Bleak House: Skimpole

Leigh Hunt when not writing about jousts.

83, continued

Horace Skimpole "deceives Mr. Jarndyce into thinking he…is as innocent, as naïve, as carefree as a child. Actually he is nothing of the sort," and his "false childishness" accentuates the miseries of the real children.

"Eventually, Leigh Hunt (he) was immortalized as Horace Skimpole in Bleak House, Dickens confessing to a friend, "I suppose that he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words…It is the absolute representation of the real man." Paul Johnson, Intellectuals.

Horace Skimpole is, like Don Quixote (whom Nabokov will later compare him to), Jay Gatsby, and Holden Caulfield, one of those literary creations of whom, once you have read their story, you never forget them. For the first half of Bleak House, Skimpole is hilarious…part of what made me fall in love with Dickens again was reading the absurd ridiculousness of Skimpole's scenes, which made me laugh out loud in public places. In the second half, however, Skimpole, his personality and mannerisms unchanged, seamlessly transitions from comic icon to terrifying figure of destruction. And Dickens never makes a false move in the process.

This is in large part due to Dickens's aesthetic choices. Skimpole is introduced very early in the book, practically from the moment Esther, Ada, and Richard arrive at Bleak House…before the children whose pain will fuel our tragic empathy, Jo and Charley Neckett above all, make their presence known, thus deceiving us into accepting Skimpole at face value. More, if memory serves me well, Skimpole never appears in the 'Charles Dickens' chapters and is only included in Esther Summerson's portion of the narrative. Dickens would have laid merciless waste to him from the start, but Esther, with her gentle soul seeing the best in everybody, gives Skimpole the benefit of the doubt long after his monstrous nature has made itself known.

Jarndyce, who considers children "the finest creatures on Earth,' sees Skimpole as a fine man because of his seeming ingenuity and total devotion to what he believes in: a life of artistic pursuits and little else, to the end where he declares the world can basically go to hell as longs as it "lets Horace Skimpole live!" But he never is shown working at literature, art, or composition. Instead, Skimpole sponges off the generosity of Jarndyce and others while talking up big ideas.

Skimpole's malevolent tendencies are observed early on, and self-described. From the "child's" own testimony, he was fired from his position as a royal doctor because he didn't like to treat anybody. He has a wife and three daughters but spends little time with them and does nothing to support them. And there is a menacing hint behind all our laughter every time Skimpole, in all reasonableness, agrees with his persecutors that yes, he is a debtor, a wastrel, and a dissolute bad example…but don't blame him! He is a child, after all! There was a line in the last season finale of Lost where Frank Lapidus tells Richard Alpert's ragtag group of American allies "I've found that people who have to say they're the good guys usually aren't that good." So with Skimpole's constant self-identification as a child.

Dickens builds these qualities up to a point where Skimpole becomes one of the piece's villains, maybe the worst because, if apathy is the cardinal sin, Skimpole is the most apathetic of all. At least Tulkinghorn is considering Sir Leicester's welfare in his actions and the Smallweeds include each other in their cutthroat striving for success. Skimpole truly believes that as long as Horace Skimpole is alive and well and happy, he has no reason to think of anything else. His incorrigible behavior helps bring about "Coavinses"'s death, orphaning his children. He sends Jo away from Bleak House, where Esther could have taken care of him in his ill, weakened state, so as to avoid Mr. Bucket's attentions and keep his health well. This action will ultimately kill the poor boy. And worst of all, he speeds along the needless trials and death of Richard Carstone. Richard shows a Skimpole-like attitude to life from the beginning in his desultory picking at occupations and willingness to take Mr. Jarndyce's money and resources and consent to marry Ada without giving anything in return. Then he begins listening to Skimpole, who urges him to sue Jarndyce, engage the deadly dispassionate Mr. Vholes, and give no thought to financial resources. Richard's trust in Skimpole becomes so complete that neither can be moved even by the most earnest supplications. When all is said and done, even ESTHER cannot tolerate him, putting down his autobiography (which from context clues has him show no remorse for Jo or Richard) when he calls Mr. Jarndyce one of the most selfish men in the world from the beginning.

When Esther Summerson cannot think well of you, that says something.

Horace Skimpole was one of Dickens's most well-considered characters. The novelist needed a figure with no connection to Chancery who could epitomize the spreading apathy of society…for to only use Krook would have centered apathy in the legal system. Even today, the public is willing to take maladjusted behavior from public figures in stride (the O.J. Simpson case, for instance) because of their abilities to do things which are not socially useful but are creative and, in that way, magnificent. The line between the truly artistic and those who are not really artistic but can reach a semblance of artistic talent or, worse, convincingly pretend they are artistic, is a hard one to draw. Skimpole anticipates celebrity culture and undue worship of the intellectual. "Let Horace Skimpole live!" Why?

(I knew about Leigh Hunt back in Boardman, when his slightly ridiculous but actually good poem "The Glove and the Lions" was included in my middle-school literature textbook. I remember the message about human selfishness, and that his biography mentioned he was jailed for three years for insulting the Regent. Paul Johnson accuses him of helping to destroy Shelley along the same lines Skimpole destroyed Richard.)