Bleak House
never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit, always
with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a
general feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in,
and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little
while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his
languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be
quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening.
I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only
have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been
bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at
me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a
constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to
cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing
naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box,
I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada relied on
having me next them and that they could never have talked together so
happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not
knowing where to look—for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy’s eyes
were following me—and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this
young man was putting himself on my account.
Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the
young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.
Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the
possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes.
Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I
felt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write
to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a
correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to
the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy’s
perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any
theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we
were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly—where I am sure I
saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful
spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The
upholsterer’s where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and
my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near
the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one
moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching
cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the
daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.
While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so
extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring
us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge’s cousin was a Mr. Bayham
Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large
public institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard
into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that
those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger’s roof, and
Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger
“well enough,” an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor’s consent
was obtained, and it was all settled.
On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr.
Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger’s house.
We were to be “merely a family party,” Mrs. Badger’s note said; and
we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in
the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a
little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,
playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,
reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.
She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,
and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her
accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there
was any harm in it.
Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking
gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised
eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He
admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the
curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands.
We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite
triumphantly, “You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham
Badger’s third!”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Jarndyce.
“Her third!” said Mr. Badger. “Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the
appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former
husbands?”
I said “Not at all!”
“And most remarkable men!” said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.
“Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger’s first
husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of
Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European
reputation.”
Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled.
“Yes, my dear!” Mr. Badger replied to the smile, “I was observing to
Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former
husbands—both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people
generally do, difficult to believe.”
“I was barely twenty,” said Mrs. Badger, “when I married Captain
Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am
quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I
became the wife of Professor Dingo.”
“Of European reputation,” added Mr. Badger in an undertone.
“And when Mr. Badger and myself were married,” pursued Mrs. Badger,
“we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached
to the day.”
“So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands—two of them
highly distinguished men,” said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,
“and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the
forenoon!”
We all expressed our admiration.
“But for Mr. Badger’s modesty,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I would take
leave to correct him and say three distinguished men.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!” observed Mrs.
Badger.
“And, my dear,” said Mr. Badger, “what do I always tell you? That
without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction
as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many
opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak—no, really,” said Mr.
Badger to us generally, “so unreasonable—as to put my reputation on
the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and
Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,”
continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next
drawing-room, “in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on
his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from
the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But
it’s a very fine head. A very fine head!”
We all echoed, “A very fine head!”
“I feel when I look at it,” said Mr. Badger, “‘that’s a man I should
like to have seen!’ It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that
Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor
Dingo. I knew him well—attended him in his last illness—a speaking
likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over
the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger
IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy.”
Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very
genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and
the professor still ran in Mr. Badger’s head, and as Ada and I had
the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full
benefit of them.
“Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me
the professor’s goblet, James!”
Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.
“Astonishing how they keep!” said Mr. Badger. “They were presented to
Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean.”
He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.
“Not that claret!” he said. “Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON
an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.
(James, Captain Swosser’s wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that
was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You
will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of
this wine with you. (Captain Swosser’s claret to your mistress,
James!) My love, your health!”
After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger’s first and
second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room a
biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser
before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the
time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,
given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
“The dear old Crippler!” said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. “She was
a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser
used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a
nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved
that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he
frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he
would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck
where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he
fell—raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire
from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes.”
Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
“It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo,” she
resumed with a plaintive smile. “I felt it a good deal at first. Such
an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with
science—particularly science—inured me to it. Being the professor’s
sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I
had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that
the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr.
Badger is not in the least like either!”
We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and
Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.
In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never
madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,
never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.
The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and
Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great
difficulty, “Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!”
when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.
Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,
that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other’s
society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be
separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we
got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent
than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my
arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.
“My darling Esther!” murmured Ada. “I have a great secret to tell
you!”
A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
“What is it, Ada?”
“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”
“Shall I try to guess?” said I.
“Oh, no! Don’t! Pray don’t!” cried Ada, very much startled by the
idea of my doing so.
“Now, I wonder who it can be about?” said I, pretending to consider.
“It’s about—” said Ada in a whisper. “It’s about—my cousin
Richard!”
“Well, my own!” said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I
could see. “And what about him?”
“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”