seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly well know I had never seen until that hour.

We have pages and pages to go before this particular mystery is finally solved, and perhaps it is because so much narrative is yet to come that Dickens lays it on so thick in this scene.

Meanwhile, Boythorn and Skimpole have one of their skirmishes of Duty vs. Irresponsibility, ending with Skimpole asserting that though "the Slaves on American plantations ... are worked hard" and "don't altogether like it" and "theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but, they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence." Dickens, ardently anti-slavery, is here giving a strong hint that Skimpole may yet prove to be a villain in the novel. But on the other hand, Skimpole's sentimentalized, "picturesque" attitude toward slavery in the antebellum United States would persist for another century in novels and movies.

The following Saturday, Jarndyce, Ada and Esther are out for a walk when a storm comes up, with lightning and thunder. They take refuge in a keeper's lodge on the Dedlock property. As they are waiting in the doorway, watching the storm, someone asks, "Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?" Ada thinks Esther has spoken, but it's Lady Dedlock, who has also "taken shelter in the lodge, before our arrival there, and had come out of the gloom within." Esther has also reacted to the surprise voice, but in a different way from Ada: "The beating at my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice, as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable pictures of myself."

It turns out that Lady Dedlock and Jarndyce have met, a long time before. She mentions the letter he had written to Sir Leicester requesting his aid in helping Richard, and asks to be introduced first to Ada and then to Esther. Learning that Esther is his ward, she asks, "Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" He says that she has. Lady Dedlock and Esther look at each other, and then Lady Dedlock turns away "with a hasty air, almost expressive of displeasure or dislike." She and Jarndyce, we learn, had met when they were "abroad," and she observes that Jarndyce had been better acquainted with her sister, with whom she had become estranged: "'We went our several ways,' said Lady Dedlock, 'and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.'"

Pony phaeton (Source)

Then "a little pony phaeton" carrying Hortense and Rosa arrives. Lady Dedlock had sent for it, asking her maid to come -- meaning Rosa, though Hortense had apparently insisted that she was the one sent for.  "The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking on with her lips tightly set," as Lady Dedlock offers to send the carriage back for Ada and Esther. Jarndyce declines, and Lady Dedlock "took a graceful leave of Ada -- none of me," Esther notes, and bids Rosa get into the carriage with her. As for Hortense,

She remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction, through the wettest of the wet grass.

"'Is that young woman mad?' said my guardian." The keeper says that she's just "mortal high and passionate -- powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others put above her, she don't take kindly to it." And as Jarndyce, Ada and Esther return home, they see Hortense still striding through the wet grass.

In London, the omniscient narrator tells us, the courts have shut down for the long vacation, leaving all of the clerks idle, as well as the businesses that support the law, such as Mr Snagsby, the stationer. He and Mrs Snagsby are entertaining the Chadbands. Mr Chadband is a minister "attached to no particular denomination," who includes among his followers Mrs Snagsby. "'My little woman,' says Mr Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn, 'like to have her religion rather sharp, you see!'"

Mr Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, and he wanted to grovel; is very much in a perspiration about the head; and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is going to edify them.

Chadband's "edification," however, typically consists of platitudes delivered in the most pompous and verbose manner possible. Still, as the narrator observes, "the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired."

As the Snagsbys are entertaining the Chadbands, however, the servant, Guster, informs Mr Snagsby that he is wanted in the shop downstairs, where he finds a constable with Jo in his custody. The constable has ordered Jo to "move on," and Jo insists that there's nowhere for him to move on to. Jo has apparently indicated to the constable that Mr Snagsby can vouch for him, and although Mrs Snagsby has appeared at the top of the stairs to proclaim that he doesn't know the boy, Snagsby admits that he does.

Then Mr Guppy appears, and confirms Snagsby's acquaintance with Jo. The constable is still convinced that Jo is up to no good, partly because he lives in Tom-all-Alone's.  Moreover, Jo has money upon him, which is enough to convince the constable that Jo has been stealing. So Jo tells the story of being approached "by a lady in a wale" (i.e., veil) who gave him a sovereign to show her where Nemo lived, died, and was buried. The constable agrees to leave Snagsby in charge of Jo's moving on -- over Mrs Snagsby's protests -- and departs.

Intrigued by Jo's story of the veiled lady, Guppy begins asking questions, raising the curiosity of the others, so that Guppy and Jo are ushered upstairs to continue the interrogation. Guppy opines that "there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's," which is enough to have Mrs Chadband eager to hear more: She happens to be acquainted with Kenge and Carboy's. Before she married the Rev. Mr Chadband, she says, she "was left in charge of a child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs Kenge and Carboy's."

It's Guppy's turn to be astonished, though when he gasps, "Miss Summerson, ma'am!" he is rebuked by Mrs Chadband, who is apparently the Mrs Rachael who was servant to Esther's godmother/aunt. "'I call her Esther Summerson,' says Mrs Chadband, with austerity. 'There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. "Esther, do this! Esther, do that!" and she was made to do it.'"


The Rev. Chadband seizes upon this moment of astonishment to take the floor and sermonize on the topic of ... Jo, who is bewildered by everything that's going on, and "whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms." Guppy gives him a penny and Mr Snagsby loads him up with some of the table leftovers, and off he goes into the night.

Guppy, of course, is not going to let all these revelations go. He has been vexed by the arrival in the offices of Kenge and Carboy of Richard Carstone, but gratified "to find the new comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that." So he gathers his friends, fellow law-clerks Young Smallweed and Tony Jobling, and invites them to dine with him.

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

After much Dickensian business about these swaggering striplings, during which we learn that Jobling was the one who accompanied Guppy to Chesney Wold, Guppy announces "a plan I have lately thought of proposing." It may, he stammers, "have some reference to a subject, which may -- or may not -- have cast its shadow on my existence" -- that is, of course, his failed proposal to Esther. He tells Jobling that in his duties at Kenge and Carboy's he has been delivering a weekly allowance to Miss Flite at Krook's, and that Krook has a room to let. Krook "must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender -- all of which I have thought likely at different times -- it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him."

Jobling is game, even when he learns that the room is where Krook's last lodger died. So they proceed to Krook's, where he is dead drunk. They manage to get him awake, and after treating him to a better quality of gin than he is used to, "Mr Guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr Weevle, and states the object of their visit." The result is that Jobling/Weevle is installed in the second-floor room, which he adorns with "copper-plate impressions from that truly national work, The Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing." And in time the neighbor ladies are gossiping, "don't you be surprised Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!"

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Burn Gorman as Guppy, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Sally Leonard as Polly, Warren Clarke as Boythorn, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Emma Williams as Rosa, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Robert Pugh as Mr Chadband, Catherine Tate as Mrs Chadband, Michelle Tate as Guster, Harry Eden as Jo, Dominic Coleman as Policeman, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Tom Georgeson as Clamb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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