Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

by whom or when. From these

you came on Richard’s room, which was part library, part sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of

many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval

of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the

year round, with his window open, his bedstead without any

furniture standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his

cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that

you came into another passage, where there were back-stairs and

where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the

stable and being told to “Hold up” and “Get over,” as they slipped

about very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came

out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go

straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low

archway, wondering how you got back there or had ever got out of

it.

 

The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was

as pleasantly irregular. Ada’s sleeping-room was all flowers—in

chintz and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two

stiff courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of

a stool for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our

sitting-room was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls

numbers of surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures

at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been

served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole

process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists.

In my room there were oval engravings of the months—ladies

haymaking in short waists and large hats tied under the chin, for

June; smooth-legged noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village

steeples, for October. Half-length portraits in crayons abounded

all through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the

brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the

grey old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice,

in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen

Anne’s reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons,

with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing

fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, from the

wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the

pincushions and scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the

same quaint variety. They agreed in nothing but their perfect

neatness, their display of the whitest linen, and their storing-up,

wheresoever the existence of a drawer, small or large, rendered it

possible, of quantities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such,

with its illuminated windows, softened here and there by shadows of

curtains, shining out upon the starlight night; with its light, and

warmth, and comfort; with its hospitable jingle, at a distance, of

preparations for dinner; with the face of its generous master

brightening everything we saw; and just wind enough without to

sound a low accompaniment to everything we heard, were our first

impressions of Bleak House.

 

“I am glad you like it,” said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us

round again to Ada’s sitting-room. “It makes no pretensions, but

it is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with

such bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before

dinner. There’s no one here but the finest creature upon earth—a

child.”

 

“More children, Esther!” said Ada.

 

“I don’t mean literally a child,” pursued Mr. Jarndyce; “not a

child in years. He is grown up—he is at least as old as I am—but

in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless

inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.”

 

We felt that he must be very interesting.

 

“He knows Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “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!” said Mr.

Jarndyce.

 

“And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?”

inquired Richard.

 

“Why, just as you may suppose,” said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance

suddenly falling. “It is said that the children of the very poor

are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole’s children

have tumbled up somehow or other. The wind’s getting round again,

I am afraid. I feel it rather!”

 

Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.

 

“It IS exposed,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “No doubt that’s the cause.

Bleak House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come

along!”

 

Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in

a few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a

maid (not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had

not seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in

it, all labelled.

 

“For you, miss, if you please,” said she.

 

“For me?” said I.

 

“The housekeeping keys, miss.”

 

I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on

her own part, “I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone,

miss. Miss Summerson, if I don’t deceive myself?”

 

“Yes,” said I. “That is my name.”

 

“The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the

cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow

morning, I was to show you the presses and things they belong to.”

 

I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone,

stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my

trust. Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in

me when I showed her the keys and told her about them that it would

have been insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I

knew, to be sure, that it was the dear girl’s kindness, but I liked

to be so pleasantly cheated.

 

When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was

standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in

his school-time, of football. 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

neckkerchief 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.

 

I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been

educated for the medical profession and had once lived, in his

professional capacity, in the household of a German prince. He

told us, however, that as 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), he had never been able to

prescribe with the requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said,

he had no head for detail. And he told us, with great humour, that

when he was wanted to bleed the prince or physic any of 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! Well! So he had got on in life, and here he

was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making

fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of

art. 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. If I felt at all confused at that early time in

endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had

thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am

far from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why

he was free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted;

he was so very clear about it himself.

 

“I covet nothing,” said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way.

“Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce’s

excellent house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can

sketch it and alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I

have sufficient possession of it and have neither trouble, cost,

nor responsibility. My steward’s name, in short, is Jarndyce, and

he can’t cheat me. We have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is

a bright-eyed woman, of a strong will and immense power of business

detail, who throws herself into objects with surprising ardour! I

don’t regret that I have not a strong will and an immense power of

business detail to throw myself into objects with surprising

ardour. I can admire her without envy. I can sympathize with the

objects. I can dream of