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Mrs. Guppy's Indignation
Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy's mother, and took her, very much against her will, downstairs. (872)
Harry Furniss
1910
13.8 cm x 9.7 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Bleak House, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Chapter 64, "The Track" — facing XI, 864.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She wouldn't hear of it. "Why, get along with you," said she to my guardian, "what do you mean? Ain't my son good enough for you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!"
"My good lady," returned my guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask me to get out of my own room."
"I don't care for that," said Mrs. Guppy. "Get out with you. If we ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good enough. Go along and find 'em."
I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy's power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest offence.
"Go along and find somebody that's good enough for you," repeated Mrs. Guppy. "Get out!" Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy's mother so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out. "Why don't you get out?" said Mrs. Guppy. "What are you stopping here for?"
"Mother," interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, "will you hold your tongue?"
"No, William," she returned, "I won't! Not unless he gets out, I won't!"
However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy's mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and above all things that we should get out. [Chapter LXIV, "Esther's Narrative," 871-872]
Left: Phiz's only comic offering in the final double-number smacks of drawing-room farce: Magnanimous Conduct of Mr. Guppy (September 1853). Right: Fred Barnard's finalé of the Guppy proposal subplot: "Get out with you. If we ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good enough. Go along and find 'em." (1873).
The concluding, essentially comic scene exemplifies Dickens's "streaky bacon" technique of plot construction, as, having brought closure to all the other plot strands, Dickens here connects the comic marriage plot of William Guppy, his deluded mother, and boon companion, Tony Jobling (aka, Weevil) with the Esther's relationship with her guardian, John Jarndyce.
Esther and her guardian set out for the new "Bleak House" in Yorkshire accompanied by Allan Woodcourt, who is to take up his position as village physician there. Recognizing that he was wrong to impose upon so young a woman who also happens to be his ward, Jarndyce recants his marriage proposal. In fact, recognizing where her true sympathies lie, he encourages her to marry Woodcourt and to live in the new Bleak House. Meanwhile, back in London, Guppy renews his marriage proposal, which Esther firmly dismisses, much to the chagrin of the young man's doting mother. Jarndyce has to have her removed after she confusedly orders him to leave his own house — this is the mixed scene that Furniss describes, with a solicitous Jarndyce in the foreground and the servants removing the obstreperous Mrs. Guppy in the background.
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Created 25 March 2021