The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “No sir,” I said, “I don’t think I shall.” Really not seeing on consideration why I should be.

  So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm, and we went round the corner, under a colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage, into a comfortable sort of room, where a young lady and a young gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, talking.

  They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, trusting face!

  “Miss Ada,” said Mr. Kenge, “this is Miss Summerson.”

  She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended, but seemed to change her mind in a moment, and kissed me. In short, she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner, that in a few minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the fire upon us, talking together, as free and happy as could be.

  What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could confide in me, and like me! it was so good of her, and so encouraging to me!

  The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth, with an ingenuous face, and a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire too, talking gaily, like a light-hearted boy. He was very young; not more than nineteen then, if quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were both orphans, and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the first time, in such an unusual place, was a thing to talk about; and we talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its red eyes at us—as Richard said—like a drowsy old Chancery lion.

  We conversed in a low tone, because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a bustle, and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had risen, and his lordship was in the next room.

  The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly, and requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next room; Mr. Kenge first, with my darling—it is so natural to me now, that I can’t help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black, and sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship, whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind.

  The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship’s table, and his lordship silently selected one, and turned over the leaves.

  “Miss Clare,” said the Lord Chancellor. “Miss Ada Clare?”

  Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near him. That he admired her, and was interested by her, even I could see in a moment. It touched me, that the home of such a beautiful young creature should be represented by that dry official place. The Lord High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pride of parents.

  “The Jarndyce in question,” said the Lord Chancellor, still turning over leaves, “is Jarndyce of Bleak House.”

  “Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.

  “A dreary name,” said the Lord Chancellor.

  “But not a dreary place at present, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.

  “And Bleak House,” said his lordship, “is in—”

  “Hertfordshire, my lord.”

  “Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?” said his lordship.

  “He is not, my lord,” said Mr. Kenge.

  A pause.

  “Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?” said the Lord Chancellor, glancing towards him.

  Richard bowed and stepped forward.

  “Hum!” said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.

  “Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,” Mr. Kenge observed, in a low voice, “if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable companion for—”

  “For Mr. Richard Carstone?” I thought (but I am not quite sure) I heard his lordship say, in an equally low voice, and with a smile.

  “For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson.”

  His lordship gave me an indulgent look, and acknowledged my curtsy very graciously.

  “Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said, and whispered. His lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again, until we were going away.

  Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can’t help it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor; with whom his lordship spoke a little apart; asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone; not seated, but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony—as if he still knew, though he was Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to the candour of a boy.

  “Very well!” said his lordship aloud. “I shall make the order. Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge,” and this was when he looked at me, “a very good companion for the young lady, and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the circumstances admit.”

  He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to him for being so affable and polite; by which he had certainly lost no dignity, but seemed to us to have gained some.

  When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go back for a moment, to ask a question; and left us in the fog, with the Lord Chancellor’s carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.

  “Well!” said Richard Carstone, “that’s over! And where do we go next, Miss Summerson?”

  “Don’t you know?” I said.

  “Not in the least,” said he.

  “And don’t you know, my love?” I asked Ada.

  “No!” said she. “Don’t you?”

  “Not at all!” said I.

  We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet, and carrying a reticule, came curtsying and smiling up to us, with an air of great ceremony.

  “O!” said she. “The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and don’t know what’s to come of it.”

  “Mad!” whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.

  “Right! Mad, young gentleman,” she returned so quickly that he was quite abashed. “I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,” curtsying low, and smiling between every little sentence. “I had youth and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of the three served, or saved me. I have the honour to attend Court regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray accept my blessing.”

  As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady, that we were much obliged to her.

  “Ye-es!” she said mincingly. “I imagine so. And here is Conversation Kenge. With his documents! How does your honourable worship do?”

  “Quite well, quite well! Now don’t be troublesome, that’s a good soul!” said Mr. Kenge
, leading the way back.

  “By no means,” said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me. “Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both—which is not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!”

  She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, “Youth. And hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!”

  CHAPTER 4

  TELESCOPIC PHILANTHROPY

  We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at Mrs. Jellyby’s; and then he turned to me, and said he took it for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was?

  “I really don’t, sir,” I returned. “Perhaps Mr. Carstone—or Miss Clare—”

  But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby.

  “In-deed! Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire, and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. Jellyby’s biography, “is a lady of very remarkable strength of character, who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry—and the natives—and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work, and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby.”

  Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.

  “And Mr. Jellyby, sir?” suggested Richard.

  “Ah! Mr. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, “is—a—I don’t know that I can describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of Mrs. Jellyby.”

  “A nonentity, sir?” said Richard, with a droll look.

  “I don’t say that,” returned Mr. Kenge gravely. “I can’t say that, indeed, for I know nothing whatever of Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very superior man; but he is, so to speak, merged—Merged—in the more shining qualities of his wife.” Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and tedious, on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already, Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would be at Mrs. Jellyby’s to convey us out of town, early in the forenoon of tomorrow.

  He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. 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!”

  “O 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 extraction 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 chil
d 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—