Bleak House
whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his
sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for
compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.
Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy’s pardon with a kiss and
assuring him that she hadn’t meant to do it.
“That’s the state of the case,” said Caddy. “If I ever blame myself,
I still think it’s Ma’s fault. We are to be married whenever we can,
and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won’t
much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,”
said Caddy with a sob, “that I shall never hear of Africa after I am
married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.
Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it’s as much as he does.”
“It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!” said I.
“Very gentlemanly indeed,” said Caddy. “He is celebrated almost
everywhere for his deportment.”
“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 hair-brush, 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