The Hummums

The Hummums is a lodging house in Covent Garden where Pip takes refuge for a night after being warned not to return home. Its oppressive bedroom becomes the setting for his sleepless vigil: the warning follows him into the room and gives shape to his fear for Magwitch and his uncertainty about the danger at home.

Setting and Accommodation

The Hummums could provide a bed at any hour of the night. After receiving the warning at the Temple gate, Pip turns toward Fleet Street, hires a late hackney chariot, and asks to stay there. The chamberlain admits him through a wicket and leads him to a ground-floor bedroom at the back of the building.

The room is cramped beneath a four-post bedstead that intrudes on both the fireplace and the doorway, leaving little space for the washing-stand. When Pip asks for a night-light, the chamberlain supplies a rush-light enclosed in a perforated tin tower. Its feeble, impractical light adds to the room’s confinement rather than dispelling it.

Pip’s Night at the Inn

Worn out and footsore, Pip cannot sleep. The room’s inhospitable atmosphere, the strange shapes around him, and the noises he attributes to its furnishings intensify his unease. The eyes he imagines in the patterned light seem to spell out the warning, and he cannot keep it separate from his thoughts.

His attention repeatedly returns to unanswered questions: why he must not go home, what has happened there, when he can return, and whether Magwitch is safe. Even memories of parting from Estella cannot dislodge the warning. As he begins to doze from exhaustion, it persists in his mind like a command he has to repeat in different forms.

Narrative Function

The Hummums is a brief refuge, but not a place of reassurance. Its available bed and shelter allow Pip to remain away from home for the night; its oppressive room, by contrast, magnifies the uncertainty that keeps him awake. The episode also marks a practical turning point: Pip decides that he must consult Wemmick before seeing anyone else, and that the question requires Wemmick’s private judgment rather than his professional one.