Squire ‘Gumley’ Wilson
Picture a fog rolling over the Mersey. Liverpool docks half-hidden, ships sounding in the distance, the air thick enough to act as a disguise. A man pulls his coat collar high and lowers the brim of his hat. He gives a name that is not quite his own as he boards a ship bound for America. The image of Squire ‘Gumley’ Wilson travelling incognito, a fugitive slipping quietly from England, swallowed by fog and distance, does not quite match the man described by those who knew him. They remembered him as open, sociable and charming; a man of easy generosity and expensive habits. He filled a room rather than avoided it. Unfortunately, he also spent money more freely than he earned it. When the first instalments of Bleak House appeared in 1852, the fog provided a familiar motif. Dickens has it seep into his story, a metaphor for confusion and illusion. Three years earlier, Parliament had passed the Bankruptcy Act 1849, promising a more orderly system for dealing with insolvency. For thos...