Bleak House: Chapters 1 - 10

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

That's great Francis; it will be fresh in your mind :) Thank you.

[Piyangie]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Piyangie wrote: "I'm thinking of joining in as well. It's time for a reread. :)"

Great! The introduction by Vladimir Nabokov that both you and Daniela have, is I suspect, excerpts fr..."

Yes, it is, Jean. When I read the book for the first time, I skipped his intro. I read it only recently as a preparatoryfor this reading.

You do a wonderful job in leading the discussion, sharing additional interesting information which I (most of us maybe) would never have found for myself. So, I always try to join in with a group read here whenever time permits me. :)

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Thank you very much Piyangie :)

And thanks for the confirmation about Vladimir Nabokov's essay!

[Curt]

I think it's interesting that folks would act it out in the streets. Kind of like people dressing up like Hobbits or Star Wars characters. Different times, but people are pretty much the same.

[Natalie]

I love that they did that! I feel like it’s something that connects us through the ages. Being passionate about something just for fun, like people lining up for Harry Potter midnight releases at Borders. It’s always fun to geek out. 😄

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

And it brings it alive to us :)

[Anna]

Can't wait! <3

[Elisabeth]

Hi everyone,

I am going to try following along as well. I haven't read Bleak House for about 20 years, but have always counted it among my favorites. It will be lovely to read along with everyone and see what they think as I am rediscovering it myself. I have my ratty old copy with all my school notes in it -- but have ordered a pretty hardcover version just to make it that much nicer of an experience.

[Luffy Sempai]

Elisabeth wrote: "Hi everyone,

I am going to try following along as well. I haven't read Bleak House for about 20 years, but have always counted it among my favorites. It will be lovely to read along with everyone ..."

You don't say! Happy to read along with you and everyone else, Elisabeth. :)

[Rod]

Elizabeth, I still have an older Norton critical edition with great essays and historical material in the the back

[Luffy Sempai]

Rod wrote: "Elizabeth, I still have an older Norton critical edition with great essays and historical material in the the back"

How interesting, Rod! The oldest book I have is one of Erik Frank Russell, which I bought from my school library. The last date on the borrower's list, which is affixed to the first page of the book, reads 1998. That's my best shot at seniority :/

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Good to see you Anna and Elisabeth :)

We begin in 3 days time. Is anyone else reading this with us?

[Fiona]

I’m joining in, Jean. I have started Bleak House numerous times and struggled to get past the first few chapters. I’m really looking forward to this buddy read and am delighted to see some of my previous Dickens’ buddy readers are joining in too. Thanks for all the information in the intro.

[Luffy Sempai]

Fiona wrote: "I’m joining in, Jean. I have started Bleak House numerous times and struggled to get past the first few chapters. I’m really looking forward to this buddy read and am delighted to see some of my pr..."

Not being able to follow up with the book is something that we have in common. I am fairly confident of reading Bleak House piecemeal.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Lovely to see you Fiona :) Now you have commented, you'll get the daily updates once we start (and I'm sure you'll be fine. It's a great book!)

Anyone else to check in? We start reading and discussing on Saturday!

[John]

Fiona wrote: "I’m joining in, Jean. I have started Bleak House numerous times and struggled to get past the first few chapters. I’m really looking forward to this buddy read and am delighted to see some of my pr..."
I intend this to be a general comment (advice), hopefully not any kind of a spoiler! If you stick with it, Dickens engages in satire that I found funny, definitely not 'over the top'.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

That's lovely Lisa - please don't worry as I know you're just finishing one Dickens novel (and some other friends here are just finishing another!)

The links Nisa puts in at the beginning of each thread should help, and you can just comment whenever you like! No pressure, as this is a busy read with 60 in so far already! (though I do love to see what everyone thinks :) )

[Adrian]

Bionic Jean wrote: "We begin in 3 days time. Is anyone else reading this with us?"

I know I haven't joined in any reads yet, but I'm hoping to join in with this as it is one of my favourite Dickens TV series, so I really should read the book !!

[Luffy Sempai]

Adrian wrote: "Bionic Jean wrote: "We begin in 3 days time. Is anyone else reading this with us?"

I know I haven't joined in any reads yet, but I'm hoping to join in with this as it is one of my favourite Dicken..."

No worries. Here the book is less slow than the series on TV!

[Greg]

It looks promising that work will clear up in time for me to join. Undoubtedly I will fall behind at some point, but I'll keep up as long as I can. :)

[Bridget]

Greg, I'm so happy you can join in. I hope work stays clear for you; I understand oh too well how work stuff gets in the way of reading.
I am right now starting the first chapter - with a huge smile on my face.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Lovely! Welcome all recent comers. It's fantastic to see so many (65 so far!) joining in :)

I'm putting this thread in the current folder ready, but locking it for a few hours, since we've had lots of preamble now.

Those who have not done so already, please read the first six comments at the beginning of the thread. Thanks!

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Installment 1:

Chapter 1: In Chancery

“LONDON. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.”

It is a miserable day in London, with rain, mud, filth and fog:

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.””

The fog is everywhere; it is everywhere; implacable and all-pervasive.

“Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.”

In the High Court of Chancery, the Lord High Chancellor sits “with a foggy glory round his head”. The solicitors and lawyers are “making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might” They are only mock serious.



Lincoln's Inn Old Hall Chapel and Chancery Hall 1830 - by Thomas Shepherd

One case:

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means.”

The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has long lost any relevance or meaning.

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession.”

A man from Shropshire struggles in vain to get his case heard. Another regular at the Court of Chancery, is a “little mad old women in a squeezed bonnet, who is always in court.” Some believe she is, or once was, a party to a suit, but no one really knows ”because no one cares“. She later “marches off with her documents”.

An application has been made to the Chancellor for a boy and a girl, who are associated with the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, to be put in the custody of a significantly older cousin. But nothing is yet settled. The court leaves the decision for another day, and adjourns.

“If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre—why so much the better for other parties than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!”

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

And a little more …

We are told that the Courts of Chancery always wins, with its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard …which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart“. This is heartfelt from Charles Dickens , who had experienced it recently, as well as when he was a court reporter in his youth.

Charles Dickens had won a suit against plagiarists in 1844, but he had to pay considerable legal expenses himself, because the plagiarists were declared bankrupt. John Forster writes about it:

“The pirates,” wrote Dickens to me, after leaving the court on the 18th of January, ”are beaten flat. They are bruised, bloody, battered, smashed, squelched, and utterly undone. Knight Bruce would not hear Talfourd, but instantly gave judgment … He said that there was not a shadow of doubt upon the matter. That there was no authority which would bear a construction in their favour; the piracy going beyond all previous instances.

Two days later he wrote: “The farther affidavits put in by way of extenuation by the printing rascals are rather strong, and give one a pretty correct idea of what the men must be who hold on by the heels of literature … ” He had sat up till three in the morning, he says, preparing his speech; and would have done all kinds of things with the affidavits.

... After infinite vexation and trouble, he had himself to pay all the costs incurred on his own behalf; and, a couple of years later, upon repetition of the wrong he had suffered in so gross a form that proceedings were again advised by Talfourd and others, he wrote to me from Switzerland the condition of mind to which his experience had brought him. “My feeling about the —— is the feeling common, I suppose, to three fourths of the reflecting part of the community in our happiest of all possible countries; and that is, that it is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong of the law. I shall not easily forget the expense, and anxiety, and horrible injustice of the Carol case, wherein, in asserting the plainest right on earth, I was really treated as if I were the robber instead of the robbed. Upon the whole, I certainly would much rather not proceed. And I know of nothing that could come, even of a successful action, which would be worth the mental trouble and disturbance it would cost.”

This partly explains Charles Dickens ’s vicious attack on Chancery when he wrote the first chapter of Bleak House. His resentment is obviously still smouldering!

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

NOTE:

“Michaelmas” here does not really relate to the Christian festival of “Michaelmas”, or only historically. That is on 28th September, but we are in November.

In the legal profession, “Michaelmas term” means the first of four terms into which the legal year is divided by the courts of England, Wales and Ireland. It’s also used by the oldest Universities (Oxford and Cambridge).

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

What an opening! The one word sentence: “London”, brought me up sharp, as if this was going to be the heading of a factual piece. We then move through an amazingly atmospheric description of the fog and filth. It chilled me to my bones, making me feel as if I were sinking deeper and deeper into the mire with each sentence. I thought it was really powerful. l’m tempted to say a London winter is still like that even now—with all the rain, mud, fog, smog, dirt and dreariness—but that’s a little bit of an exaggeration.

And of course Charles Dickens begins in the literal fog and gloom, because he wants to show us the Chancery “fog”. It is a strong metaphor for the events which are to follow in the story; all the characters and scenes are going to be shown through a sinister murk of fog. And if you didn’t enjoy it, and feel as if you’re grinding to a halt, don’t worry! Charles Dickens is deliberately creating this depressing feel of a dreary Victorian “London Particular” which swallows everything up, for a purpose.

A “London Particular” , by the way, was a regular occurrence at this time. The Sherlock Holmes stories often mention it too. It can also be called a “pea-souper”, and means a peculiarly thick London fog, where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. And there are very odd things hidden in the long description of this “London Particular”. A “forty foot long Megalosaurus”, where Londoners “slip and slide” and add “new deposits” to the crusts of mud which accumulates “at compound interest”. All this talk of money, and dinosaurs, must surely hint at something!

The Court of Chancery too, is like a Megalosaurus. In the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce people have been born into it, married into it, and died still in it. The Chancellor is addressed continually as “Mlud”. Is it too much of a step from there to “mud”? And from “Jarndyce” to jaundice?

I did enjoy the humorous names in this chapter—the way Charles Dickens defines, but also clearly make fun of the court and legal officials. We have “Chuzzle”, “Mizzle”, “Drizzle” and the aptly named “Tangle” … “who knows more of Jarndyce than anybody”. We needed those, and it reveals that however serious or doom-laden the events, Charles Dickens can’t resist throwing in a few frivolities!

So the first chapter has given us two strong metaphors, to indicate that anything to do with Chancery will be slow-going: the “fog” of the legal system (“Mlud”, is only one letter different from “mud”) and the foggy unknown future of the young people we are about to meet: the wards of Jarndyce, who will be steeped in this intellectual quagmire. It’s such a great parody of the Courts of Chancery, through exaggeration. There is a sort of “fog” about the entire story—all the myriad strands we are to follow. By now, with these middle novels, Charles Dickens knew exactly where he was going :)

One more thing … did you notice that the narrator is using the present tense? That feels really unusual.

[Luffy Sempai]

I could not grasp all of the meaning of the first chapter. Thank you for helping out. It will be plainer sailing once the following chapters are read.

London is no longer a Victorian city, but though it is now much more modern, some aspect of Dickensian London survives, and will survive until the climate changes a lot.

I liked this opening. I await further participations and reactions with curiosity.

[John]

I felt the present tense worked well for a 'You Are There!' effect, I'm not a visual reader, but was almost overwhelmed by the lack of clarity (brightness). Also, when (the name) Tangle was introduced, it were as though a, starting pistol had gone off '3-2-1...Dickens!'

[Paul]

Bionic Jean wrote: " “Tangle” … “who knows more of Jarndyce than anybody” "

and John wrote "... it were as though a starting pistol had gone off ..."

"Tangle" does double duty. Obviously, it's a name that we have come to characterize as Dickensian. But it's also a metaphor for the case itself. Who but someone named Tangle would have the greatest understanding of a case that is now all but impossible to understand?

[Paul]

Bionic Jean wrote: " (“Mlud”, is only one letter different from “mud”)"

Do you think that's intentional or is it reading too much into the narrative? I only got the impression that Dickens was making mock of the droning, self-righteous tone with which a lawyer reading one of the 18 briefs might address the court. Say it yourself in a low, slow voice and see how ridiculous it sounds.

Speaking of 18 briefs, for some reason a ridiculous picture of the judge playing Whack-a-Mole with his gavel popped into my head when Dickens referred to the 18 lawyers popping up out of their chairs.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Paul wrote: "Do you think that's intentional or is it reading too much into the narrative? I only got the impression that Dickens was mak..."

I postulated the question Paul, to stimulate discussion! I don't write set questions as that can put some members off, (I know it would me!) but there are questions which can arise naturally out of any comment :) Look at the next sentence:

"The Chancellor is addressed continually as “Mlud”. Is it too much of a step from there to “mud”?

But as for my personal opinion, it is yes. I believe it to be quite deliberate, or Charles Dickens would not have mentioned it so much. My later paragraph explains what I think the metaphor refers to: "the foggy unknown future of the young people we are about to meet: the wards of Jarndyce, who will be steeped in this intellectual quagmire."

Sorry, I don't know your reference - I suspect it's American. But isn't isn't it odd how Charles Dickens can throw out an idea which makes us make connections completely out of his time and culture?

I'm enjoying these comments, Luffy, Lisa and John.

[Sam]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Paul wrote: "Do you think that's intentional or is it reading too much into the narrative? I only got the impression that Dickens was mak..."

I postulated the question Paul, to stimulate discussio..."

This is my first post in the group beyond an intro in the welcome topic and I wish to acknowledge Luffy for a response to that post in beginning.

I agree with Bionic Jean on "Mlud," I think the whole chapter is rich in prose with suggestive connotations and with so much that I feel it is probably intended. Another example like that is, "Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice, arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog..." We automatically think frog and link the rhymes fog,frog, bog. This is very playful and clever prose and although we might misread some, I would be more worried of missing the intentional ones. Thanks again to Bionic Jean for the work to provoke these stimulating comments from everyone.

I thought Dickens use of megalosaurus was interesting and a google search of Dickens and dinosaurs yields some fun articles.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Sam wrote: "We automatically think frog and link the rhymes fog,frog, bog ..."

Lovely! Thanks Sam :) And I'm delighted to see you here.

"a google search of Dickens and dinosaurs yields some fun articles" Something to save for a rainy day. Charles Dickens's mention of the megalosaurus actually make me think of his views on Charles Darwin, but as it was only a metaphor, and a tenuous connection, I didn't bother to wrote a post about it. There will be better times, when it is more relevant.

In the meantime we are steeped in the murk, mud, madness and machinations of Chancery :)

[Paul]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Sorry, I don't know your reference - I suspect it's American. "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoP1E...

[Connie]

I also liked the Megalosaurus reference. It gives the impression of the court being mired in the ancient times of the dinosaurs when it needs to be modernized. It's also large and destructive, squashing everything in its path.

[Jenny]

Charles Dickens writes children particularly well, so I'm quite interested in learning more about these young wards.
Also Paul, yes I got that image as well!

[Anne]

The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce reminds me of the Circumlocution Office in Dombey and Sons in one sense: They are both government offices in which work goes on and on with no end in sight. In Dombey and Son this never-ending work is satired humorously by Dickens. But, though we're told that Jardyce and Jarndyce has become the joke of the legal profession, there's nothing humorous (so far) about the way the case is described. The atmosphere is dreary and, well, bleak. The case is enveloped in a literal and metaphorical fog through which no one can see, though people die trying.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Anne (On semi-hiatus) wrote: "The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce reminds me of the Circumlocution Office in Dombey and Sons ..."

Nice, and good to see you here, Anne!

Connie - exactly!

[Kathleen]

Love your intro, Jean, and I do really love this atmospheric opening.

I have a question about a line amidst these fog descriptions. "Gas looming through the fog ... has a haggard and unwilling look." How is it the gas could be seen? Or is he just referring to the light from the gas-lit lamps?

[Fiona]

The opening chapter sets the scene perfectly. It takes a bit of wading through but Dickens’ wit shines through the fog and the legal obfuscation and so I know we’re in for a great read.

Thank you, Jean, for your excellent summary.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Kathleen wrote: "Love your intro, Jean, and I do really love this atmospheric opening.

I have a question about a line amidst these fog descriptions. "Gas looming through the fog ... has a haggard and unwilling loo..."

The "gas" here means the gaslights in the shops and houses. So yes, you're right that it is "the light from the gas-lit lamps" - but not just the streetlamps. This was before any electric lighting.

Charles Dickens means that nothing has a defined outline in the reflected gaslight: passengers, horses, carriages or houses. They all look like ghosts.

"Haggard and unwilling" is personification. He means that that is what we would feel like, if we were there, so he attributes our feeling to the objects. Charles Dickens was the master at this, as you probably know :)

Thanks Kathleen and Fiona!

[Kathleen]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "Love your intro, Jean, and I do really love this atmospheric opening.

I have a question about a line amidst these fog descriptions. "Gas looming through the fog ... has a haggard ..."

Thanks for clarifying, Jean! And yes, Dickens' personification is one of my favorite things about his writing. But then I'll probably say that about 10 other things before we're through. :-)

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Me too :)

[Greg]

Just finished the first chapter:

I love how the Lord High Chancellor is first introduced! He appears with "foggy glory round his head," almost like an unholy halo. And his vision itself is blinkered by it as he gazes up at the roof “where he can see nothing but fog.” He’s described as a sort of patron saint of the fog.

Other images that struck me were the ”flakes of soot as big as full-grown snowflakes” and the wonderful wadding Megalosaurus that many have already mentioned. The whole chapter is so evocative! Love what you say Connie about the Megalosaurus.

I’ll admit that I did get confused by a sentence here and there, though I was able to get the gist. Sometimes I was able to piece things together by information that came later; other places, I still feel unsure about a sentence or two. For instance, the sentence:

”A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do.”

I think maybe this prisoner is trying to get a pardon or acquittal, which he has no hopes of because the people in charge of the case are mostly deceased? Did I understand that correctly? I still feel unsure of what exactly “fallen into a state of conglomeration” means though. Does that mean that the last surviving executor is just ceaselessly talking (conglomerating meaningless words)?

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

"In short", as the Victorians would say, yes Greg :) The "last survivor" is just putting together meaningless bits of information, and not understanding them, or having any hope of understanding them - and nor does anyone else.

In those few paragraphs Charles Dickens is actually giving a us a thumbnail sketch of some of the characters we will meet in the novel, without naming them. Another is "the man from Shropshire". And we will meet the little old lady with the "papers and the reticule" before the end of this installment.

So good to see you here!

[Lori]

Thank you Jean for all of the wonderful background information especially regarding Dicken's own hatred of the Chancery Courts. I also was thinking of the Circumlocution office as I read this chapter, however I think it's obvious how much different Dickens is going to treat the Chancery Courts compared to the Circumlocution office. This court will not be satirized lightly and made to seem a laughable institution as I think came across with the Circumlocution Office. Here, it seems that Dickens has put his foot down and staked his claim that there will be much worse divisiveness and deceit happening in the court. The last paragraph of the chapter is evidence of this (which I believe you have already quoted above):

...the empty court is locked up. If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre- why so much the better for other parties than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!

[Sara]

I love the atmosphere Dickens is able to create from the beginning of the novel. We know from the start that this is a mess through which even the sharpest eye cannot see, the fog blankets everything outside, and extends itself to the proceedings inside.

Greg - I took the conglomeration to be a tangle, bits and pieces cobbled together, that he cannot ever expect to untangle, since he had no knowledge of any of it in the beginning. The sentence you quoted is one that really makes you feel the weight of the injustice being meted out in this court.

Connie - love your thoughts on the dinosaur!

[Lori]

I am glad to know that we will meet the little old lady, Jean! I was taken by her and my heart just melted.

One other bit I noticed with Mr. Tangle was how very little he speaks - he doesn't waste his words and sometimes it seems as if I am filling in the blanks. For instance, what is he referring to when he says the grandfather of the boy and girl was a victim of rash action - brains.? Could this mean he has dementia and is unable to be the caretaker?

[Paul]

Bionic Jean wrote: "In those few paragraphs Charles Dickens is actually giving a us a thumbnail sketch of some of the characters we will meet in the novel, without naming them. Another is "the man from Shropshire". And we will meet the little old lady with the "papers and the reticule" before the end of this installment."

Ah, I never thought of that. I thought Dickens was just giving the court a little colour and spice by describing some of the hangers-on who perennially hang around trials and courtrooms.

[Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"]

Lori - You've picked up the bitter tone really well. Sometimes these institutions just seemed to hit a raw nerve, and yes, Charles Dickens found it difficult to ne completely frivolous in his humour. Savage satire is nearer! And you're right, he does warn us.

I'll have a look at that bit, and get back to you.

Sara - "the conglomeration to be a tangle, bits and pieces cobbled together,"

Exactly, and you've echoed "Mr. Tangle" there - nice!