Lectures on Literature

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  Jarndyce explains to Richard that Skimpole is grown up, at least as old as he, Jarndyce, is, " 'but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.

  " '... He is a musical man; an Amateur, but might have been a Professional. He is an Artist, too; an Amateur, but might have been a Professional. He is a man of attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his family; but he don't care—he's a child!'

  " 'Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?' inquired Richard.

  " 'Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after him. He is a child, you know!' "

  We are presented to Mr. Skimpole through Esther's eyes: "He was a little bright creature, with a rather large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous, and was said with such a captivating gaiety, that it was fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr. Jarndyce, and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance, in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portraits), which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the usual road of years, cares, and experiences." He had failed as a doctor in the household of a German prince since "he had always been a mere child in point of weights and measures, and had never known anything about them (except that they disgusted him)." When called on to perform any duty, such as ministering to the prince or his people, "he was generally found lying on his back, in bed, reading the newspapers, or making fancy sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last, objecting to this, in which,' said Mr. Skimpole, in the frankest manner, 'he was perfectly right,' the engagement terminated, and Mr. Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) 'nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks.' His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! ... All he asked of society was, to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, 'Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only—let Harold Skimpole live!'

  "All this, and a great deal more, he told us, not only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candour—speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but still had his claims too, which were the general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was quite enchanting," although Esther remains somewhat confused as to why he was free of all duties and accountabilities of life.

  The next morning at breakfast Skimpole discourses engagingly on Bees and Drones and frankly expresses the thought that the Drone is the embodiment of a wiser and pleasanter idea than the Bee. But Skimpole is not really a stingless drone, and this is the secret point of his personality: he has a sting which remains concealed for a long time. His offhand professions of childishness and carelessness afforded much pleasure to Mr. Jarndyce, who was relieved to find what he thought was a candid man in a world of deceit. But the candid Mr. Skimpole used good Jarndyce's kind heart for his own ends. A little later, in London, the presence of something hard and evil behind Skimpole's childish banter becomes more and more evident. A sheriff s officer named Neckett, from the firm of Coavins, who had come one day to arrest Skimpole for his debts, dies, and Skimpole refers to it in a manner that shocks Esther: " 'Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff,' said Mr. Skimpole. 'He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.' " The man has left a motherless family, which Skimpole jokes about as he lightly touches the piano by which he is seated. " 'And he told me,' he said, playing little chords where [says the narrator] I shall put full stops, 'That Coavinses had left [period] Three children [period] No mother [period] And that Coavinses' profession [period] Being unpopular [period] The rising Coavinses [period] Were at a considerable disadvantage,' " Mark the device here—the cheerful rogue idly touching these musical chords in between his trite banter.

  Now Dickens is going to do a very clever thing. He is going to take us to the motherless household of the dead man and show us the plight of the children there; and in the light of this plight, Mr. Skimpole's so-called childishness will reveal its falsity. Esther is the narrator: "I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, 'We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder's got the key!'

  "I applied the key on hearing this, and opened the door. In a poor room, with a sloping ceiling, and containing very little furniture, was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. [I like the 'heavy,' which weighs down the sentence at the necessary point.] There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets, as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched, and their small figures shrunken, as the boy walked up and down, nursing and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.

  " 'Who has locked you up here alone?' we naturally asked.

  " 'Charley,' said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.

  " 'Is Charley your brother?'

  " 'No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.' ...

  " 'Where is Charley now?'

  " 'Out a-washing,' said the boy....

  "We were looking at one another, and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face—pretty-faced too—wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soapsuds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child, playing at washing, and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the truth." So Skimpole is a vile parody of a child, whereas this little girl is a pathetic imitator of an adult woman. "The child [the boy] was nursing, stretched forth its arms, and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.

  " 'Is it possible,' whispered [Mr. Jarndyce] ... 'that this child works for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake look at this!'

  "It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure."

  Now, please, note the intonation of pity and of a kind of tender awe in Mr. Jarndyce's speech: " 'Charley, Charley!' said my guardian. 'How old are you?'

  " 'Over thirteen, sir,' replied the child.

  " 'O! What a great age!' said my guardian. 'What a great age, Charley!'

  "I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke t
o her; half playfully, yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.

  " 'And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?' said my guardian.

  " 'Yes, sir,' returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, 'since father died.'

  " 'And how do you live, Charley? O! Charley,' said my guardian, turning his face away for a moment, 'how do you live?' "

  I should not like to hear the charge of sentimentality made against this strain that runs through Bleak House. I want to submit that people who denounce the sentimental are generally unaware of what sentiment is. There is no doubt that, say, a story of a student turned shepherd for the sake of a maiden is sentimental and silly and flat and stale. But let us ask ourselves, is not there some difference between Dickens's technique and the old writers. For instance, how different is this world of Dickens from the world of Homer or from the world of Cervantes. Does a hero of Homer's really feel the divine throb of pity? Horror, yes—and a kind of generalized routine compassion—but is the keen sense of specialized pity as we understand it today, as it were, in the dactyllic past? For let us nurse no doubt about it: despite all our hideous reversions to the wild state, modern man is on the whole a better man than Homer's man, homo homericus, or than medieval man. In the imaginary battle of americus versus homericus, the first wins humanity's prize. Of course, I am aware that dim throbs of pathos do occur in the Odyssey, that Odysseus and his old father do, suddenly, when they meet again after many years, and after a few casual remarks, suddenly raise their heads and lament in a kind of elemental ululation, a vague howl against fate, as if they were not quite conscious of their own woe. Yes, this compassion is not quite conscious of itself; it is, I repeat, generalized emotion in that old world with its blood puddles and dung heaps on marble, whose only redemption, after all, is that it left us a handful of magnificent epics, an immortal horizon of verse. Well, you have sufficiently heard from me about the thorns and fangs of that world. Don Quixote does interfere in the flogging of a child, but Don Quixote is a madman. Cervantes takes the cruel world in his stride, and there is always a belly laugh just around the corner of the least pity.

  Now here, in the passage about the little Necketts, Dickens's great art should not be mistaken for a cockney version of the seat of emotion—it is the real thing, keen, subtle, specialized compassion, with a grading and merging of melting shades, with the very accent of profound pity in the words uttered, and with an artist's choice of the most visible, most audible, most tangible epithets.

  And now the Skimpole theme is going to meet, head-on, one of the most tragic themes in the book, that of the poor boy Jo. This orphan, this very sick little Jo, is brought by Esther and the girl Charley, now her maid,[*] to the Jarndyce house for shelter on a cold, wild night. Jo is shown shrunk into the corner of a window seat in the hall of the Jarndyce house, staring with an indifference that scarcely could be called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him. Esther is again the narrator. " 'This is a sorrowful case,' said my guardian, after asking him a question or two, and touching him, and examining his eyes. 'What do you say, Harold?'

  " 'You had better turn him out,' said Mr. Skimpole.

  " 'What do you mean?' inquired my guardian, almost sternly.

  " 'My dear Jarndyce,' said Mr. Skimpole, 'you know what I am: I am a child. Be cross to me, if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about him.'

  "Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again, and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood by.

  " 'You'll say it's childish,' observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at us. 'Well, I dare say it may be; but I am a child, and I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten—you are arithmeticians, and I am not—and get rid of him!'

  " 'And what is he to do then?' asked my guardian.

  " 'Upon my life,' said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his engaging smile, 'I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But I have no doubt he'll do it.' "

  This is of course to imply that all poor Jo has to do is just to die like a sick animal in a ditch. However, Jo is put to bed in a wholesome loft room. And as the reader learns much later, Skimpole is easily bribed by a detective to show the room where Jo is, and Jo is taken away and disappears for a long time.

  The Skimpole theme is then related to Richard. Skimpole begins to sponge on him and even, after a bribe, produces a new lawyer for him to pursue the fruitless suit. Mr. Jarndyce takes Esther with him on a visit to Skimpole's lodgings to caution him, still believing in his naive innocence. "It was dingy enough, and not at all clean; but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over; but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa, in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup—it was then about mid-day—and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the balcony.

  "He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and received us in his usual airy manner.

  " 'Here I am, you see!' he said, when we were seated; not without some difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. 'Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!'

  " 'This is our friend's consulting room (or would be, if he ever prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,' said my guardian to us. [[The prescribing is a parody of the doctor theme in Dr. Woodcourt.]

  " 'Yes,' said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, 'this is the bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his feathers now and then, and clip his wings; but he sings, he sings.'

  "He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, 'He sings! Not an ambitious note, but still he sings.' ...

  " 'This is a day,' said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a tumbler, 'that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter [Arethusa], I have a Sentiment daughter [Laura], and I have a Comedy daughter [Kitty]. You must see them all. They'll be enchanted.' "

  Something rather significant is happening here from the thematic point of view. Just as in a musical fugue one theme can be imitated in parody of another, we have here a parody of the caged-bird theme in connection with Miss Flite, the crazy little woman. Skimpole is not really caged. He is a painted bird with a clockwork arrangement for mechanical song. His cage is an imitation, just as his childishness is an imitation. There is also a thematic parody in the names he gives to his daughters, compared to the names of the birds in Miss Flite's theme. Skimpole the child is really Skimpole the fraud, and in this extremely artistic way Dickens reveals Skimpole's real nature. If you have completely understood what I have been driving at, then we have made a very definite step towards understanding the mystery of literary art, for it should be clear that my course, among other things, is a kind of detective investigation of the mystery of literary structures. But remember that what I can manage to discuss is by no means exhaustive. There are many things—themes and facets of themes—that you should find by yourselves. A book is like a trunk tightly packed with things. At the customs an official'
s hand plunges perfunctorily into it, but he who seeks treasures examines every thread.

  Towards the end of the book Esther is concerned that Skimpole is draining Richard dry and calls on him to ask him to break off his connection, which he blithely agrees to do when he learns that Richard has no money left. In the course of the conversation it is disclosed that it was he who had assisted in removing Jo after he had been put to bed at Jarndyce's orders, a disappearance that had remained a complete mystery. He defends himself in characteristic fashion: "Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received into the house and put to bed, in a state that I strongly object to. The boy being in bed, a man arrives—like the house that jack built. Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well. Should the Skimpole have refused the note? Why should the Skimpole have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket; ‘what's this for? I don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole perceives them. What are they?"