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

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“Does he teach?” asked Ada.

 

“No, he don’t teach anything in particular,” replied Caddy. “But

his deportment is beautiful.”

 

Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance

that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we

ought to know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was

that she had improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little

crazy old lady, and that she frequently went there early in the

morning and met her lover for a few minutes before breakfast—only

for a few minutes. “I go there at other times,” said Caddy, “but

Prince does not come then. Young Mr. Turveydrop’s name is Prince;

I wish it wasn’t, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he

didn’t christen himself. Old Mr. Turveydrop had him christened

Prince in remembrance of the Prince Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop

adored the Prince Regent on account of his deportment. I hope you

won’t think the worse of me for having made these little

appointments at Miss Flite’s, where I first went with you, because

I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she likes me.

If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would think

well of him—at least, I am sure you couldn’t possibly think any

ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn’t ask

you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would,” said Caddy,

who had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, “I should be very

glad—very glad.”

 

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 cut-glass 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 much 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.

 

“Oh, 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 strapped 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 veneration 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. Oh!” 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