Lectures on Literature

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  The reasons boil down to the fact that as a police officer, charged with the execution of justice, Bucket has a strong faith in money which Skimpole would shake by rejecting the offered bank note with the result that Bucket would be of no further use as a detective. Moreover, if it is blameable in Skimpole to accept, it was more blameable in Bucket to offer the money: "Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the general cohesion of things, that he should think well of Bucket. The State expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that's all he does!"

  Skimpole, at the last, is neatly summed up by Esther: "A coolness arose between him and my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds, and on his having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being heavily in my guardian's debt, had nothing to do with their separation. He died some five years afterwards, and left a diary behind him, with letters and other materials towards his Life; which was published, and which showed him to have been the victim of a combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. 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.' " Actually Jarndyce is one of the best and kindest human beings ever described in a novel.

  So to sum up. In the counterpoint arrangement of our book, Mr. Skimpole is shown first as a gay, lighthearted, childish person, a delightful infant, a candid and innocent child. Good John Jarndyce, being in some ways the real child of the book, is completely taken in and taken up with the pseudochild Skimpole. Dickens has Esther describe Skimpole so as to bring out his shallow but pleasing wit and his cheap but amusing charm; and soon, through this charm, we begin to perceive the essential cruelty and coarseness and utter dishonesty of the man. As a parody of a child, he serves, moreover, the purpose of bringing out in beautiful relief the real children in the book who are little helpers, who assume the responsibilities of grown-up people, children who are pathetic imitations of guardians and providers. Of the utmost importance for the inner development of the story is the meeting between Skimpole and Jo; Skimpole betrays Jo, the false child betraying the real one. There is within the Skimpole theme a parody of the caged-bird theme. Richard, the unfortunate suitor, is really the caged bird. Skimpole who preys upon him is at best a painted fowl, at worst a vulture. Finally, though almost entirely undeveloped, there is the contrast between the real doctor, Woodcourt, who uses his knowledge to help mankind, and Skimpole, who refuses to practice medicine and, on the only occasion in which he is consulted, correctly diagnoses Jo's fever as dangerous but recommends that he be thrown out of the house, undoubtedly to die.

  The most touching pages in the book are devoted to the child theme. You will note the stoic account of Esther's childhood, her godmother (actually aunt) Barbary continually impressing on her consciousness a sense of guilt. We have the neglected children of the philanthropist Mrs. Jellyby, the orphaned Neckett children as little helpers, the "dirty little limp girls in gauze dresses" (and the little boy who dances alone in the kitchen) who take dancing lessons at the Turveydrop school to learn the trade. With the coldly philanthropic Mrs. Pardiggle we visit the family of a brickmaker and look at a dead baby. But among all these poor children, dead or alive or half-alive, among these "poor dull children in pain" the most unfortunate little creature is the boy Jo, who is so closely and blindly mixed up with the mystery theme.

  At the coroner's inquest on the dead lodger Nemo it is recalled that he had been seen talking with the boy who swept the crossing down the lane, and the boy is brought in. "O! Here's the boy, gentlemen!

  "Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy!—But stop a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary paces.

  "Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for him. He don't find no fault with it. Spell it? No. He can't spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both. Can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he'll tell the truth."

  After the inquest, at which Jo is not allowed to testify, he is privately questioned by Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor. Jo knows only: "That one cold winter night, when he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world, said, 'Neither have I. Not one!' and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since; and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die; and similar strange questions....

  " 'He wos wery good to me,' says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve. 'Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he wos!' " Dickens then writes in his Carlylean mode, with tolling repetitions. The lodger's body, "the body of our dear brother here departed [is borne off] to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed.... Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a Caffre would shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed, to receive Christian burial.

  "With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life—here, they lower our dear brother down a foot or two: here, sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick bedside: a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilisation and barbarism walked this boastful island together."

  And here is the blurred silhouette of Jo in the fog and the night. "With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in between the bars; stands looking in for a little while.

  "It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and so departs.

  "Jo, is it thou? [Again the Carlylean eloquence] Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who can't exactly say what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this:

  " 'He wos wery good to me, he wos!' "

  Constantly "moved on" by the police,Jo sets out from London and, in the first stages of smallpox, is sheltered by Esther and Charley, to whom he transmits the disease, and then, mysteriously disappearing, is not heard from until he reappears in London, worn down by his illness and privations, and lies dying in the shooting gallery that belongs to Mr. George. His heart is compared to a heavy cart. "For the cart so hard to draw, is near its journey's end, and drags over stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps, shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise, and behold it still upon its weary road.... There, too, is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always; both thinking much, how strangely Fate [with the genial help of Charles Dickens] has entangled this rough outcast in the web of very different lives.... Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a while, he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards him ... and touches his chest and heart. The cart had very nearly given
up, but labours on a little more....

  " 'Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be frightened.'

  " 'I thought,' says Jo, who has started, and is looking round, 'I thought I wos in Tom-all-Alone's [the frightful slum where he lived] agin. Ain't there nobody but you, Mr. Woodcot?' [Mark the symbolism in the special twist Jo gives the doctor's name, turned into Woodcot, that is, a little cottage of wood, a coffin.]

  " 'Nobody.'

  " 'And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?'

  " 'No.' Jo closes his eyes, muttering, 'I'm wery thankful.'

  "After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very near his ear, and says to him in a low, distinct voice:

  " 'Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?'

  " 'Never knowd nothink, sir.'

  " 'Not so much as one short prayer?'

  " 'No, sir. Nothink at all.... I never knowd what it wos all about.'... After a short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong effort to get out of bed.

  " 'Stay, Jo! What now?'

  " 'It's time for me to go to that there berryin-ground, sir,' he returns, with a wild look.

  " 'Lie down, and tell me. What burying-ground, Jo?'

  " 'Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there berryin-ground, sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be berried....'

  " 'Bye-and-bye, Jo. By-and-bye.'...

  " 'Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They'll have to get the key of the gate afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step there, as I used fur to clean with my broom.—It's turned wery dark, sir. Is there any light a-comin?'

  " 'It is coming fast, Jo.'

  "Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very near its end.

  " 'Jo, my poor fellow!'

  " 'I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin—a-gropin—let me catch hold of your hand.'

  " 'Jo, can you say what I say?'

  " 'I'll say anythink as you say, sir, fur I know it's good.'

  " 'OUR FATHER.'

  " 'Our Father!—yes, that's wery good, sir.' [Father, a word he had never used.]

  " 'WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.'

  " 'Art in Heaven—is the light a-comin, sir?'

  " 'It is close at hand. HALLOWED BE THY NAME!'

  " 'Hallowed be—thy——' "

  And now listen to the booming bell of Carlyle's apostrophic style: "The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!

  "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."

  This is a lesson in style, not in participative emotion.

  The crime-mystery theme provides the main action of the novel and is its backbone, its binding force. Structurally, it is the most important of the novel's themes of mystery and misery, Chancery and chance.

  One of the branches of the Jarndyce family consisted of two sisters. One of these sisters, the elder, had been engaged to Boythorn, John Jarndyce's eccentric friend. The other sister had an affair with a Captain Hawdon and bore an illegitimate daughter. The elder sister deceived the young mother into believing that her child had died at birth. Then, breaking all connection with her fiance, Boythorn, her family and her friends, this elder sister retired with the little girl to a small town and reared the child in austerity and harshness that were deserved, in her opinion, by the sinful way it had taken to arrive into this world. The young mother, later, married Sir Leicester Dedlock. After many years of comfortable though deadish wedlock, she, now Lady Dedlock, is being shown some new insignificant affidavits connected with the Jarndyce case by the family lawyer Tulkinghorn and is singularly affected by the handwriting in which one of the documents has been copied. She tries to ascribe her own questions about it to mere curiosity, but almost the next moment she faints. This is enough for Mr. Tulkinghorn to start an investigation of his own. He tracks down the scribe, a man going by the name of Nemo (Latin for "no one"), only to find him dead in a squalid room at Krook's of an overdose of opium, which was much easier to get then than it is now. Not a scrap of paper is found in the room, but a package of most important letters has already been whisked away by Krook even before he brought Tulkinghorn into the lodger's room. At the inquest held over the body of the dead Nemo it is found that no one knows anything about him. The only witness with whom Nemo used to exchange some personal, friendly words, the little streetsweeper Jo, is rejected by the authorities. But Mr. Tulkinghorn questions him in private.

  From newspaper reports Lady Dedlock learns about Jo and comes to see him in disguise, dressed in her French maid's clothes. She gives him money when he shows her localities, etc., associated with Nemo, for she knows from his handwriting that he was Captain Hawdon, and, especially, Jo takes her to see the pestilent graveyard with the iron gate where Nemo has been buried. Jo's story spreads and reaches Tulkinghorn, who confronts Jo with Hortense, the French maid, who wears the clothes that Lady Dedlock had borrowed on her secret visit to Jo. Jo recognizes the clothes but is emphatically certain that the voice, the hand, and the rings on the hand of the woman now before him are not those belonging to the other. Thus Tulkinghorn's idea that Jo's mysterious visitor was Lady Dedlock is confirmed. Tulkinghorn then continues his investigation, but he also sees to it that Jo is made "to move on" by the police, since he does not want others to learn too much from him. (This is why Jo happens to be in Hertfordshire when he is taken ill and why Bucket, with Skimpole's help, removes him from Jarndyce's house.) Tulkinghorn gradually discovers the identity of Nemo, Captain Hawdon. Getting the trooper George to deliver to him a letter in the Captain's hand is part of this process. When Tulkinghorn is ready with his story, he tells it in front of Lady Dedlock as if referring to other persons. Seeing herself discovered and at Tulkinghorn's mercy, Lady Dedlock comes to his room in her country mansion, Chesney Wold, to discuss his intentions. She is ready to leave her house, her husband, and to disappear. Tulkinghorn decides that she is to stay and continue in her role as a fashionable woman in society and Sir Leicester's wife until he makes his decision and chooses his time. When at a later date he tells her that he is about to disclose her past to her husband, she goes out at night for a long walk, and that very night Tulkinghorn is murdered in his rooms. Did she murder him?

  The detective Bucket is hired by Sir Leicester to track down his solicitor's unknown murderer. Bucket first suspects George, the trooper, who has been heard threatening Tulkinghorn, and has George arrested. Later many things seem to point to Lady Dedlock, but all these are false clues. The real murderer is Hortense, the French maid, who has willingly helped Mr. Tulkinghorn to ferret out the secret of her former mistress, Lady Dedlock, but who turns against Tulkinghorn when the latter fails to recompense her sufficiently for her services and, moreover, offends her when he threatens her with jail and practically throws her out of his rooms.

  But a Mr. Guppy, a law clerk, had also followed his own line of investigation. For personal reasons (he was in love with Esther), he tried to get from Krook some letters he suspected had fallen into the old man's hands after Captain Hawdon's death. He nearly succeeded, when Krook unexpectedly and weirdly dies. Thus, the letters, and with them the secret of the Captain's love affair with Lady Dedlock and of Esther's birth, fell in the hands of a pack of blackmailers headed by old Smallweed. Though Tulkinghorn had then bought the letters from them, the Smallweeds after his death try to extort money from Sir Leicester. Detective Bucket, our third pursuer, an experienced man, seeks to settle the matter to the Dedlocks' advantage but in doing so has to tell Sir Leicester his wife's secret. Sir Leicester loves his wife too much not to forgive her. But Lady Dedlock, warned by Guppy of the fate of her letters, sees in it the hand of vengeful Fate and leaves her home forever, ignorant of her husband's reaction to the "secret."

  Sir Leicester s
ends Bucket in hot pursuit. Bucket takes along Esther, whom he knows to be her daughter. In the midst of a freezing ice storm, together they trace Lady Dedlock to the brickmaker's cottage in Hertfordshire, not far from Bleak House, to which Lady Dedlock had gone to seek Esther, who unknown to her had been all the time in London. Bucket finds out that two women had left the cottage shortly before his arrival, one bound for the north but the other southward for London. Bucket and Esther follow the northbound one for a long while until the astute Mr. Bucket suddenly decides to go back through the storm and to pick up the other woman's trail. The northbound woman had worn Lady Dedlock's clothes, the London-bound one was dressed as the poor brickmaker's wife, but it suddenly dawns on Bucket that the two had exchanged their clothes. He is right, but he and Esther come too late. Lady Dedlock, dressed as a poor woman, has reached London and has gone to Captain Hawdon's grave. She dies of exhaustion and exposure, clutching the bars of the iron gate, after walking a hundred miles through a dreadful storm, practically without rest.

  As one can see from this bare resume, the plot of the mystery theme does not quite live up to the poetry of the book.

  Gustave Flaubert's ideal of a writer of fiction was vividly expressed when he remarked that, like God in His world, so the author in his book should be nowhere and everywhere, invisible and omnipresent. There do exist several major works of fiction where the presence of the author is as unobtrusive as Flaubert wished it to be, although he himself did not attain that ideal in Madame Bovary. But even in such works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he remains diffused through the book so that his very absence becomes a kind of radiant presence. As the French say, il brille par son absence—"he shines by his absence." In connection with Bleak House we are concerned with one of those authors who are so to speak not supreme deities, diffuse and aloof, but puttering, amiable, sympathetic demigods, who descend into their books under various disguises or send therein various middlemen, representatives, agents, minions, spies, and stooges.