Bleak House

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Mr. Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold.

"Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If
any man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present
time as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have
pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his
head."

"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"
remonstrates Mr. Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in
the gig."

"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round."

That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round!
As though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming"
triangular!

"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be
all square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
perhaps of meaning too. "But I was disappointed. They never did.
And when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to
people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty
trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion.
And of any new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a
reference to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up.
Then what's a fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and
living cheap down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of
living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live
dear."

"Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks.

"Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers
have been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr.
Jobling. "They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are great.
Well," proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-
water, "what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"

Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise
than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.

"Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed--"

Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.

"--Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once
since you--"

"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. "Say it, Guppy.
You mean it."

"No-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.

"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have
mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately
thought of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?"

"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. "He was
not ours, and I am not acquainted with him."

"He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy
retorts. "Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with
him through some accidental circumstances that have made me a
visitor of his in private life. Those circumstances it is not
necessary to offer in argument. They may--or they may not--have
some reference to a subject which may--or may not--have cast its
shadow on my existence."

As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt
his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch
it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords
in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the
pitfall by remaining silent.

"Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be. They
are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove
this?"

Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.

"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, "--I mean, now,
Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
Snagsby."

Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed
checks him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem! Shakspeare!"

"There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.
"That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his
encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane?"

"I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling.

"You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"

"Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling.

"Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties
of late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it
the amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and
into a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room
to let. You may live there at a very low charge under any name you
like, as quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no
questions and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me--
before the clock strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another
thing, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice
and become familiar again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always
rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching
himself to read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to
me. He is a most extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but
what it might be worth a fellow's while to look him up a bit."

"You don't mean--" Mr. Jobling begins.

"I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
modesty, "that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't
make him out."

Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"

"I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out,
more or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and
secret (though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came
across. Now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a
soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and
whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed
pawnbroker, or a money-lender--all of which I have thought likely
at different times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of
knowledge of him. I don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when
everything else suits."

Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the
ceiling. After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their
hands in their pockets, and look at one another.

"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a
sigh. "But there are chords in the human mind--"

Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-
water, Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony
Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things
are slack, his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound
goes," will be at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr.
Guppy adds with emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon
his friend!"

The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!" Mr.
Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!" Mr.
Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!"
Mr. Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."

They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
"Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass
for old acquaintance sake."

"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an
incidental way.

"Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling.

"There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"

"No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have
died somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at
MY place!" Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to
die in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at
HIS place, I dare say!"

However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay.
Mr. Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat
and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He
soon returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and
that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back
premises, sleeping "like one o'clock."

"Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him. Small,
what will it be?"

Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and
hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and
six breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums
is eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and
six in half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"

Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run
his eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night
and to have disappeared under the bedclothes.

Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,
breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On
the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-
bottle and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this
liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they
open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.

"Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the
old man another shake. "Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!"

But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a
spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor
as he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy.

"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,
"it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."

"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking
him again. "Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty
times over! Open your eyes!"

After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his
visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on
another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens
his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as
insensible as before.

"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. "How are you, my Lord
Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little
matter of business."

The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the
least consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to
rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall and
stares at them.

"How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture.
"How do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope
you are pretty well?"

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at
nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face
against the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up
against it, and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The
air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the
combination of these things recovers him. He comes back pretty
steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking keenly at
them.

"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,
odd times."

"Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy.

"What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the
suspicious Krook.

"Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.

The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,
examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

"I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's
been making free here!"

"I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. "Would you allow me
to get it filled for you?"

"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. "Certainly I
would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door--Sol's Arms--the
Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!"

He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,
with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and
hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it
in his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.

"But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting
it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is
eighteenpenny!"

"I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy.

"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his
hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a
baron of the land."

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his
friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object
of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never
gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety),
takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of
him. "You'd like to see the room, young man?" he says. "Ah! It's
a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap
and soda. Hi! It's worth twice the rent, letting alone my company
when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice away."

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them
upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be
and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug
up from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded--
for the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as
he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other
famous claims on his professional consideration--and it is agreed
that Mr. Weevle shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle
and Mr. Guppy then repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where
the personal introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected
and (more important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are
secured. They then report progress to the eminent Smallweed,
waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, and
separate, Mr. Guppy explaining that he would terminate his little
entertainment by standing treat at the play but that there are
chords in the human mind which would render it a hollow mockery.

On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears
at Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes
himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters
stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the
following day Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of
young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a
hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for
window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging
up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth
of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.

But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next
after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only
whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The
Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty,
representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk
that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing. With
these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box
during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his
apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every
variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument,
fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and
is backed up by every variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the
result is very imposing.

But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness.
To borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and
read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are
shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is
unspeakable consolation to him. To know what member of what
brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and
distinguished feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no
less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives
him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of
British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy
marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in
circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious
destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle reverts from this intelligence to
the Galaxy portraits implicated, and seems to know the originals,
and to be known of them.

For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices
as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as
to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades
of evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is
not visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness
quenched in a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has
inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of
ink--and talks to Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the
court, commendingly, with any one disposed for conversation.
Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer
two remarks to Mrs. Perkins: firstly, that if her Johnny was to
have whiskers, she could wish 'em to be identically like that young
man's; and secondly, "Mark my words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't
you be surprised, Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at
last for old Krook's money!"

CHAPTER XXI

The Smallweed Family

In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one
of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth
as Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the
office and its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little
narrow street, always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in
on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of
an old forest tree whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as
the Smallweed smack of youth.

There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several
generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no
child, until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak
in her intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish
state. With such infantine graces as a total want of observation,
memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to
fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother
has undoubtedly brightened the family.

Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a
helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,
limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever
held, the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small
collection of the hardest facts. In respect of ideality,
reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is
no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's
grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a
grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single
butterfly.

The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of
Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting
species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired
into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's
god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of
it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in
which all the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he
broke something--something necessary to his existence, therefore it
couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. As
his character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity
school in a complete course, according to question and answer, of
those ancient people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently
quoted as an example of the failure of education.

His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of
"going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp
scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman
improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the
discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late,
as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious-
minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and marrying
late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins.
During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family
tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to
marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has
discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-
tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever.
Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and
that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have
been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something
depressing on their minds.

At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below
the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only
ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest
of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character
no bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's mind--
seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side of
the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while away
the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the pots
and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed's usual occupation to
watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a sort
of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when it
is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed's seat and guarded
by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with
which he is always provided in order that he may have something to
throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she
makes an allusion to money--a subject on which he is particularly
sensitive.

"And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's
twin sister.

"He an't come in yet," says Judy.

"It's his tea-time, isn't it?"

"No."

"How much do you mean to say it wants then?"

"Ten minutes."

"Hey?"

"Ten minutes." (Loud on the part of Judy.)

"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."

Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head
at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money
and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten
ten-pound notes!"

Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.

"Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man.

The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only
doubles up Mrs. Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's
chair and causes her to present, when extricated by her
granddaughter, a highly unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary
exertion recoils on Mr. Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into
HIS porter's chair like a broken puppet. The excellent old
gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black
skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated
appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands
of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and
poked and punched like a great bolster. Some indication of a neck
being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his
life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's
chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by
the Black Serjeant, Death.