Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

Preface

I. In Chancery

II. In Fashion

III. A Progress

IV. Telescopic Philanthropy

V. A Morning Adventure

VI. Quite at Home

VII. The Ghost’s Walk

VIII. Covering a Multitude of Sins

IX. Signs and Tokens

X. The Law-Writer

XI. Our Dear Brother

XII. On the Watch

XIII. Esther’s Narrative

XIV. Deportment

XV. Bell Yard

XVI. Tom-all-Alone’s

XVII. Esther’s Narrative

XVIII. Lady Dedlock

XIX. Moving On

XX. A New Lodger

XXI. The Smallweed Family

XXII. Mr. Bucket

XXIII. Esther’s Narrative

XXIV. An Appeal Case

XXV. Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All

XXVI. Sharpshooters

XXVII. More Old Soldiers Than One

XXVIII. The Ironmaster

XXIX. The Young Man

XXX. Esther’s Narrative

XXXI. Nurse and Patient

XXXII. The Appointed Time

XXXIII. Interlopers

XXXIV. A Turn of the Screw

XXXV. Esther’s Narrative

XXXVI. Chesney Wold

XXXVII. Jarndyce and Jarndyce

XXXVIII. A Struggle

XXXIX. Attorney and Client

XL. National and Domestic

XLI. In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Room

XLII. In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Chambers

XLIII. Esther’s Narrative

XLIV. The Letter and the Answer

XLV. In Trust

XLVI. Stop Him!

XLVII. Jo’s Will

XLVIII. Closing In

XLIX. Dutiful Friendship

L. Esther’s Narrative

LI. Enlightened

LII. Obstinacy

LIII. The Track

LIV. Springing a Mine

LV. Flight

LVI. Pursuit

LVII. Esther’s Narrative

LVIII. A Wintry Day and Night

LIX. Esther’s Narrative

LX. Perspective

LXI. A Discovery

LXII. Another Discovery

LXIII. Steel and Iron

LXIV. Esther’s Narrative

LXV. Beginning the World

LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire

LXVII. The Close of Esther’s Narrative

PREFACE

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge’s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the “parsimony of the public,” which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.

This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

“My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!”

But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of—a parsimonious public.

There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook’s case. The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.**

In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things.

1853

**Another case, very clearly described by a dentist, occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States of America, quite recently. The subject was a German who kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard.