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Skimpole and the Stranger
"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on the fly-leaf of a book.
Harry Furniss
1910
14.5 cm x 9.8 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Bleak House, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Chapter 6, "Quite at Home" — facing XI, 97.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large amount of property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both, could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their power that would settle this?"
"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
"Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is no judge of these things!"
"Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on it!"
"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on the fly-leaf of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious."
The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he did not express to me. [Chapter VI, "Quite at Home," 76]
Just as he could not help parodying Leigh Hunt or ridiculing his own mother, so he could not help but put down in writing that which preoccupied him. He never really paused to consider its effect on others. . . . [Ackroyd 808]
James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784 – 28 August 1859), an English critic, essayist and poet, inspired aspects of the Harold Skimpole character in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Dickens's illustrators Phiz, Barnard, and Furniss were likely aware of the connection. Although Skimpole, like Hunt, prides himself on his aetherial, otherworldly Romantic imagination, Dickens renders him a charming humbug, a poser and leech. Since Hunt, like Dickens's father, was a chronic debtor, Dickens is of two minds about Skimpole, but chooses to penetrate the jovial facade to expose what lies beneath. John Dickens was at least a caring and considerate father, but there is something hypocritical about Skimpole's preening himself on the powers of his imagination while he relies upon friends to supplement his insufficient income as a literary figure. To expose this hypocrisy, when Skimpole asserts the simplicity and limitation of his desires, Dickens substitutes material pleasures for the aesthetic joys of the imagination. The character might pretend that his breakfast is nothing but a meal of transcendental sunbeams, but the novelist enumerates the costly items behind the fancy. Hunt was a contributor to Household Words (1851-59). Hunt’s obituary-writer commented that “Some people will be surprised to hear not only that Leigh Hunt is dead, but that he only died on Sunday last ... he was one of a generation long since passed away.” Dickens may have made use of Hunt as a topical reference since he had just published Table Talk, which Dickens employs to create Skimpole's distinctive "voice." Hunt and Dickens may have met through Thomas Carlyle, to whom Hunt presented a copy of Christianism (1832), and who subsequently became Hunt's next-door neighbour when Hunt moved to Cheyne Row.
The point is that Dickens could not really help doing it. The picture of Harold Skimpole was so right for Bleak House that Dickens could no more have changed it than he could have abandoned the novel itself. He was always notoriously sure of the accuracy of his own perceptions, but he was also equally sure of the rightness of his literary judgment. The twin themes of irresponsibility and neglect run everywhere through Bleak House, and Skimpole is an intrinsic part of a much larger design. He had to go in, and the force of this creative compulsion should never be underestimated: the fact that Dickens made no attempt to mitigate the severity of the portrait is only one indication of the extent to which he felt driven to write in this manner. He simply could not stop himself from doing it. [Ackroyd 652]
In a letter of 25 September 1853 to John Forster, Dickens admitted that Hunt had inspired the character of Harold (originally, "Leonard") Skimpole: "I suppose he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words! ... It is an absolute reproduction of a real man". A contemporary critic commented, "I recognized Skimpole instantaneously; ... and so did every person whom I talked with about it who had ever had Leigh Hunt's acquaintance" (cited in Page, p. 955: note 2 to Chapter 6). G. K. Chesterton suggested that Dickens "May never once have had the unfriendly thought, "Suppose Hunt behaved like a rascal!'; he may have only had the fanciful thought, "Suppose a rascal behaved like Hunt!'" (Chesterton 1906). Although everyone in their circle seems to have recognized Hunt in the character of Skimpole, neither Phiz nor Furniss has produced a portrait of the character that much resembles the original facially, perhaps because they regarded Skimpole as a projection of Dickens himself rather than simply a burlesque of Hunt.
Just as Harold Skimpole was part of his own self; that is why he went almost blindly forward with the characterisation, for in the heat of composition (and we have seen how sometimes he mouthed words in the mirror before he wrote them down), he was Skimpole and had to exorcise him. [Ackroyd 653]
Left: Sir George Frampton's realistic portrait of Hunt in a low-relief sculpture does not resemble various illustrators' versions of Skimpole: The Leigh Hunt Memorial (1897). Centre: Phiz's original illustration of Skimpole and the sheriff's bailiff: Covinses (April 1852). Right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's lively study of the charming musician: Harold Skimpole (1867).
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Created 16 February 2021