The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss Flite’s that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our account had interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step, if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go to the Academy, and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss Flite’s—whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to by both, we smartened Peepy up a little, with the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hairbrush; and went out: bending our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.

  I found the Academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the Academy had been lent, last night, for a concert.

  We went upstairs—it had been quite a fine house once, when it was anybody’s business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody’s business to smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop’s great room, which was built out into a mews at the back, and was lighted by a skylight. It was a bare, resounding room, smelling of stables; with cane forms along the walls; and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres, and little cutglass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among them for their instructor, when Caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. “Miss Summerson, Mr. Prince Turveydrop!”

  I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance, with flaxen hair parted in the middle, and curling at the ends all round his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine manner, which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me: that I received the impression that he was like his mother, and that his mother had not been considered or well used.

  “I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby’s friend,” he said, bowing low to me. “I began to fear,” with timid tenderness, “as it was past the usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.”

  “I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,” said I.

  “O dear!” said he.

  “And pray,” I entreated, “do not allow me to be the cause of any more delay.”

  With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady of a censorious countenance, whose two nieces were in the class, and who was very indignant with Peepy’s boots. Prince Turveydrop then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance. Just then, there appeared from a side door, old Mr. Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his Deportment.

  He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and stepped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up, if it were cast loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of Deportment.

  “Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby’s friend, Miss Summerson.”

  “Distinguished,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “by Miss Summerson’s presence.” As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes.

  “My father,” said the son, aside, to me, with quite an affecting belief in him, “is a celebrated character. My father is greatly admired.”

  “Go on, Prince! Go on!” said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back to the fire, and waving his gloves condescendingly. “Go on, my son!”

  At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing, sometimes played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His distinguished father did nothing whatever, but stand before the fire, a model of Deportment.

  “And he never does anything else,” said the old lady of the censorious countenance. “Yet would you believe that it’s his name on the door-plate?”

  “His son’s name is the same, you know,” said I.

  “He wouldn’t let his son have any name, if he could take it from him,” returned the old lady. “Look at the son’s dress!” It certainly was plain—threadbare—almost shabby. “Yet the father must be garnished and tricked out,” said the old lady, “because of his Deportment. I’d deport him! Transport him would be better!”

  I felt curious to know more, concerning this person. I asked, “Does he give lessons in Deportment, now?”

  “Now!” returned the old lady, shortly. “Never did.”

  After a moment’s consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment?

  “I don’t believe he can fence at all, ma’am,” said the old lady.

  I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and more incensed against the Master of Deportment as she dwelt upon the subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong assurances that they were mildly stated.

  He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his Deportment to the best models, and to keep the best models constantly before himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort; to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times; and to lead an idle life in the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured, and would have toiled and laboured to that hour, if her strength had lasted so long. For, the mainspring of the story was, that, in spite of the man’s absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his Deportment) had, to the last, believed in him, and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon him, and whom he could never regard with too much pride and deference. The son, inheriting his mother’s belief, and having the Deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a-day, and looked up to him with vene
ration on the old imaginary pinnacle.

  “The airs the fellow gives himself!” said my informant, shaking her head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on his tight gloves: of course unconscious of the homage she was rendering. “He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes, that you might suppose him the most virtuous of parents. O!” said the old lady, apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. “I could bite you!”

  I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her, with the father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without the old lady’s account, or what I might have thought of the old lady’s account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried conviction with it.

  My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came ambling up to me, and entered into conversation.

  He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

  “A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his right glove, and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, “will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—polish—polish!”

  He sat down beside me; taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And really he did look very like it.

  “To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers. “But we are not—if I may say so to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art”; with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—“we are not what we used to be in point of Deportment.”

  “Are we not, sir?” said I.

  “We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he could do, to a very limited extent, in his cravat. “A levelling age is not favourable to Deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the Devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a-year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am,—still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”

  “Indeed?” said I.

  He replied with the high-shouldered bow. “Where what is left among us of Deportment,” he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of weavers.”

  “One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here,” said I.

  “You are very good,” he smiled, with the high-shouldered bow again. “You flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has—no Deportment.”

  “He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed.

  “Understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But there are things—” he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to add, “this kind of thing, for instance.”

  I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby’s lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.

  “My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

  “Your son is indefatigable,” said I.

  “It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman,” said Mr. Turveydrop, with very disagreeable gallantry, “what a sex you are!”

  I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don’t know, but they certainly found none, on this occasion, to exchange a dozen words.

  “My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, “do you know the hour?”

  “No, father.” The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out, with an air that was an example to mankind.

  “My son,” said he, “it’s two o’clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three.”

  “That’s time enough for me, father,” said Prince. “I can take a morsel of dinner, standing, and be off.”

  “My dear boy,” returned his father, “you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.”

  “Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?”

  “Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, “that I must show myself, as usual, about town.”

  “You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere,” said his son.

  “My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.”

  “That’s right. Good-bye, father!” said Prince, shaking hands.

  “Good-bye, my son. Bless you!”

  Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy—and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school in Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.

  The father opened the room door for us, and bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me: especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and suggested the possibility of so many Mr. Turveydrops, that I said, “Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend to Caddy.” I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln’s Inn.

  Caddy told me that her lover’s education had been so neglected, that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. “He does it with the best intention,” observed Caddy, “but it hasn’t the effect he means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough fo
r both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. “Besides, it’s not as if I was an accomplished girl, who had any right to give herself airs,” said Caddy. “I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!

  “There’s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,” continued Caddy, “which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It’s of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince’s wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it’s impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So, I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it’s the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy’s frock, “but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but, on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma.”