Bleak House
breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can
always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who
thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer’s establishment
is, in Guster’s eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes
the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with
its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant
apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook’s Court at one
end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses’
the sheriff’s officer’s backyard at the other she regards as a
prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil—and
plenty of it too—of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.
Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of
Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many
privations.
Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the
business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
licenses Mr. Snagsby’s entertainments, and acknowledges no
responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,
insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the
neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and
even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the
wives’) position and Mrs. Snagsby’s, and their (the husbands’)
behaviour and Mr. Snagsby’s. Rumour, always flying bat-like about
Cook’s Court and skimming in and out at everybody’s windows, does say
that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is
sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the
spirit of a mouse he wouldn’t stand it. It is even observed that the
wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining
example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with
greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more
than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of
correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby’s
being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk
in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the
sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a
Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were
old times once and that you’d find a stone coffin or two now under
that chapel, he’ll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and
Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of
the country out of telling the two ’prentices how he HAS heard say
that a brook “as clear as crystal” once ran right down the middle of
Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away
into the meadows—gets such a flavour of the country out of this that
he never wants to go there.
The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully
effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his
shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook’s Court. The crow
flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Garden into
Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.
Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in
nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still
remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman
helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,
flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache—as
would seem to be Allegory’s object always, more or less. Here, among
his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.
Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where
the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,
quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.
Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of
the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,
mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables
with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the
holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,
environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where
he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks
that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on
the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that
can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers
are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring
to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of
sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of
indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now
the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That’s not it. Mr.
Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.
Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory
staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and
he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.
He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened
with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no
clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.
His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be
drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious
instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the
stationers’, expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in
the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any
crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,
the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to
the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or
never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on
his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the
middle-aged man out at elbows, “I shall be back presently.” Very
rarely tells him anything more explicit.
Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came—not quite so straight, but
nearly—to Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby’s,
Law-Stationer’s, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in
all its branches, &c., &c., &c.
It is somewhere about five or six o’clock in the afternoon, and a
balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook’s Court. It hovers about
Snagsby’s door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one
and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into
the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door
just now and saw the crow who was out late.
“Master at home?”
Guster is minding the shop, for the ’prentices take tea in the
kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker’s two
daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two
second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
’prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely
awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won’t
grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.
“Master at home?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad
to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and
veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture
of the law—a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a
bit of bread and butter. Says, “Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!”
“I want half a word with you, Snagsby.”
“Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn’t you send your young man
round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir.” Snagsby has
brightened in a moment.
The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,
counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing
round, on a stool at the desk.
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby.”
“Yes, sir.” Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,
modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save
words.
“You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately.”
“Yes, sir, we did.”
“There was one of them,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly
feeling—tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!—in the wrong
coat-pocket, “the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather
like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I
looked in to ask you—but I haven’t got it. No matter, any other time
will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this.”
“Who copied this, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat
on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a
twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. “We gave this out,
sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that
time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to
my book.”
Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of
the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes
the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down
a page of the book, “Jewby—Packer—Jarndyce.”
“Jarndyce! Here we are, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby. “To be sure! I might
have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges
just over on the opposite side of the lane.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the
law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
“WHAT do you call him? Nemo?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo, sir. Here
it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight
o’clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine.”
“Nemo!” repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo is Latin for no one.”
“It must be English for some one, sir, I think,” Mr. Snagsby submits
with his deferential cough. “It is a person’s name. Here it is, you
see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o’clock;
brought in Thursday morning, half after nine.”
The tail of Mr. Snagsby’s eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.
Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.
Snagsby, as who should say, “My dear, a customer!”
“Half after nine, sir,” repeats Mr. Snagsby. “Our law-writers, who
live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but
it’s the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a
written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the
King’s Bench Office, and the Judges’ Chambers, and so forth. You know
the kind of document, sir—wanting employ?”
Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of
Coavinses’, the sheriff’s officer’s, where lights shine in Coavinses’
windows. Coavinses’ coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of
several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.
Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance
over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions
with his mouth to this effect: “Tul-king-horn—rich—in-flu-en-tial!”