Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

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, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a

flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected

by an open door with Mrs. Jellyby’s room) and choking dreadfully.

It smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and

crying with the windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs.

Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about

Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief to

me, for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish

and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he

made Ada laugh so that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous

manner.

Soon after seven o’clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.

Jellyby’s advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very

deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We

had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and

a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak

of, but it was almost raw. The young woman with the flannel

bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table wherever it

happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the

stairs. The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have

been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door,

and there appeared to be ill will between them.

All through dinner—which was long, in consequence of such

accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle

and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young

woman in the chin—Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her

disposition. She told us a great deal that was interesting about

Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that

Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once.

Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies’ committees or

resolutions of ladies’ meetings, which she read to us; others were

applications from people excited in various ways about the

cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and

these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four

times to write. She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as

she had told us, devoted to the cause.

I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in

spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top

or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed

passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be

actively interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word,

he might have been a native but for his complexion. It was not

until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the

possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he

WAS Mr. Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with

large shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the

back of his head, who came in the evening, and told Ada he was a

philanthropist, also informed her that he called the matrimonial

alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and

matter.

This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself

about Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists

to teach the natives to turn pianoforte legs and establish an

export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saving, “I

believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one

hundred and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a

single day, have you not?” or, “If my memory does not deceive me,

Mrs. Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five

thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?”—always

repeating Mrs. Jellyby’s answer to us like an interpreter. During

the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head

against the wall as if he were subject to low spirits. It seemed

that he had several times opened his mouth when alone with Richard

after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, but had always

shut it again, to Richard’s extreme confusion, without saying

anything.

Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee

all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter.

She also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject

seemed to be—if I understood it—the brotherhood of humanity, and

gave utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was