Bleak House

'Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,' she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, 'how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is – and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by telling him.'

'But would it not be adding to his unhappiness, to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?' said I.

'No,' said Miss Jellyby, softening. 'I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some care taken of them, then.'

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.

'It began in your coming to our house,' she said.

We naturally asked how?

'I felt I was so awkward,' she replied, 'that I made up my mind to be improved in that respect, at all events, and to learn to dance. I told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight; but I was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr. Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street.'

'And was it there, my dear–' I began.

'Yes, it was there,' said Caddy, 'and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up, and was likely to make him a better wife; for I am very fond of him.'

'I am sorry to hear this,' said I, 'I must confess.'

'I don't know why you should be sorry,' she retorted a little anxiously, 'but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion, and it might break his heart, or give him some other shock, if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed – very gentlemanly.'

'Does his wife know of it?' asked Ada.

'Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?' returned Miss Jellyby, opening her eyes. 'There's no such person. He is a widower.'

We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope 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. Turvey-drop 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. Turvey-Drop. 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 up-stairs – 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. Turvey-drop'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 Turvey-drop!'

I curtseyed 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 L

'O 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 Summer-son'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. O!' said the old lady, apostrophising 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 it? I did not think it necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

'A lady so graceful and accomplished,' he said, kissing his right glove, and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, 'will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish – polish – polish!'

He sat down beside me; taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And really he did look very like it.

'To polish – polish – polish!' he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers. 'But we are not – if I may say so, to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art;' with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—'we are not what we used to be in point of Deportment.'

'Are we not, sir?' said I.

'We have degenerated,' he returned, shaking his head, which he could do, to a very limited extent, in his cravat. 'A levelling age is not favourable to Deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), "Who is he? Who the Devil is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?" But these are little matters of anecdote – the general property, ma'am, – still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.'

'Indeed?' said I.

He replied with the high-shouldered bow. 'Where what is left among us of Deportment,' he added, 'still lingers. England – alas, my country! – has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of weavers.'

'One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here,' said I.

'You are very good,' he smiled, with the high-shouldered bow again. 'You flatter me. But, no – no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has – no Deportment.'

'He appears to be an excellent master,' I observed.

'Understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But there are things'—he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to add, 'this kind of thing, for instance.'

I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.

'My amiable child,' murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

'Your son is indefatigable,' said I.

'It is my reward,' said Mr. Turveydrop, 'to hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman,' said Mr. Turveydrop, with very disagreeable gallantry, 'what a sex you are!'

I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was, by this time, putting on her bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't know, but they certainly found none, on this occasion, to exchange a dozen words.

'My dear,' said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, 'do you know the hour?'

'No, father.' The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out, with an air that was an example to mankind.

'My son,' said he, 'it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three.'

'That's time enough for me, father,' said Prince. 'I can take a morsel of dinner, standing, and be off.'

'My dear boy,' returned his father, 'you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.'

'Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?'

'Yes, my dear. I suppose,' said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, 'that I must show myself, as usual, about town.'

'You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere,' said his son.

'My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.'

'That's right. Good-bye, father!' said Prince, shaking hands.

'Good-bye, my son. Bless you!'

Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket – and with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy – and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.

The father opened the room-door for us, and bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me: especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and suggested the possibility of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, 'Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend to Caddy.' I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln's Inn.

Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected, that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. 'He does it with the best intention,' observed Caddy, 'but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!' Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. 'Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl, who had any right to give herself airs,' said Caddy. 'I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!'

'There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,' continued Caddy, 'which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So I get a little practice with – who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet,' said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy's frock, 'but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but, on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma.'

The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. 'Caddy, my love,' I replied, 'I begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends.' 'Oh, do you?' cried Caddy; 'how happy that would make me!' 'My dear Caddy,' said I, 'let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters, and try to find the right way through them.' Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could, in my old-fashioned way, to comfort and encourage her; and I would not have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

By this time, we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded up-stairs, that there had been a sudden death there, and an inquest; and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door, to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. 'You look pale,' said Caddy, when we came out, 'and cold!' I felt as if the room had chilled me.