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."

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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.

13. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 445-486

Chapter 28: The Ironmaster through Chapter 30: Esther's Narrative

Dickens indulges in a little attack on class snobbery. Various family hangers-on are staying at Chesney Wold, including cousin Volumnia Dedlock, "a young lady (of sixty), who is doubly highly related; having the honour to be a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family," and now lives in retirement in Bath; where she lives slenderly on an annual present from Sir Leicester."

The talk turns to Rosa, whom Volumnia calls "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw in my life," and whom Lady Dedlock describes as her "pet -- secretary -- messenger -- I don't know what." They also speak highly of Mrs Rouncewell, who discovered Rosa. But then Sir Leicester gloomily announces "that I have been informed, by Mr Tulkinghorn, that Mrs Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliament," whereupon Volumnia "utters a little sharp scream." In the circles of the landed gentry, no matter how idle and useless they may be, it is unthinkable that a housekeeper's son, even one who has made his fortune in industry, should be afforded such an honor.

"'He is called, I believe -- an -- Ironmaster.' Sir Leicester says it slowly, and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is called a Lead-mistress; or that the right word may be some other word expressive of some other relationship to some other metal. Volumnia utters another little scream." But Sir Leicester is gratified to report that Mr Rouncewell turned down the offer.

However, the man himself is there, and has requested an audience with Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock on the subject of the very young woman Volumnia has just praised, Rosa. And so Mr Rouncewell enters, a man "a little over fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother," with "a clear voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd, though open face." Rouncewell tells them, "I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence in my son's good sense -- even in love. I find her what he represents her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with great commendation."

His son wants to marry Rosa, but before Mr Rouncewell gives his consent, he wants to make it a condition that Rosa no longer be a servant at Chesney Wold. (In other words, he would consider his son to be marrying down if Rosa remained there.) But "if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time, and leave it precisely where it is."

That this "Ironmaster" should even presume to impose "conditions" is a challenge to Sir Leicester's sense of the order of things. Lady Dedlock (for good reason) is not so hidebound, and she hears him out when he says, "I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a century, and will die here I have no doubt." He is not "ashamed of my mother's position here," he says, and he admits that he has been "an apprentice, and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up." But, he adds, they have raised their children "to make them worthy of any station." So he suggests that Rosa should be educated to the same level as his daughters before she marries his son.

Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly. "Mr Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester, with his right hand in the breast of his blue coat -- the attitude of state in which he is painted in the gallery:  "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold, and a --" here he resists a disposition to choke -- "a factory?"

Well, yes, Mr Rouncewell says, "I think a parallel may be justly drawn between them." The village school is all very well, "and handsomely supported by this family," he says, but "I do not regard the village-school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's wife."

These ideas are, Sir Leicester proclaims, "so diametrically opposed" to his own, "that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your feelings, and repellent to my own." Lady Dedlock says nothing, and Mr Rouncewell withdraws, saying, "I shall recommend my son to conquer his present inclinations," and bids them good night. But later in her room Lady Dedlock speaks to Rosa herself, and says, "I wish you to be happy, and will make you so -- if I can make anybody happy on this earth." There is something in Rosa's situation that has spoken to her. "Some melancholy influence is upon her; or why should so proud a lady close the doors, and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate?"

Next day the Dedlock cousins are "amazed to hear from Sir Leicester, at breakfast time, of the obliteration of landmarks, and opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through Mrs Rouncewell's son."

Winter comes to Chesney Wold, and the house is shut up and the Dedlocks move to their house in town. Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are sitting together when a footman announces "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy." Sir Leicester, who has never heard of such a person, is astonished, but he learns that Lady Dedlock is familiar with "The young man of the name of Guppy" and has given instructions that he be admitted.

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

Sir Leicester withdraws and Guppy, who has come armed with notes for the speech he is about to deliver, but hasn't fully mastered his abbreviations, finally stumbles onto his point: "whether your ladyship ever happene to hear of, or to see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson." This gets Lady Dedlock's full attention. Did it strike Lady Dedlock that Esther bore a resemblance to anyone she knew? asks Guppy. No, she says, insisting, "I remember the young lady very well." And Guppy tells her that on his own visit to Chesney Wold, he was struck by "such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's own portrait. So, after stumbling over his notes again, Guppy forges ahead:

"Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact, because -- which I mention in confidence -- I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss Summerson's image is imprinted on my art. If I could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more decided favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet.... I have encountered the person, who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up, before Mr Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship." 

A "dreadful paleness" falls on Lady Dedlock. And when Guppy tells her that Miss Barbary's servant (i.e., Mrs Chadband, the former Mrs Rachael) was told that Esther's "real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon," Lady Dedlock says, "My God!"

Guppy goes on to tell her that a "law-writer" was found dead at Krook's, and that Guppy has "discovered, very lately, that that law-writer's name was Hawdon." And that a disguised lady had hired "a crossing-sweeping boy" to show her the law-writer's grave. That the boy had mentioned "the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off." And that "It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could possibly be identified. But he did. He left a bundle of old letters." And tomorrow, Guppy claims, he will take possession of those letters.

Lady Dedlock maintains her calm, and when Guppy proposes to bring those letters to her, she says he may. And Guppy takes his leave.

No one else in the house hears the cry "from a wild figure on its knees."

"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me; but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!" 

Dickensian melodrama at its ripest, though we may prefer the cold, stoically impassive Lady Dedlock who listened with as little impression as possible to Guppy's revelations.

Esther meanwhile remains ignorant of these revelations about her parentage. At Bleak House, they have spent "nearly three weeks" entertaining Allan Woodcourt's mother, who was invited to visit by Mr Jarndyce. "She took very kindly to me," Esther reports, "and what extremely confidential: so much so that sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable." Which is Mrs Woodcourt's aim: She wants to discourage Esther and her son from marrying. She goes on and on about the Welsh nobility from which the Woodcourts are descended. ("Welsh nobility" being a kind of oxymoron to the English.) She asserts that her "son's choice of a wife, for instance, is limited by it; but the matrimonial choice of the Royal family is limited, in much the same manner." Moreover, on the father's side, Allan is "descended from a great Highland family," making him "one of the last representatives of two old families. With the blessing of Heaven he will set them up again, and unite them with another old family." She also claims that Allan "is fickleness itself ... always paying trivial attentions to young ladies ... ever since he was eighteen." And she administers the coup de grace by saying that Allan "has gone to seek his fortune, and to find a wife -- when do you mean to seek your fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson?" She predicts that Esther "will marry some one, very rich and very worthy, much older -- five and twenty years, perhaps -- than yourself."

"It is curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it did," Esther reflects. "I know it did." But she's still willing to give Mrs Woodcourt the benefit of the doubt: "Now, I suspected that she was very cunning; next moment, I believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple." Esther has a great capacity for denial.

But for the time being there are the preparations for the wedding of Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop to occupy her. She and Ada are to be the bridesmaids. Mr Jellyby is out of the shadow of bankruptcy, having liquidated everything possible, and the Jellybys have "removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting the horsehair out of the seats of the chairs, and choking themselves with it)." Caddy says her father called the children "Wild Indians" and "the best thing that could happen to them was, their being all Tomahawked together," by which, she explains, he means "they are very unfortunate in being Ma's children, and that he is very unfortunate in being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems unnatural to say so." As for Mrs Jellyby, Caddy is unsure whether she really knows her daughter is getting married, even though she has been told so repeatedly.

Clearly something has to be done to get the wedding taken care of, so Esther takes charge. And things go off reasonably well, all things considered. The wedding guests are drawn from Mrs Jellyby's circle of activists, one of whom, Miss Wisk, is an unfortunate Dickensian caricature feminist who objects to weddings in general because "the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man." Mrs Pardiggle is there, still proclaiming "that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat."

And so Dickens has brought us straight up to a denouement, and postponed its resolution to wander off into a tangent.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Burn Gorman as Guppy, Johnny Vegas as Krook, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Emma Williams as Rosa, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Di Botcher as Mrs Woodcourt, Harry Eden as Jo, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole.

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.