Bleak House by Charles Dickens (best ebook reader for laptop .txt) 📕
Description
Bleak House, completed by Dickens in 1853, tells several interlocking story-lines and features a host of colorful characters. Though very difficult to summarise, the novel centers around the decades-long legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, involving the fair distribution of assets of a valuable estate. The case is mired in the legal quagmire of the Court of Chancery, whose byzantine and sluggish workings Dickens spares no effort to expose and condemn. Dickens also exposes the miserable condition of the poor, living in squalid, pestilential circumstances.
The novel’s heroine is Esther Summerson, whose parentage is unclear and who has been brought up by a cold and strict godmother, who tells her only: “Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.” On the death of her godmother, she is given an education through the unexpected intervention of a Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, whom she has never met. When she comes of age, she is appointed as a companion to Ada, one of two young people who are “wards of Chancery,” whose fates depend on the outcome of the legal struggle and who are taken into guardianship by Mr. Jarndyce. The other ward Richard, despite Mr. Jarndyce’s frequent warnings, eventually goes astray by pinning all his hopes on a successful outcome of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
We are also introduced to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, and to their cunning and suspicious lawyer, Mr. Tulkinghorn. He uncovers evidence that Lady Dedlock is not all she seems and determines to remorselessly pursue every lead to expose her secrets.
The novel has a curious construction in that the first-person narrative of Esther, written in the past tense, is interleaved with many chapters written from the omniscient viewpoint and in the present tense.
Several prominent critics such as G. K. Chesterton consider Bleak House to be Dickens’ finest novel, and it is often ranked among the best English-language novels of all time.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, “Now for it!”
“Ho!” cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. “Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?”
“For a pipe,” says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman’s nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him in diverse parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour’s rammer.
When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the fire.
“Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U—u—u—ugh!” chatters Grandfather Smallweed, swallowing his rage. “My dear friend!” (still clawing).
“I tell you what,” says Mr. George. “If you want to converse with me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can’t go about and about. I haven’t the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don’t suit me. When you go winding round and round me,” says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again, “damme, if I don’t feel as if I was being smothered!”
And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure himself that he is not smothered yet.
“If you have come to give me a friendly call,” continues Mr. George, “I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether there’s any property on the premises, look about you; you are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!”
The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her grandfather one ghostly poke.
“You see! It’s her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman won’t sit down like a Christian,” says Mr. George with his eyes musingly fixed on Judy, “I can’t comprehend.”
“She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot” (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), “but I need attention, my dear friend.”
“Well!” returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. “Now then?”
“My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a pupil of yours.”
“Has he?” says Mr. George. “I am sorry to hear it.”
“Yes, sir.” Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. “He is a fine young soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable.”
“Did they?” returns Mr. George. “Do you think your friend in the city would like a piece of advice?”
“I think he would, my dear friend. From you.”
“I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There’s no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a dead halt.”
“No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,” remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. “Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and—oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?” says Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his ear like a monkey.
Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has taken.
“But to pass from one subject to another,” resumes Mr. Smallweed. “ ‘To promote the conversation,’ as a joker might say. To pass, Mr. George, from the ensign to the captain.”
“What are you up to, now?” asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in stroking the recollection of his moustache. “What captain?”
“Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon.”
“Oh! That’s it, is it?” says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. “You are there! Well? What about it? Come, I won’t be smothered any more. Speak!”
“My dear friend,” returns the old man, “I was applied—Judy, shake me up a little!—I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my opinion still is that the captain is not dead.”
“Bosh!” observes Mr. George.
“What was your remark, my dear friend?” inquires the old man with his hand to his ear.
“Bosh!”
“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Mr. George, of my opinion you
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