Bleak House (2005) Episode Recaps 7-9

by The Adaptation Stationmaster

Episode 7

We learn right away in this adaptation which characters are responsible for Jo’s disappearance though we don’t exactly know how. Almost the first thing we see is Skimpole watching Esther and Charley search for him and smiling. Then we cut to Inspector Bucket in London telling Tulkinghorn that the boy has been discreetly removed. “Perhaps I was being overcautious,” says Tulkinghorn, “but the interests of one of our oldest English families is involved.”

Charley goes to wake Esther one morning and is horrified to find that she’s caught smallpox from Jo. In the book, it’s Charley that catches the disease from him and then Esther catches from it being the one to tend to her. I don’t blame the miniseries for simplifying that plot development though it does raise the question of why Charley is able to take care of Esther without being infected.

Keeping his composure with difficulty, Mr. Jarndyce explains to his staff that except for Charley no one is to go near Esther, not even Ada. Denis Lawson and Carey Mulligan powerfully convey their characters’ grief in this scene. It’s a great tearjerker. Less grieved is Skimpole who says, “if she does live, which is unlikely, she’ll be so horribly disfigured that any person of a sensitive disposition, such as myself, will find her too distressing a sight to bear.” Props to Andrew Davies, that sounds like exactly like something Skimpole would have said in the book. However, I find it hard to believe that Jarndyce wouldn’t get angry at him for saying it as Ada does. Maybe he’s just too devastated to respond.

Mrs. Rouncewell mentions Esther’s illness to Lady Dedlock. Ironically, she assures her “it’s not the Jarndyce one, my lady, the other one,” assuming that will make her feel better. This scene isn’t from the book but it’s a great moment as Lady Dedlock learns that her long lost daughter might be dying and is unable to even express her emotion.

Krook, red-faced, drunk and ranting to his cat, pours over Nemo’s old letters by night, trying to decipher whatever mystery Guppy is trailing. In the book, we never get much insight into Krook’s life goals. To the miniseries’ credit, this feels roughly like what Dickens would have written for him. Suddenly, something clicks in his mind and he’s able to read the words. But just as he’s celebrating, he spontaneously combusts. Yes, that’s right. (We only see the explosion in silhouette.) This is definitely one of the craziest plot points in Dickens. People even wrote to him while the book was being serialized and told him it was scientifically inaccurate. It would have been fairly easy for the miniseries to make Krook’s death something more plausible and mundane. Instead, they make it even more melodramatic with him finally achieving his goal only to spontaneously combust before he has even a minute to do anything nefarious with the information. More power to them, I say! While the character of Tony Jobling has been cut, Miss Flite and Mr. Snagsby comment on the unusual sootiness in the air outside Krook’s shop before Guppy finds the owner’s remains, just as Jobling and Guppy do in the book.

As they worry about Esther, Ada tells Mr. Jarndyce that Richard has asked about her in his letters. She also tells him regretfully that Richard intends to devote more of his energies to Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He’s breaking with Kenge and getting a lawyer of his own. Jarndyce isn’t happy about this but blames it on the curse of the long running suit rather than on Richard himself. In the book, we learn all this when Jarndyce explains it to Esther after she’s recovered. On the whole, I think the miniseries is right to show more scenes from the perspective of other characters rather than sticking to Esther’s point of view like glue. Still, it might have been nice to see her react to this news since she’s the main character.

Amusingly, at the inquest for Krook’s death, Miss Flite, acting as a witness, refers to Guppy as “that fine handsome young man.” In his testimony, Guppy portrays himself as the closest companion Krook had. It looks like he’ll be able to get his hands on the fateful letters when Smallweed suddenly appears and announces that his late wife was Krook’s brother, and his property goes to him. (“Put a guard on it! No one can touch it least of all that preening young villain from Kenge and Carboy’s!”) You’d think Smallweed showing up at the coroner’s court would make this plot twist even more surprising than in the book where he presumably does but we don’t see it. (Instead, we learn the news when he tells Guppy.) That was doubtless the idea behind the change. but for whatever reason, I don’t find it that way when I watch the episode. Still, it’s a great plot twist and it’s good to see Peter Guinness as the coroner again.

The miniseries doesn’t even attempt to portray Esther’s sickness from her perspective. We don’t get any of the surreal fantasies she has in the book. (“I seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy shore…Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads!”) That probably would have been a difficult thing to do in the medium of television, but I don’t think it would have been impossible. The BBC’s 2008 miniseries, Little Dorrit, which shared a screenwriter with this, portrayed its characters’ experience of falling into delirium very well.

Anyway, Esther mercifully recovers in time, but her face is horribly scarred. Well, sort of. This is one of the few things that I believe the 1985 miniseries did better than this one. (The others were the characterizations of Boythorn and Skimpole.) Esther’s pockmarked face certainly doesn’t look good but if you look up images of real-life smallpox victims on the internet, you’ll see they could be much more horrifying. Esther looks more like she’s suffering from chickenpox. (Along similar lines, Phil Squod appears considerably less ugly than Dickens describes.) She asks Mr. Jarndyce not to let Ada to see her like this just yet but Ada bursts into the room anyway and tearfully hugs her without so much as a flinch. In the book, of course, Esther doesn’t let Ada see her until after she’s been away at Boythorn’s for a while. That arguably made this moment more cathartic, but I sympathize with the miniseries’ desire to have more scenes with Ada and develop her relationships with the other characters more fully.

Guppy goes to Lady Dedlock’s London house to tell her the bad news about the letters he was supposed to retrieve for her. Amusingly, when she asks how Krook died, he decides to simplify things by just saying, “fire, my lady.” Just as Guppy is about to leave, Tulkinghorn appears and questions him about his business with the Dedlocks. Charles Dance is so awesomely creepy as this character. We actually gain a little liking and respect for Guppy for not folding under his interrogation.

Ada catches Esther up on what’s been happening while she’s been sick. She tells her that Jenny said a mysterious veiled lady came to her house and asked after Esther. She paid money for the handkerchief Esther had left with her as a memento. It’s unusual for the miniseries to only let us hear the characters talking about this, as in the book, and not dramatizing it. On the whole, I approve of the way this adaptation shows us things we’re only told about in the source material but I also approve of the way it doesn’t do that here. It makes for a nice change of pace, and I think viewers are smart enough to figure out the strange woman’s identity. Miss Flite visits Bleak House and also gives Esther some news, telling her that Woodcourt has become a hero, saving many people’s lives in a shipwreck. Later, we see Esther take out the pressed flowers Woodcourt gave her and sadly stare at her altered reflection in the mirror. Dickens practically giftwrapped this visual way of showing her thoughts for adapters. It’s effectively sad though I’d feel even sadder if I weren’t already starting to get used to Esther’s marks. Then again, maybe that’s appropriate since Esther’s friends quickly get used to them and we viewers are supposed to feel like her friends.

Tulkinghorn is intrigued to learn from Smallweed that Guppy is searching for something of Krook’s. He decides it’s time to summon Sgt. George to his office again. In the ensuing scene, Tulkinghorn is much more overt than in the book about the fact that he’s blackmailing George into giving him a sample of Capt. Hawdon’s handwriting. George acquiesces but gets a little threatening himself. (“You hold the lives of others very cheap, I think. If I were you, I should be fearful for my own.”) This, of course, is to make George a more believable suspect for the murder of Tulkinghorn later in the story. (In the book, he’s mainly suspected because Clamb or Clamb’s equivalent remembered Tulkinghorn calling him “a threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow” when he was really referring to Gridley.) Viewers can probably guess by now that someone is going to kill Tulkinghorn even if it’s not George. That might sound like a criticism, but I don’t think guessing that makes the miniseries less gripping than the book. If anything, it might be more so as we sit on the edge of our seats waiting for the sword of Damocles to drop.

Episode 8

George fiddles with his gun after cleaning it as if fantasizing about shooting someone. Then he looks at an old letter from Hawdon. Phil tells him to let Smallweed and Tulkinghorn “go hang” but to no avail. George says that Tulkinghorn will get what he wants though he stresses it will only be “this time.”

Just as Miss Flite is about to depart from Bleak House in carriage provided by Mr. Jarndyce for the occasion, she remembers to warn Ada that someone needs to hold Richard back from Chancery. “I know the signs, my dear,” she says. “I saw them begin in Gridley and I saw them end.” In the book, this moment comes in the middle of a long dialogue in which Miss Flite reveals that despite her seeming veneration for the Court of Chancery, she knows it makes its claimants addicts and ruins their lives. Since she hasn’t revealed that in this adaptation, her warning, while effectively ominous, feels out of character. That’s why the miniseries being so much faster paced than the book is such a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes it much more engaging to watch than the source material is to read. On the other hand, so many of the supporting characters lose the depth they had there.

Speaking of ominousness, Clamb gives Capt. Hawdon’s handwriting sample to Tulkinghorn. It matches Nemo’s.

Esther tries to distract Ada with light chitchat as she helps her dress, but she’s haunted by Miss Flite’s words. Esther assures her (and possibly herself) that Richard’s steady love for her will save him. Once she’s calmed down, Ada turns the conversation to Woodcourt and his heroism. Esther says she’s glad he never acted on any feelings he might have had for her now that’s she so unattractive. Jarndyce overhears this and speaks to her privately about her feelings later. She says that even if her face hadn’t been ruined, he would never have proposed to her because of his mother. I love the touch of Esther, sad as she is about this, not being able to keep from laughing a little when she remembers Mrs. Woodcourt. “I shouldn’t think there’s a man in the world who’d want to marry a pockmarked little nobody like me now,” she says with seeming casualness. Anna Maxwell Martin does a great job portraying someone who’s trying to be cheerful when she’s really not and partly succeeding. Mr. Jarndyce seems to be trying to work up to a proposal but by accident or design, she cuts him off.

Smallweed and Judy obsessively take inventory of Krook’s property. (Well, Smallweed does so obsessively. Judy is just obedient.) Guppy tells them that a female client of his would pay for any letters they find addressed to a Capt. Hawdon. Smallweed does a double take at that name. From what I remember, it’s not clear in the book how Tulkinghorn or Smallweed know to look for the letters at Krook’s. I can’t even remember how they came to suspect that Nemo was Hawdon. Anyone want to refresh my memory?

The Bleak House gang gets another invitation to visit Boythorn in Lincolnshire. Esther shamefacedly admits that she wouldn’t be comfortable having strangers see her “new self.” (You might say she’s shamefaced in two senses of the word. OK, that was a bad pun. Forgive me.) But she agrees after Ada suggest she wear a veil and Jarndyce relays Boythorn’s intent to tear his house down if she doesn’t come. In the book, when Esther makes this visit to Boythorn, he, Ada and Jarndyce are all absent at first. It seems like she doesn’t mind strangers seeing her scarred face so much as her friends, which I find more interesting but since there was less of Boythorn earlier in the miniseries than there was in the book, there’s something to be said for getting more of him here. Anyway, Mrs. Rouncewell tells Lady Dedlock, who had expressed an interest, that Esther is alive and in town but marked by the smallpox.

I love that this adaptation includes the brief bit from the book where Esther overhears a child (Lila Sharp) ask its parent (Alex Blake) why her (Esther’s) face isn’t pretty anymore. I wish it could have also shown that the child was no less fond of her for that. But the scene, which features Esther, Charley and Ada picnicking, does convey in a very short time what the books demonstrates with a long passage, that Esther is much happier than she was, thanks in part to the goodness of the villagers, but she still feels pangs of regret every now and then.

Before they retire to bed, Mr. Boythorn tells Esther and Ada the dark legend of the Ghost’s Walk at the manor at Chesney Wold, of a rebellious former Lady Dedlock whose footsteps can be heard on the terrace whenever calamity and disgrace are about to come to the Dedlock family. As I’ve mentioned, Mrs. Rouncewell tells this story early in the book and I would have preferred but there are fun aspects to this scene, mainly the way Ada is genuinely creeped out by the story, but Esther laughs it off and Jarndyce just rolls his eyes.

Clamb asks Tulkinghorn if Sgt. George’s debt is going to be cleared as they agreed. Tulkinghorn says no, Smallweed should let the matter rest for a month and then foreclose. (“Sgt. George is going to have to learn that there is a price to be paid for acts of defiance.”) This plot point isn’t in the book that I recall. Its obvious function is to give George even more reason to hate Tulkinghorn. The miniseries doesn’t verbalize the memory of Gridley as a reason for this, but it does give us the image of Sgt. George shooting at the gallery just as Gridley did, which may be meant to serve as a reminder for the viewers.

Esther, Ada and Charley explore the grounds of the manor to see the Ghost’s Walk. “If you see the ghost,” says Boythorn, “tell her Lawrence Boythorn would be happy to see disgrace and ruin for Sir Arrogant Numbskull and all his tribe!” (If he only knew…) The ladies do hear a footstep when they near the terrace, but it turns out to be that of Lady Dedlock. She sends Charley and Ada away so she can speak to Esther in private. Then she breaks down and confesses that she is Esther’s mother. She pleads for forgiveness, but her daughter is simply overjoyed to have finally found here. This scene is a powerful tearjerker that will make you want to hug your mom. As she tells Esther the story of her guilty conception and birth, Gillian Anderson conveys both grief and relief at finally being able to say the name of her former lover, James Hawdon. I don’t love Anna Maxwell Martin in the scene as much. Not that she’s terrible or anything. Maybe the fault lies in the way her character is written. It’s rather ridiculous for the intelligent Esther, having grown up in this culture and especially having been raised by a woman who told her that she and her mother are each other’s disgrace, to need it explained to her that they can’t see each other again and risk exposure. I suppose they have to provide exposition for those who aren’t versed in historical social mores, though I feel like if they’ve been watching this miniseries up to this point, those viewers would have figured the relevant ones out now. Still, a great tearjerker. Before we see Esther run sobbing back to her room, she vocalizes a thought she only has later in the book. “I am the one who will bring calamity and disgrace to the house! It’s true what Miss Barbary said! It would have been better if I had never been born!”

Episode 9

Lady Dedlock stares out a window. In the first episode when we saw her do this, the impression we got was that she was simply bored. Now we that we know what lies behind her mask, she comes across less as snobby or creepy and more pitiable. Rosa picks up on the fact that something is wrong and asks about it, but Lady Dedlock, of course, can’t tell her. In a parallel scene, Ada asks Esther why she was so distraught when she came back from the Ghost’s Walk. All Esther can say is that she’s better now and that Lady Dedlock wasn’t cross to her. “I thought we’d never have secrets from each other,” Ada says, hurt. “I hope this will be the last,” says Esther.

Boythorn announces that he and Jarndyce have to go away on business, leaving Ada and Esther alone at his house. Ada agrees to this a little quickly. Once they’re alone, she takes Esther to the local inn where they meet Richard, back with his regiment. As in the book, it’s heartwarming that Richard doesn’t bat an eye when Esther pulls back her veil. He may be going down a bad path but he still sees her real value.

Meanwhile, Jarndyce admits to Boythorn that he plans to propose to Esther. While there are early hints of his feelings in the book, most readers forget about them by the time he actually proposes. (With so much going on in the story, we can’t be expected to remember everything.) Here we wonder, as we don’t at this point in the source material, just how Esther will respond to this proposal. Near the end of the book, Mr. Jarndyce speaks to Esther of “the old dream I sometimes when you were very young, of making you my wife one day.” That sounds creepy to modern people and may have even raised a few eyebrows back in the Victorian period. The miniseries has him explicitly tell Boythorn this wasn’t a long-time plan.

Back at the inn, Esther expresses discomfort with Richard not feeling like he could visit Mr. Jarndyce. “Things are a little awkward at present between my guardian and me. All my fault, I daresay,” says Richard with disarming cheerfulness. It becomes clear though that he’s come to regard Jarndyce as the enemy due to their conflicting interests in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He praises his new lawyer in London, Mr. Vholes, who was introduced to him by Skimpole who’s also in the neighborhood. Ada fruitlessly tells Richard not to pursue the Jarndyce fortune at the expense of his military career for her sake; she doesn’t think it’s worth it. In the book, Ada writes that to him in a letter as Richard actually sees Esther before her at this point. Letters, of course, are more natural in a book than on television or film. It would have been nice for this scene to include Richard’s argument from the book that if the Jarndyce case corrupts everyone, it might have corrupted Mr. Jarndyce too. That was an argument that sounded just convincing enough that you could kind of respect Richard for believing it even though I doubt any readers actually bought it for a second. Later, Ada confides her naive plan to Esther of keeping Richard at the house so much that he’ll forget all about his cares in London. “I shall never give him up,” she vows, “no matter what happens!”

At Krook’s, Judy finds the bundle of letters addressed to Capt. Hawdon and Miss Flite gets into an argument with her new landlord, Smallweed. She scoffs at his declared plans of getting “getting younger sons of the aristocracy” to lodge at the shop, which makes her seem more mentally on the ball than she does in the book, but I did claim that this adaptation doesn’t give its supporting characters as much depth as the book does, so maybe it’d be inconsistent of me to object.

Skimpole and Vholes (Dermot Crowley) arrive at Boythorn’s. Vholes has come to inform Richard that his case is about to go before the court again. He admits that Richard being there won’t make a difference but “Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own interests and when a client lays down his own principle, I am obliged to carry it out.” The respectable bloodsucker that is Vholes is one of the most perfectly portrayed character in this adaptation and he has some real competition for that honor. He could have stepped right off the page. (Well, maybe he could use a few more pimples to make him absolutely perfect but that’s such a nitpick.) Esther and Skimpole talk, and she correctly figures that Vholes bribed him for the introduction to Richard. I have my issues with both Skimpole and Esther in this adaptation, as I’ve written before, but this scene between them is really great. I love that they kept Skimpole telling Charley he gave her father a great deal of business while was alive and could do the same for her brother if he ever set up in the same profession. Ada and Richard see Vholes from a distance and even without being able to hear anything they say, it’s clear that she’s less happy to see him than is he.

Speaking of bribery, Guppy goes to Krook’s shop and tries to get Smallweed to give him the letters his client desires. Whether he could have made him a big enough offer will never be known as Tulkinghorn suddenly appears. Again, give Guppy credit for not letting slip the name of his secret client. (If I were being grilled by Tulkinghorn, I’d crack like an egg.) He even puts up a little resistance when Tulkinghorn sends him packing. Not much of a resistance but a little one. In the book when Smallweed tried to blackmail Sir Leicester Dedlock, Bucket lamented that the later Tulkinghorn “held all these horses in his hand and could have drove ’em his own way,” but it’s not clear exactly how he could have done this. (I believe there’s only one private exchange between Smallweed and Tulkinghorn that readers witness.) Here Tulkinghorn gets Smallweed to accept two hundred and fifty pounds for the incriminating letters and agree to never tell anyone about them through sheer charisma. Actually, he intimidates Smallweed with a facial expression into handing over the letters before offering to pay him anything. That’s kind of lazy writing but Charles Dance is so great in the role that it works onscreen.

At his office, Vholes asks a trapped looking Richard to sign for some costs, assuring him that he has his “shoulder to the wheel” and that it’ll all be worth it. The book describes Vholes as looking at Richard “as if he were looking at his prey and charming it.” Dermot Crowley definitely captures that in this stomach-turning scene.

As Rosa helps her get ready for dinner, Lady Dedlock tells her that Sir Leicester is out of sorts because his candidate lost to Mr. Rouncewell’s candidate. (The miniseries doesn’t delve into all the amusing stuff Dickens wrote about Lord Thomas Doodle and the Right Honorable William Buffy, MP.) She herself is out of sorts because Tulkinghorn is coming over. “You don’t care for Mr. Tulkinghorn, my lady?” asks Rosa. If Hortense were to ask that, it would sound very suspicious, but it’s totally innocent coming from her. “No, I do not,” says Lady Dedlock, “I care for you though, Rosa. Very much.”

Boythorn and Jarndyce return. Far from being angry at Ada for going behind his back, Jarndyce is delighted to hear that Richard was in the neighborhood. He’s less pleased to hear about his hostility toward him (Jarndyce) and his growing obsession with Jarndyce and Jarndyce. (I was wrong before about him saying catchphrase about the wind being in the east for the last time. He says it again here.) He tells Ada he regrets not allowing her engagement to Richard as it might have motivated him to be more constant in his career. “You are his best hope now, Ada,” he says. Way to put undue pressure on her, Jarndyce! I feel like Davies just has him say this because he thought it would make the conflict between Jarndyce and Richard more interesting if the former were to feel he was wrong about something, not because it makes any sense.

The Court of Chancery breaks up again with no verdict on the Jarndyce case but plenty of more applications for cost. (Shocking, I know.) Richard is so visibly frustrated that his reaction draws the attention of the chancellor. (Not a big reaction, just a glance.)

After dinner, Sir Leicester rants against Mr. Rouncewell to Mr. Tulkinghorn. Tulkinghorn tells him a (fictitious) story about a townsman of Mr. Rouncewell’s whose daughter was a favorite of a great lady but who parted them when it became known that this lady had long ago had a child out of wedlock. Sir Leicester concedes that he’d understand under those circumstances. “But the fact of the matter is that such a set of circumstances could not possibly happen. The behavior you speak of would never have taken place,” he maintains, utterly failing to pick up on the tension between his lawyer and his wife.

Later that night, Lady Dedlock confronts Tulkinghorn in his room about her secret. She says she plans to run away rather than stay and face Sir Leicester and disgrace. He tells her that running away would reveal everything and her only choice is to stay quiet and wait on his instructions. This version of the scene arguably leaves Lady Dedlock with more dignity than the book’s does. We don’t see her lose her composure once she’s alone in her room again. On the other hand, it omits her insistence on standing by the window as she listens to Tulkinghorn, a great moment of defiance for her in the book. Actually, that’s kind of a pathetic act of defiance now that I stop to think about it. But it comes across as awesome in context. Anyway, the image of Lady Dedlock slowly making her way through the empty halls at night is a haunting one.