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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“Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!” whispers Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs. “Powerfully rich!”
“Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?”
“This gentleman, this gentleman.”
“So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I’ll hold a wager. Not bad quarters, either,” says Mr. George, looking round again. “See the strongbox yonder!”
This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn’s arrival. There is no change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were known.
“Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!” he says as he comes in. “You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant.”
As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper stands and says within himself perchance, “You’ll do, my friend!”
“Sit down, sergeant,” he repeats as he comes to his table, which is set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. “Cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!” Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him.
“Now, I can feel what I am about” (as perhaps he can in two senses), “Mr. Smallweed.” The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear his part in the conversation. “You have brought our good friend the sergeant, I see.”
“Yes, sir,” returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer’s wealth and influence.
“And what does the sergeant say about this business?”
“Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his shrivelled hand, “this is the gentleman, sir.”
Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and profoundly silent—very forward in his chair, as if the full complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, “Well, George—I believe your name is George?”
“It is so, sir.”
“What do you say, George?”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” returns the trooper, “but I should wish to know what you say?”
“Do you mean in point of reward?”
“I mean in point of everything, sir.”
This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed’s temper that he suddenly breaks out with “You’re a brimstone beast!” and as suddenly asks pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the tongue by saying to Judy, “I was thinking of your grandmother, my dear.”
“I supposed, sergeant,” Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one side of his chair and crosses his legs, “that Mr. Smallweed might have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?”
“Yes, sir, that is so,” says Mr. George with military brevity.
“Therefore you may happen to have in your possession something—anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders, a letter, anything—in Captain Hawdon’s writing. I wish to compare his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.”
“Noble, my dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his eyes.
“If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against your inclination—though I should prefer to have it.”
Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed scratches the air.
“The question is,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, uninterested way, “first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing?”
“First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing, sir,” repeats Mr. George.
“Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?”
“Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, sir,” repeats Mr. George.
“Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written paper tied together.
“Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,” repeats Mr. George.
All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner, looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
“Well?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “What do you say?”
“Well, sir,” replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, “I would rather, if you’ll excuse me, have nothing to do with this.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, “Why not?”
“Why, sir,” returns the trooper. “Except on military compulsion, I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne’er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr. Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my sensation,” says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, “at the present moment.”
With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on the lawyer’s table and three strides backward to resume his former station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed’s favourite adjective of disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words “my dear friend” with the monosyllable “brim,” thus converting the possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment
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