Bleak House
Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss
Summerson’s boxes and the rest of the baggage had been “sent round.”
Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting
to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
“Then it only remains,” said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, “for
me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the
arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss
Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the
(glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.
Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all
concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there.”
“Where IS ‘there,’ Mr. Guppy?” said Richard as we went downstairs.
“No distance,” said Mr. Guppy; “round in Thavies Inn, you know.”
“I can’t say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am
strange in London.”
“Only round the corner,” said Mr. Guppy. “We just twist up Chancery
Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes’ time,
as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain’t
it, miss?” He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
“The fog is very dense indeed!” said I.
“Not that it affects you, though, I’m sure,” said Mr. Guppy, putting
up the steps. “On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss,
judging from your appearance.”
I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at
myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the
box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and
the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our
destination—a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to
hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people,
principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped,
which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription
JELLYBY.
“Don’t be frightened!” said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the
coach-window. “One of the young Jellybys been and got his head
through the area railings!”
“Oh, poor child,” said I; “let me out, if you please!”
“Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up
to something,” said Mr. Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little
unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and
crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a
milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were
endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression
that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after
pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head,
I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could
follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to
push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and
beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I
had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down
through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last
he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to
beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in
pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I
don’t know with what object, and I don’t think she did. I therefore
supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised
when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and
going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me,
announced us as, “Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!” We passed
several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid
treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby’s presence,
one of the poor little things fell downstairs—down a whole flight
(as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we
could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child’s head
recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards
said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with
perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of
from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious
habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard
again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
“I am very glad indeed,” said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, “to
have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr.
Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of
indifference to me.”
We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where
there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair
but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The
shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair
when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we
could not help noticing that her dress didn’t nearly meet up the back
and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of
stay-lace—like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only
very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that
with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we
followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the
back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking
though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting
the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was
in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,
which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden
down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her,
from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right
place.
“You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing
in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), “you find me,
my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African
project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in
correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals
anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am
happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have
from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating
coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank
of the Niger.”
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very
gratifying.
“It IS gratifying,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “It involves the devotion of
all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it
succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know,
Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts
to Africa.”
This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I
was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate—
“The finest climate in the world!” said Mrs. Jellyby.
“Indeed, ma’am?”
“Certainly. With precaution,” said Mrs. Jellyby. “You may go into
Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into
Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
Africa.”
I said, “No doubt.” I meant as to Holborn.
“If you would like,” said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers
towards us, “to look over some remarks on that head, and on the
general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I
finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
amanuensis—”
The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to
our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
“—I shall then have finished for the present,” proceeded Mrs.
Jellyby with a sweet smile, “though my work is never done. Where are
you, Caddy?”
“‘Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs—’” said Caddy.
“‘And begs,’” said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, “‘to inform him, in
reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project—’ No,
Peepy! Not on my account!”
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen
downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting
himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity
most—the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you
naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I
interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor
Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very
much astonished at it and at Ada’s kissing him, but soon fell fast
asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he
was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in
detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the
momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all
other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so
little about it.
“Six o’clock!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “And our dinner hour is nominally
(for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss
Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps?
You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad
child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!”
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at
all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada
and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They
were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window
was fastened up with a fork.
“You would like some hot water, wouldn’t you?” said Miss Jellyby,
looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
“If it is not being troublesome,” said we.
“Oh, it’s not the trouble,” returned Miss Jellyby; “the question is,
if there IS any.”
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell
that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half
crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss
Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water,
but they couldn’t find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to
get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up
to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my
bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of
noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the
doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my
lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and
though the handle of Ada’s went round and round with the greatest
smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door.
Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be
very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red
Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as
mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of
the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug with “A Present from Tunbridge
Wells” on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick,