Readers who followed the serial publication of Bleak House (March 1852--September 1853) were met with a scene both grotesque and mysterious in the tenth installment of December 1852. At that point in the novel, Guppy and Jobling are shocked to find their rooms infected by some horrible substance: "A thick yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder." Upon venturing downstairs to Mr. Krook's quarters, they find no sign of the man, "but there is a smouldering suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling." Even more remarkable: "Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he IS here!" The dreadful scene leads to only one conclusion: Mr. Krook is dead from "Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died" (403; ch. 32). This episode of spontaneous combustion met immediately with criticism from scientist, philosopher, and literary critic George Henry Lewes. (1) Lewes protested the impossibility of such a manner of death in an article published in The Leader, sparking a public debate with Dickens, detailed in Gordon Haight's 1968 article, "Dickens and Lewes on Spontaneous Combustion." (2) Since then, other critics have joined the fray. Rarely has the significance of spontaneous combustion been in question--critics generally agree that the episode symbolizes Krook's association with the all-consuming Court of Chancery. More often at issue is whether the symbolism of Krook's death relies upon the credibility of spontaneous combustion, as Dickens's defensive response to Lewes seems to suggest. Dickens writes to Lewes that he must have "assumed that I knew nothing at all about the question--had no kind of sense of my responsibility--and had taken no trouble to discriminate between truth and falsehood." On the contrary, Dickens continues, "I looked into a number of books with great care, expressly to learn what the truth was" (Letters 7: 2829). Critics have argued that Dickens's mistaken belief in the possibility of spontaneous combustion does not affect its metaphorical importance (Levine 133; Denman 140). Some have offered scientific evidence contemporary with the novel in order to justify Dickens's defense of spontaneous combustion (Wilkinson 23247; Gaskell 2635). Others have suggested that plausibility actually does matter, arguing that a grasp of the full import of Krook's death requires a suspension of disbelief (Blount 211). More recently, Daniel Hack has asserted that the symbolism of Krook's death is most meaningful when read as a contestation of science as the supreme authority of truth (146). In response to Hack's point that spontaneous combustion undermines the authority of science (even as the public debate with Lewes apparently adheres to its standards of proof ), I will be arguing, rather, that Dickens subordinates empirical science to other forms of cognition. While it may seem that the debate about spontaneous combustion has been exhausted--that Dickens was simply obstinate or misinformed or both--I suggest that the question of spontaneous combustion in Bleak House is symptomatic of a larger contemporary debate that moves beyond the pages of fiction. Examining Krook's explosive death in the context of a Victorian discourse about creativity, art, science and morality, allows us to understand better what was at stake for Dickens in his exchange with Lewes, and why he had to insist science was on his side in order to make his case for the imagination.
