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Tulkinghorn on the Leads
Mr. Tulkinghorn sleeps in his turret, and has some leads outside on which his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
Harry Furniss
1910
14.7 cm x 8.6 cm, framed
Dickens's Bleak House, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, for Chapter 12, "On the Watch" — facing XI, 176.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room, and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time. He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?" [Chapter XII, "On the Watch," 163]
Left: The original Phiz introduction of the lawyer, The old man of the name of Tulkinghorn (January 1853). Centre: Fred Barnard's 1873 Household Edition illustration of the later scene in which the lawyer contemplates how to spring his trap on Lady Dedlock: A Bird of Ill-Omen (Chapter XLI). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s portrait of the Dedlocks and their confidential attorney in the full-page Diamond Edition woodblock engraving: Tulkinghorn on the Leads (1910).
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Created 28 February 2021