# Captain Hawdon — Bleak House character guide

> Captain Hawdon in Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Nemo

**First appearance:** 0010-ix-signs-and-tokens

## Snapshot

A shabby, nameless lodger above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop, scraping a living as a law-writer—once a captain, now a man the world has finished with.

## Who they are

Known to his neighbors only as Nemo—Latin for nobody—Hawdon writes legal documents by candlelight in a squalid room and drinks himself toward an early grave. His death is the first crack in the novel's surface, drawing the coroner, the law, and eventually Mr. Bucket into a chain of inquiry that reaches the highest circles. His buried past, and the letters he left behind, make him the hinge on which the mystery of Esther's origins and Lady Dedlock's secret quietly turns.

## In the story

### [More Old Soldiers Than One](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/bleak_house_se/chapters/xxvii-more-old-soldiers-than-one)

Mentioned as the former officer under whom George served; his handwriting is sought by Tulkinghorn.

### [The Young Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/bleak_house_se/chapters/xxix-the-young-man)

Mentioned as the law-writer Nemo, whose death and old letters are central to Mr. Guppy's revelations.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/bleak_house_se/characters/captain_hawdon
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/bleak_house_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/bleak_house_se/characters