4. JOHN JARNDYCE'S CURIOUS COURTSHIP
When Esther is in the coach being taken to London after Miss Barbary's death, an anonymous gentleman tries to cheer her up. He seems to know about Mrs. Rachael, the nurse hired by Miss Barbary, who had seen Esther off with so little affection, and to disapprove of her. When he offers Esther a piece of thickly sugared plum cake and a pie made out of the livers of fat geese, and she declines, saying they are too rich for her, he mutters, "Floored again!" and throws them out the window as lightly as he will later cast away his own happiness. Afterwards we learn this has been the good, kindhearted, and fairly wealthy John Jarndyce, who serves as a magnet for all kinds of people—miserable children and rogues, and shams, and fools, falsely philanthropic women, and crazy people. If Don Quixote had come to Dickensian London, I suggest that his kind and noble heart might have attracted people in the same way.
As early as chapter 17 we get the first hint that Jarndyce, gray-haired Jarndyce, is in love with twenty-one-year-old Esther but is silent about it. The Don Quixote theme is mentioned by name when Lady Dedlock meets the party, who are visiting nearby Mr. Boythorn, and the young people are presented to her. Gracefully, when the lovely Ada is introduced, " 'You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,' said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, 'if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this.' " She is referring to the fact that at Jarndyce's request the Lord Chancellor has appointed him to be the guardian of Richard and Ada even though the main contention of the suit was over the respective shares of the estate between them. Thus he was being quixotic, Lady Dedlock implies in a compliment, to harbor and to support two young people who were legally his antagonists. His guardianship of Esther was a personal decision he made after a letter from Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's sister and Esther's real aunt.
John Jarndyce, some time after Esther's illness, comes to the decision of writing her a letter of proposal. But, and here comes the point, it seems to be suggested that he, a man at least thirty years Esther's senior, suggests marriage to protect her from the cruel world and is not going to change towards her, will remain her friend and will not become her lover. Not only is this attitude quixotic if what I suspect is true, but also the whole plan of preparing her to receive a letter, the contents of which she is able to guess, only upon her sending Charley for it after a week's pondering: " 'You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stagecoach. First and last you have done me a world of good, since that time.'
" 'Ah, Guardian, what have you done for me since that time!'
" 'But,' said he, 'that is not to be remembered now.'
" 'It can never be forgotten.'
" 'Yes, Esther,' said he, with a gentle seriousness, 'it is to be forgotten now; to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember now, that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel assured of that, my dear?'
" 'I can, and I do,' I said.
" 'That's much,' he answered. 'That's everything. But I must not take that, at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts, until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send Charley to me this night week—"for the letter." But if you are not quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point, never send.'
" 'Guardian,' said I, 'I am already certain. I can no more be changed in that conviction, than you can be changed towards me. I shall send Charley for the letter.'
"He shook my hand and said no more."
For an elderly man, deeply in love with a young woman, a proposal on such terms is of course a great act of renunciation, self-control, and tragic temptation. Esther, on the other hand, accepts it under the innocent impression, "That his generosity rose above my disfigurement, and my inheritance of shame," a disfigurement that Dickens is going to play down thoroughly in the last chapters. Actually, of course, and this does not seem to have entered the mind of any of the three parties concerned—Esther Summerson, John Jarndyce, and Charles Dickens—the marriage would not be quite as fair towards Esther as it seems, since owing to its white-marriage implications it would deprive Esther of her normal motherhood while, on the other hand, making it unlawful and immoral for her to love any other man. Just possibly there is an echo of the caged-bird theme when Esther, weeping although happy and thankful, addresses herself in the glass, "When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all."
The interplay between Jarndyce and Woodcourt starts when Caddy Turveydrop is sick: " 'Well, you know,' returned my guardian quickly, 'there's Woodcourt.' " I like the skimming way he does it: some kind of vague intuition on his part? At this point Woodcourt is planning to go to America, where in French and British books rejected lovers so often go. Some ten chapters later we learn that Mrs. Woodcourt, our young doctor's mother who early on had suspected her son's attachment to Esther and had tried to break it up, has changed for the better, is less grotesque, and talks less about her pedigree. Dickens is preparing an acceptable mother-in-law for his feminine readers. Mark the nobility of Jarndyce, who suggests that if Mrs. Woodcourt comes to stay with Esther, Woodcourt can visit them both. We also hear that Woodcourt is not going to America, after all, but will be a country doctor in England working among the poor.
Esther then learns from Woodcourt that he loves her, that her "scarred face" is all unchanged to him. Too late! She is engaged to Jarndyce and supposes that the marriage has not yet taken place only because she is in mourning for her mother. But Dickens and Jarndyce have a delightful trick up their Siamese sleeve. The whole scene is rather poor but may please sentimental readers. It is not quite clear to the reader whether Woodcourt at this point knows of Esther's engagement, for if he does he hardly ought to have cut in, no matter how elegantly he does it. However, Dickens and Esther (as an after-the-event narrator) are cheating—they know all along that Jarndyce will stage a noble fade out. So Esther and Dickens are now going to have a little mild fun at the expense of the reader. She tells Jarndyce that she is ready to become the "mistress of Bleak House." "Next month," says Jarndyce. Now Esther and Dickens are ready to spring their little surprise on the little reader. Jarndyce goes to Yorkshire to assist Woodcourt in finding a house there for himself. Then he has Esther come to inspect his find. The bomb explodes. The name of the house is again Bleak House, and she will be its mistress since noble Jarndyce is abandoning Esther to Woodcourt. This has been efficiently prepared for, and there is even a belated tribute to Mrs. Woodcourt who knew everything and now approves the match. Finally, we learn that when Woodcourt was opening his heart to Esther he was doing so with Jarndyce's consent. After Richard's death there is just perhaps the slightest hint that possibly John Jarndyce may still find a young wife in Ada, Richard's widow. But at the least, he is the symbolic guardian of all the unfortunate people in the novel.
5. IMPERSONATIONS AND DISGUISES
In order to discover whether it was Lady Dedlock who asked Jo about Nemo, Tulkinghorn arranges it so that Jo is shown Hortense, her discharged French maid, veiled, and he recognizes the clothes. But it is not the same jewelled hand nor is it the same voice. Later, Dickens will have some trouble in plausibly arranging Tulkinghorn's murder by Hortense, but the connection, anyway, is established at this point. Now the sleuths know it was Lady Dedlock who tried to find out things about Nemo from Jo. Another masquerade occurs when Miss Flite, visiting Esther at Bleak House when she is recovering from smallpox, informs her that a veiled lady (Lady Dedlock) has inquired about Esther's health at the brickmaker's cottage. (We know that Lady Dedlock now knows that Esther is her daughter—knowledge breeds tenderness.) The veiled lady has taken, as a little keepsake, the handkerchief that Esther had left there when she had covered the dea
d baby with it, a symbolic action. This is not the first time that Dickens uses Miss Flite in order to kill two birds with one rock: first, to amuse the reader, and second, as a source of information, a lucidity which is not in keeping with her character.
Detective Bucket has several disguises, not least of which is his playing the fool at the Bagnets (his disguise being his extreme friendliness) while all the time keeping a wary eye on George and then taking him into custody after the two leave. Bucket, being an expert in disguise himself, is capable of penetrating the disguises of others. When Bucket and Esther reach the dead Lady Dedlock at the gate to the burying-ground, in his best Sherlock Holmes manner he describes how he came to suspect that Lady Dedlock had exchanged clothes with Jenny, the brickmaker's wife, and returned to London. Esther does not understand until she lifts "the heavy head": "And it was my mother, cold and dead." Melodramatic, but effectively staged.
6. FALSE CLUES AND TRUE
It might seem, in view of the growing movement of the fog theme in the preceding chapters, that Bleak House, John Jarndyce's house, would be the height of dismal bleakness. But no—in a structural move which is extremely artistic, we swerve into the sunshine, and the fog is left behind for a while. Bleak House is a beautiful, sunny house. The good reader will recall a clue to this effect that had earlier been given at the Chancery: " 'The Jarndyce in question,' said the Lord Chancellor, still turning over leaves, 'is Jarndyce of Bleak House.'
" 'Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,' said Mr. Kenge.
" 'A dreary name,' said the Lord Chancellor.
" 'But not a dreary place at present, my lord,' said Mr. Kenge."
While the wards are waiting in London before being taken to Bleak House, Richard tells Ada that he vaguely recalls Jarndyce as "a bluff, rosy fellow." But still, the sunshine and the cheerfulness of the house come as a splendid surprise.
The clues to the person who killed Tulkinghorn are mixed in a masterly way. Very nicely, Dickens makes Mr. George casually remark that a Frenchwoman comes to his shooting gallery. (Hortense will need these shooting lessons, but most readers will overlook the connection.) And what about Lady Dedlock? "I would he were!" thinks Lady Dedlock after her cousin Volumnia has gushed that Tulkinghorn has neglected her so that "I had almost made up my mind that he was dead." This is what Lady Dedlock is made to say to herself to prepare suspense and suspicion when Tulkinghorn is murdered. It may deceive the reader into thinking that Lady Dedlock will kill him, but the reader of detective stories loves to be deceived. After Tulkinghorn's interview with Lady Dedlock, he goes to sleep while she paces her room, distraught, for hours. There is a hint that he may soon die ("And truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger and the spade were both commissioned, and would soon be digging"), and his death should now be firmly linked up in the deceived reader's mind with Lady Dedlock; while Hortense, the real murderess, has not been heard of for some time.
Hortense now visits Tulkinghorn and airs her grievances. She has not been rewarded enough for her impersonation of Lady Dedlock in front of Jo; she hates Lady Dedlock; she wants employment in a similar position. This is a little weak, and Dickens's attempts to make her speak English like a Frenchwoman are ridiculous. She is a she-tiger, nevertheless, even though her reactions to Tulkinghorn's threats to have her locked up in jail if she continues to pester him are unknown at that time.
After warning Lady Dedlock that her release of the servant Rosa has violated their agreement to preserve the status quo and that he must now reveal her secret to Sir Leicester, Tulkinghorn goes home—to his death as Dickens hints. Lady Dedlock leaves her house for a stroll in the moonlight, as if following him. The reader may think: Aha! This is too pat. The author is deceiving me; the real murderer is someone else. Perhaps Mr. George? Although a good man he has a violent temper. Moreover, at a rather tedious Bagnet family birthday party, their friend Mr. George arrives very white in the face. (Aha, says the reader.) He explains his pallor by the fact that Jo has died, but the reader wonders. Then he is arrested, and Esther, Jarndyce, and the Bagnets visit him in jail. A nice twist occurs here: George describes the woman he met on Tulkinghorn's stairs about the time Tulkinghorn was murdered. She looked—in figure and in height—like ... Esther. She wore a loose black mantle with a fringe. Now the dull reader will immediately think: George is too good to have done it. It was, of course, Lady Dedlock strikingly resembling her daughter. But the bright reader will retort: we have had already another woman impersonating Lady Dedlock rather efficiently.
One minor mystery is about to be solved. Mrs. Bagnet knows who George's mother is and sets out to fetch her, walking to Chesney Wold. (Two mothers are in the same place—a parallel between Esther's and George's situation.)
Tulkinghorn's funeral is a great chapter, a rising wave after some rather flat chapters that have preceded it. Bucket the detective is in a closed carriage, watching his wife and his lodger (who is his lodger? Hortense!) at Tulkinghorn's funeral. Bucket is growing in structural size. He is amusing to follow to the end of the mystery theme. Sir Leicester is still a pompous noodle, although a stroke will change him. There is an amusing Sherlock Holmesian talk Bucket has with a tall footman in which it transpires that Lady Dedlock, on the night of the crime, when she left the house for a couple of hours, wore the same cloak that Mr. George had described on the lady he met coming down Tulkinghorn's stairs just when the crime was committed. (Since Bucket knows that Hortense and not Lady Dedlock killed Tulkinghorn, this scene is a piece of deliberate cheating in relation to the reader.) Whether or not the reader believes at this point that Lady Dedlock is the murderess is another question—depending upon the reader. However, no mystery writer would have anybody point at the real murderer by means of the anonymous letters that are received (sent by Hortense, as it turns out) accusing Lady Dedlock of the crime. Bucket's net finally ensnares Hortense. His wife, who at his orders has been spying on her, finds in her room a printed description of Chesney Wold with a piece missing that matches the paper wadding of the pistol, and the pistol itself is recovered by dragging a pond to which Hortense and Mrs. Bucket had gone on a holiday expedition. There is another piece of deliberate cheating when in the interview with Sir Leicester, after Bucket has got rid of the blackmailing Smallweeds, he declares dramatically, "The party to be apprehended is now in this house ... and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence." The only woman the reader thinks is in the house is Lady Dedlock; but Bucket means Hortense who, unknown to the reader, has come with him and who is awaiting his summons, thinking she is to receive some reward. Lady Dedlock remains unaware of the solution of the crime, and she flees on a route followed by Esther and Bucket until she is found dead back in London, clutching the bars of the gate behind which Captain Hawdon lies buried.
7. SUDDEN RELATIONSHIPS
A curious point that reoccurs throughout the novel—and is a feature of many mystery novels—is that of "sudden relationships." Thus:
a. Miss Barbary, who brought up Esther, turns out to be Lady Dedlock's sister, and, later on, the woman Boythorn had loved.
b. Esther turns out to be Lady Dedlock's daughter.
c. Nemo (Captain Hawdon) turns out to be her father.
d. Mr. George turns out to be the son of Mrs. Rouncewell, the Dedlock's housekeeper. George, also, it develops, was Hawdon's friend.
e. Mrs. Chadband turns out to be Mrs. Rachael, Esther's former nurse.
f. Hortense turns out to be Bucket's mysterious lodger.
g. Krook turns out to be Mrs. Smallweed's brother.
8. THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE BAD OR NOT SO GOOD CHARACTERS
It is a structural point when Esther asks Guppy to lay aside "advancing my interests, and promoting my fortunes, making discoveries of which I should be the subject.... I am acquainted with my personal history," she says. I think the author's intention is to eliminate the Guppy line (half-eliminated already by the loss of the letters) s
o as not to interfere with the Tulkinghorn theme. He "looked ashamed"—not in keeping with Guppy's character. Dickens at this point makes him a better man than the rascal he was. It is curious that although his shock and retreat at seeing Esther's disfigured face show he had no real love for her (loss of a point), his not wishing to marry an ugly girl even if she proved to be aristocratic and rich is a point in his favor. Nevertheless, it is a weak passage.
When he learns the awful truth from Bucket: "Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By-and-bye he takes his hands away; and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him." Here is a turning point for Sir Leicester, where for better or worse in the artistic sense he stops being a dummy and becomes a human being in distress. Actually, he has undergone a stroke in the process. After his shock, Sir Leicester's forgiveness of Lady Dedlock shows him to be a lovable human being who is holding up nobly, and his scene with George is very moving, as is his waiting for his wife's return. "His formal array of words" as he speaks of there being no change in his attitude toward her is now "serious and affecting." He is almost on the point of turning into another John Jarndyce. By now the nobleman is as good as a good commoner!
Lectures on Literature Page 16