Snugly nested in the rural village of Walworth, yet surprisingly close to London town - so that John Wemmick, the Aged's thirtyish son, can commute downtown to the law firm where he works - Wemmick Castle is a monument to Romanticism and its love of the Middle Ages, as well as to the Regency/Napoleonic era, as the Stinger testifies. John Wemmick, aside from being a lawyer downtown, does everything at Wemmick Castle: garden, do the repairs/home improvements, tend to the animals and to the vegetables, and of course to his old papa (as my parents and teachers can testify, tending to a disabled loved one, and knowing the meaning of "special needs," requires lots of love...)
"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own jack of all trades," said Wemmick, ... Moreover, the garden has an artificial lake with a bower (gazebo) on an island in the middle. No mention of ducks (is the lake too small?) but I imagine frogs and freshwater fish in both the moat and the lake.
It comes as no surprise that he wants Wemmick Castle to be kept by the Crown as a monument (maybe as a house-museum?) when the Wemmicks become extinct. But of cause the place and the people within are completely fictional...
The Aged is hard of hearing, and Wemmick has devised several at-home adaptations to make his father more comfortable. The Aged knows when Wemmick has arrived home because a little door in the wall opens to reveal his name. This contraption, a Wemmick invention, also includes the names of other frequent visitors to The Castle (including Miss Skiffins, the future Mrs. Wemmick - John's fiancée and later wife), and as Wemmick himself says, “It is both pleasant and useful to The Aged.”
Pleasant and useful — the two essentials of inclusive design. When Pip first meets The Aged, Wemmick says, “Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s what he likes.” And as the visit continues, Pip is encouraged to “give him a nod” and he obliges. The Aged P. is also delighted by the daily firing of The Castle’s canon, which Wemmick has knocked up for his enjoyment. And Dickens reveals that Wemmick’s lady friend, Miss Skiffins, has a high regard for The Aged.
The Aged’s disability does not exclude him from tender family care — even at the center of the household. Wemmick consistently thinks of ways to adapt The Castle for the comfort of the Aged, and does not seem to begrudge these changes to his daily life.
At his home, the law clerk is gentle with his disabled father, open, caring and warm — the opposite of his law-office demeanor. Wemmick's home is his castle, complete with a moat, a bridge, a turret, and a cannon to fire every night at nine o'clock. He has his own garden (with a gazebo in the artificial lake) a pig, and some rabbits and chickens, and continues to invent and improve on devices in his home and yard,
The Aged: He's a bit hard of hearing, but loves being nodded at and loves to lower the drawbridge. When he reads aloud, he reads a-LOUD. (I can relate: I'm not hard of hearing, but I have ADHD and APD - Auditory Processing Disorder - and I'm quite the loud talker, especially when EXCITED!) He loves his son a lot, and he helps us realize that Wemmick is actually a good guy.
And when Miss Skiffins becomes Mrs. Wemmick, she assumes the care of the chickens. She has a way with these fowls, and the eggs at the Wemmick Castle improve in quality with her tender loving care!
When I watched Great Expectations with Bonham-Carter as Miss Havisham, I fell in love with the Wemmicks, especially the Aged, and with Wemmick Castle, as a lover of the eccentric and of Romanticism that I am - but in other film adaptations, and in the Manga Classics tankobon, Wemmick Castle is a generic country estate and the Aged and the Stinger are nowhere to be seen (such a disappointment!)
- Pip goes to supper at Wemmick's house in Walworth and it is better than Disney World. Seriously. It puts Cinderella's château to shame. According to Shmoop: Saying that Wemmick's house is not only better than Disney World but also puts Cinderella's château to shame, is a humorous way of emphasizing how great it is.
Walworth, says Pip.”appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement." But our hero was in for a surprise when he came to Wemmick Castle!
Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with cannons.
"My own doing," said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; don't it?"
I (Pip) highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the queerest Gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham), and a Gothic door, almost too small to get in at.
"That's a real flagpole you see on the turret," said Wemmick, “and on Sundays I run up a real flag (the Union Jack). Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge (drawbridge), I hoist it up — so — and cut off the communication."
The bridge was a plank, and the moat it crossed was a chasm about four feet wide and two feet deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and not merely mechanically.
"At nine o'clock every evening Greenwich time," said Wemmick, “the gun (cannon) fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you'll say he's a Stinger."
The piece of ordnance referred to was mounted in a separate fortress (battery), constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella (for of course, gunpowder has to be kept dry!).
"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, “out of sight, so as not to impede the idea of fortifications — for it's a principle with me, if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up — I don't know whether that's your opinion."
I said, decidedly.
"At the back, there's a pig, and there are chickens and rabbits; then I knock together my own little (cucumber- and tomato-) frames, you see, and grow cucumbers; and you'll judge at supper what sort of salad I can raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, “ If you can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions."
Then he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece of water (with an island in the middle which might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet.
"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own jack of all trades," said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it's a good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? It wouldn't put you out?"
I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat; clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.
"Well, aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial and jocose way, “ how am you?"
"All right, John; all right!" replied the old man
"Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, “and I wish you could hear his name. — Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that's what he likes. Nod away at him, if you please, like winking ! “
"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while I nodded as hard as I possibly could. “This is a pretty pleasure ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept by the Nation, after my son's time, for the people's."
"However, having an infirmity - for I am hard of hearing, sir--" (said the Aged)
I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment.
" - Yes, hard of hearing; having that infirmity coming upon me, my son he went into Law, and he took charge of me, and he by little and little made out this elegant and beautiful property. But returning to what you said, you know," pursued the old man, again laughing heartily, "what I say is, No to be sure; you're right."
I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenuity would have enabled me to say anything that would have amused him half as much as this imaginary pleasantry, when I was startled by a sudden click in the wall on one side of the chimney, and the ghostly tumbling open of a little wooden flap with "JOHN" upon it. The old man, following my eyes, cried with great triumph, "My son's come home!" and we both went out to the drawbridge.
It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute to me from the other side of the moat, when we might have shaken hands across it with the greatest ease. The Aged was so delighted to work the drawbridge, that I made no offer to assist him, but stood quiet until Wemmick had come across, and had presented me to Miss Skiffins: a lady by whom he was accompanied.
Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was, like her escort, in the post-office branch of the Law service. She might have been some two or three years younger than Wemmick, and I judged her to stand possessed of portable property. The cut of her dress from the waist upward, both before and behind, made her figure very like a toy kite; and I might have pronounced her gown a little too decidedly orange, and her gloves a little too intensely green. But she seemed to be a good sort of fellow, and showed a high regard for the Aged. I was not long in discovering that she was a frequent visitor at the Castle; for, on our going in, and my complimenting Wemmick on his ingenious contrivance for announcing himself to the Aged, he begged me to give my attention for a moment to the other side of the chimney, and disappeared. Presently another click came, and another little door tumbled open with "Miss Skiffins" on it; then Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open; then Miss Skiffins and John both tumbled open together, and finally shut up together. On Wemmick's return from working these mechanical appliances, I expressed the great admiration with which I regarded them, and he said, "Well, you know, they're both pleasant and useful to the Aged. And by George, sir, it's a thing worth mentioning, that of all the people who come to this gate, the secret of those pulls is only known to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me!"
"And Mr. Wemmick made them," added Miss Skiffins, "with his own hands out of his own head."
While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she retained her green gloves during the evening as an outward and visible sign that there was company), Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him round the property, and see how the island looked in wintertime. Thinking that he did this to give me an opportunity of taking his Walworth sentiments, I seized the opportunity as soon as we were out of the Castle.
Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand, until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, and presently the Stinger went off with a bang that shook the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged - who I believe would have been blown out of his armchair but for holding on by the elbows - cried out exultingly, "He's fired! I heerd him!" and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.
The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under condemnation - upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, to use his own words, "every one of 'em lies, sir." These were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but as the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack.
There was a neat little girl in attendance (Mary Anne, the Wemmicks' only servant, who would be like a hemtjänst - my mother worked as one in her youth in Gothenburg, and other hemtjänst, also young and female, tended to both my grandmothers - BTW the White Rabbit's human maid was also called Mary Anne! Was it a stock name for maids in the Victorian era?), who looked after the Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the night. The supper was excellent; and though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling between me and the flagpole, that when I lay down on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all night.
Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from my Gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper...
The Interior of Wemmick Castle
Like its grounds, Wemmick's home, that “a crazy little box of a cottage," is a cosy contrivance, containing a “collection of curiosities . . . mostly of a felonious character."
These were agreeably interspersed among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged [Wemmick's father]. They were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which Pip had first been conducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but as the kitchen too, if Pip might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou (read: contraption) over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack. [Chapter 25]
“The Aged prepared such a haystack of buttered toast,” Pip tells us, “that I could scarcely see him over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked on to the top-bar; while Miss Skiffins (the future Mrs Wemmick, John's fiancée, a regular at Wemmick Castle) brewed such a jorum (quantity) of tea, that the pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and repeatedly expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment.”
However, as the passing references to agricultural and industrial work reveal – “he had constructed a fountain … which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet” – there is more to these passages than knockabout comedy because the world of work has not been entirely displaced from Wemmick’s home.
Mr Wemmick’s castle and his garden are escape mechanisms, places where he can be being creative and imaginative in ways that he can’t be at work (being a lawyer and all that). Thats a feeling I’m sure we can all sympathise with : that delight in getting home, metaphorically (indeed, literally, in Wemmick’s case) pulling up the drawbridge, and losing ourselves in the flowerbeds and the punch.
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
"Both flourishing thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure"
---
The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o’clock. The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge, in her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed.
“Halloa, Mr. Pip!” said Wemmick. “You did come home, then?”
“Yes,” I returned; “but I didn’t go home.”
“That’s all right,” said he, rubbing his hands. “I left a note for you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate did you come to?”
I told him.
“I’ll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy the notes,” said Wemmick; “it’s a good rule never to leave documentary evidence if you can help it, because you don’t know when it may be put in. I’m going to take a liberty with you.—Would you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P.?”
I said I should be delighted to do it.
“Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne,” said Wemmick to the little servant; “which leaves us to ourselves, don’t you see, Mr. Pip?” he added, winking, as she disappeared.
I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged’s sausage and he buttered the crumb of the Aged’s roll.
“Now, Mr. Pip, you know,” said Wemmick, “you and I understand one another. We are in our private and personal capacities, and we have been engaged in a confidential transaction before today. Official sentiments are one thing. We are extra official.”
I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already lighted the Aged’s sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow it out.
In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged’s sausage, and greatly discomposed both my own attention and Wemmick’s; for which I apologized.
”—by disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of thereabouts. From which,” said Wemmick, “conjectures had been raised and theories formed. I also heard that you at your chambers in Garden Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched again.”
“By whom?” said I.
“I wouldn’t go into that,” said Wemmick, evasively, “it might clash with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time heard other curious things in the same place. I don’t tell it you on information received. I heard it.”
He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set forth the Aged’s breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to placing it before him, he went into the Aged’s room with a clean white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman’s chin, and propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him quite a rakish air. Then, he placed his breakfast before him with great care, and said, “All right, ain’t you, Aged P.?” To which the cheerful Aged replied, “All right, John, my boy, all right!” As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these proceedings.
“This watching of me at my chambers (which I have once had reason to suspect),” I said to Wemmick when he came back, “is inseparable from the person to whom you have adverted; is it?”
Wemmick looked very serious. “I couldn’t undertake to say that, of my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn’t undertake to say it was at first. But it either is, or it will be, or it’s in great danger of being.”
...
“Of course,” said I.
“Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!” in a cheery shout.
“All right, John; all right, my boy!” piped the old man from within.
I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another’s society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate, and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected.
Miss Skiffins is Mr. Wemmick's love interest and, later, wife. She's very proper and always wears gloves. She doesn't lets Wemmick put his arm around her until they're married:
Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on Monday morning, and was received by Wemmick himself: who struck me as looking tighter than usual, and having a sleeker hat on. Within, there were two glasses of rum-and-milk prepared, and two biscuits. The Aged must have been stirring with the skylark (since dawn, when the skylark sings), for, glancing into the perspective of his bedroom, I observed that his bed was empty.
When we had fortified ourselves with the rum-and-milk and biscuits, and were going out for the walk with that training preparation on us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. “Why, we are not going fishing!” said I. “No,” returned Wemmick, “but I like to walk with one.”
I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off. We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly:
“Halloa! Here’s a church!”
There was nothing very surprising in that; but a gain, I was rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brilliant idea:
“Let’s go in!”
We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there.
“Halloa!” said he. “Here’s a couple of pair of gloves! Let’s put ‘em on!”
As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was widened to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong suspicions. They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady.
“Halloa!” said Wemmick. “Here’s Miss Skiffins! Let’s have a wedding.”
That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that she was now engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves, a pair of white. The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sacrifice for the altar of Hymen (of Marriage: nothing to do with hymens!). The old gentleman, however, experienced so much difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick found it necessary to put him with his back against a pillar, and then to get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them, while I for my part held the old gentleman round the waist, that he might present and equal and safe resistance. By dint of this ingenious Scheme, his gloves were got on to perfection.
The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in order at those fatal rails. True to his notion of seeming to do it all without preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself as he took something out of his waistcoat-pocket before the service began, “Halloa! Here’s a ring!”
I acted in the capacity of best man to the bridegroom; while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a baby’s, made a feint of being the bosom friend (maid-of-honour) of Miss Skiffins. The responsibility of giving the lady away devolved upon the Aged, which led to the clergyman’s being unintentionally scandalized, and it happened thus. When he said, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” the old gentlemen, not in the least knowing what point of the ceremony we had arrived at, stood most amiably beaming at the Ten Commandments. Upon which, the clergyman said again, “WHO giveth this woman to be married to this man?” The old gentleman being still in a state of most estimable unconsciousness, the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, “Now Aged P. you know; who giveth?” To which the Aged replied with great briskness, before saying that he gave, “All right, John, all right, my boy!” And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause upon it, that I had doubts for the moment whether we should get completely married that day.
It was completely done, however, and when we were going out of church, Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white gloves in it, and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more heedful of the future, put her white gloves in her pocket and assumed her green. “Now, Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, triumphantly shouldering the fishing-rod as we came out, “let me ask you whether anybody would suppose this to be a wedding-party!”
Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or so away upon the rising ground beyond the village green, and there was a bagatelle board (bagatelle: a Victorian billiards-like game, something between billiards and pinball, that led to the development of pachinko) in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick’s arm when it adapted itself to her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against the wall, like a violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that melodious instrument might have done.
We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined anything on table, Wemmick said, “Provided by contract, you know; don’t be afraid of it!” I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, drank to the Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as agreeable as I could.
Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook hands with him, and wished him joy.
“Thankee!” said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. “She’s such a manager of chickens, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs, and judge for yourself. I say, Mr. Pip!” calling me back, and speaking low. “This is altogether a Walworth sentiment, please.”
