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The Death of Lady Dedlock
I stooped down, and lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead. (820)
Harry Furniss
1910
13.7 cm x 9.8 cm, framed
Dickens's Bleak House, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Chapter 59, "Esther's Narrative" — facing XI, 800.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage."
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no meaning to them in any other connexion.
"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours."
I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead. [Chapter LIX, "Esther's Narrative," 819-820]
The discovery of Lady Dedlock's corpse serves as the climax of the plot involving Esther's discovery of her past and re-establishing her relationship with the woman who gave birth to her, but did not raise her. Ancilliary figures in the climactic scene, Detective Bucket and Dr. Alan Woodcourt (who joins them in Chancery Lane), try to protect Esther, but she has become psychologically strong enough to confront her mother's corpse in Tom-all-Alone's without their emotional support. Nevertheless, Phiz's dark plate and its derivative, Harry Furniss's 1910 lithograph, are suitable to the sombre mood of the recognition scene at the close of Chapter 59. Sir Leicester waits in vain with George Rouncewell for his wife's return.
Having pursued Lady Dedlock on her false trail north of St. Alban's, Esther and Bucket return to the neighbourhood of Chancery at 3:00 A. M. in search of news of a woman dressed like Jenny, the bricklayer's wife. At Snagsby's in Chancery Lane Bucket discovers that the servant girl has Lady Dedlock's letter, written in pencil and addressed to Esther at her guardian's, explaining her recent movements and final state of mind; it concludes with a heart-felt plea to the daughter she never knew as a child:
I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive. [1910 edition, 816]
From Snagsby's servant, they learn about a ragged woman who was looking for the graveyard where Nemo was interred at the beginning of the novel. Here, at the outer, iron-barred gate, Bucket and Esther discover Honoria Dedlock disguised as Jenny, dead on the pavement. However, whereas Phiz focuses on the dead woman's alienation, on her failure to cross the threshold and be reunited in death with the lover of her youth, Furniss emphasizes Esther's final meeting with her mother. The closure of the Esther-Honoria plot paves the way for Esther's move to London to help her girlhood friend Ada look after her husband, Richard Carstone, in his physical and psychological decline precipitated by his vain pursuit of the Chancery case, employing the devious Vholes. The moment realized in the serial is Esther's first glimpse of the corpse in the darkened archway, shortly before dawn:
At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground—a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying—Jenny, the mother of the dead child. [August 1853: 575-576]
The 1910 lithograph transforms the dark plate into a better-lit recognition scene as Esther, having just turned the woman's head, suddenly responds to seeing not Jenny's but her mother's face. Realizing the climactic, final line of the chapter, Furniss has moved in for the closeup, eliminating both the light above the archway, the archway itself, and the enveloping darkness. Esther cradles her mother in an act that bespeaks tenderness towards and acceptance of the woman who unknowingly abandoned her as an infant.
Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition composite woodblock wood-engraving features Esther and her mother at Nemo's burial place: She lay there, with one arm creeping around the bar of an iron grate, and seeming to embrace it. (1873). Right: Phiz's original serial dark plate of Lady Dedlock lying dead near the resting place of Captain Hawdon: The Morning. (August 1853).
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Created 25 March 2021