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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“You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “but we can hardly call that a misfortune which enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe illness.”
“Ah! Little Miss Flite!” he said. “She lives the same life yet?”
“Just the same.”
I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to be able to put it aside.
“Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most affectionate creature, as I have reason to say.”
“You—you have found her so?” he returned. “I—I am glad of that.” He was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
“I assure you,” said I, “that I was deeply touched by her sympathy and pleasure at the time I have referred to.”
“I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill.”
“I was very ill.”
“But you have quite recovered?”
“I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness,” said I. “You know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to desire.”
I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He had gone out a poor ship’s surgeon and had come home nothing better. While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.
I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of Richard’s career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.
Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr. Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.
I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr. Jarndyce and to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret.
“I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I, “Do you think him so changed?”
“He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head.
I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was gone.
“It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.”
“You do not think he is ill?” said I.
No. He looked robust in body.
“That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?”
“Tomorrow or the next day.”
“There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I—how we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!”
“Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the first, “before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”
“God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”
Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let us meet in London!”
“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now but you. Where shall I find you?”
“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering. “Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.”
“Good! Without loss of time.”
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved mine in thanks.
And in
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