It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same
miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we
may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the
world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent
and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange
games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the
knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen
shall begin to turn prodigiously!

It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which
has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made
the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a
very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and
true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is
that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine
wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot
see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and
its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days
previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to
stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The
fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,
and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to
be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in
familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire. The waters are
out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been
sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile
in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in
it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain.
My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. The weather for
many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through,
and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no
crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave
quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in
the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards
the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the
falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is
alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases
on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and
the heavy drops fall--drip, drip, drip--upon the broad flagged
pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night. On
Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit
breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste
as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is
childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a
keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed
panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a
woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a
wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of
temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."

Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in
Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the
rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures
of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp
walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along
the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come
forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which, like the fiend, is
omniscient of the past and present, but not the future--cannot yet
undertake to say.

Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier
baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely
more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get
on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on
the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when
not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its
execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict
conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on
the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather
than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is
an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely
prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.

Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He
will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet
sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a
little stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair
and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his
blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious,
stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her
personal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my
Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little
touch of romantic fancy in him.

Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she
had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had
beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to
portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to
these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has
been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of
the fashionable tree.

How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody
knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having
been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered
HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing,
mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of
fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the
trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be
translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend
without any rapture.

She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet
in its autumn. She has a fine face--originally of a character that
would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into
classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her
figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is
so, but that "the most is made," as the Honourable Bob Stables has
frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points." The same
authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in
commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed
woman in the whole stud.

With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up
from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable
intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her
departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks,
after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town,
upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned
old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of
Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the
Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name
outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror's
trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across
the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the
rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of
it--fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in--the old gentleman
is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady's presence.

The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made
good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic
wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of
family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository.
There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of
parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer
noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of
Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school--a phrase
generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young--and
wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One
peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they
silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive
to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses
when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless
but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country
houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the
fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and
where half the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?"
He receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with
the rest of his knowledge.

Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr.
Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is
always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of
tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute
in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general
way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the
legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.

Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may
not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in
everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class--as one
of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes
herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of
ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks
so. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to
the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices,
follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a
calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her
dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new
custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new
dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are
deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects
of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage
her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their
lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience,
lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook
all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet
of the majestic Lilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir,"
say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people Lady
Dedlock and the rest--"you must remember that you are not dealing
with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest
place, and their weakest place is such a place." "To make this
article go down, gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to
their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we
know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it
fashionable." "If you want to get this print upon the tables of my
high connexion, sir," says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you
want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of
my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for
I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion,
sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my
finger"--in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not
exaggerate at all.

Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the
Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.

"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.
Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.

"Yes. It has been on again to-day," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making
one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire,
shading her face with a hand-screen.

"It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness of the
place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been
done."

"Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day," replies
Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Nor ever will be," says my Lady.

Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It
is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be
sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part
in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a
shadowy impression that for his name--the name of Dedlock--to be in a
cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous
accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should
involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of
confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of
other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal
settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole
of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to
any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the
lower classes to rise up somewhere--like Wat Tyler.

"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.
Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the
troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any
new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no
more responsibility than necessary--"and further, as I see you are
going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket."

(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of
the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)

Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them
on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on his
spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.

"'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce--'"

My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal
horrors as he can.

Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower
down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir
Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a
stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging
among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my
Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful,
being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the
papers on the table--looks at them nearer--looks at them nearer
still--asks impulsively, "Who copied that?"

Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her
unusual tone.

"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him
in her careless way again and toying with her screen.

"Not quite. Probably"--Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--"the
legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was
formed. Why do you ask?"

"Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens her
face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "Eh? What
do you say?"

"I say I am afraid," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,
"that Lady Dedlock is ill."

"Faint," my Lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it is like
the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my
room!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet
shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.
Tulkinghorn to return.

"Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down
and read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my
Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she
really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."

Still the third-person narrator. Still nothing but harsh and snide words, but this time it's all about Sir and Lady Dedlock. Lady D. is at the very top of high society, aka "fashion". This makes her basically a celebrity, and the papers feature the parties she gives and the places she goes. The Dedlocks have just come back to London from the country, where Lady Dedlock was "bored to death" . They are about to take off for Paris. Oh, her sad, sad life. Sir Leicester Dedlock is twenty years older than his wife and apparently married her for love because she didn't bring any land or wealth to the family. They don't have kids. They do however have lots of money and social status and are super-duper well bred. While they are in London, Mr. Tulkinghorn, the family lawyer, comes to visit. He is terrifying from the get-go, always wears black, knows way too many family secrets, and is just generally crazy powerful. His main mission in life is to protect the secrets and dignity of the families who retain him. of the inaction in the court that day. While he is talking, Lady Dedlock notices one of the documents he has brought with him and asks about the handwriting on it. OK, folks, quick brain snack. This is 19th- century England, so all official documents are handwritten. If copies are needed, the originals are sent out to copy clerks, part of whose professional skill is to have specifically developed handwriting for legal work. Also, this is a time when everybody is constantly writing things by hand, which means you get to know the handwriting of people close to you. So, anyway, Lady Dedlock asks about this handwriting and is strangely excited and curious by it. Mr. Tulkinghorn wonders why she wants to know, and she goes back to her indifferent mood, shrugging it off as a random question. After a little while, Lady Dedlock faints. She comes to and goes to rest in her room. There's a commotion, and Sir Dedlock is pretty worried, since he's never seen her faint before.

"Bored to death" by the rainy weather of Lincolnshire, Lady Dedlock has returned to the Dedlocks' home in London. She plans to stay there a few days, then go on to Paris. In middle age, Lady Dedlock retains her beauty and is always attractively groomed. Her husband, the baronet Sir Leicester Dedlock, loves her and does not complain that she brought to the marriage neither dowry nor prestige. This afternoon she receives Mr. Tulkinghorn, a rich, close-lipped, and secretive solicitor who represents her interests in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Noticing some legal paper that Tulkinghorn has placed on a table next to her, she takes an interest in the handwriting and asks the lawyer whose it is. A few moments later, she feels faint and asks to be taken to her room. Sir Leicester is surprised but attributes her condition to the stress of the bad weather in Lincolnshire.

Dickens now introduces two major characters  and a minor character, Sir Leicester . There is a continuity here with the first chapter: Dickens regards the world of the idle rich as comparable in futility to the world of Chancery Court, and, coincidentally, Lady Dedlock is involved in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit. Tulkinghorn is characterized as rather sinister, Sir Leicester as crotchety and self-satisfied but not vicious or depraved. About Lady Dedlock, we feel ambivalent. She seems rather empty, vain, and restless, but if Sir Leicester loves her, she may have some redeeming features that will be revealed later. The story's first bit of suspense appears when she half-faints.

"In Fashion" The narrator points out the triviality and evil in the world of fashion, although there are good people in it as well. Lady Dedlock has come home with her husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock. He loves Lady Dedlock, but she is cold and distant. The Dedlocks' lawyer and legal advisor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, visits them and updates them on the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. Lady Dedlock asks him who copied the documents, claiming that she likes the handwriting. Tulkinghorn says he'll find out. Lady Dedlock feels ill and retreats to her room

In Fashion The world of fashion is not unlike the Court of Chancery. If we go to a great estate in Lincolnshire we find the same dreary rain has made stagnant rivers and mouldy decay there. Lady Dedlock, bored in her great house, comes to London with her husband, the baronet, Sir Leicester Dedlock, twenty years her senior. He married his beautiful wife for love, though she brought no money or rank to the marriage. They have no children and are in London where they will depart for Paris. At their townhouse they receive their legal advisor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, an older impressive gentleman in black, who is a keeper of secrets. He comes to consult about some papers for the Jarndyce case, for Lady Dedlock is involved in it. In fact, the disputed inheritance from that estate is the only wealth she brought the baronet, though he is embarrassed by the fact. When Mr. Tulkinghorn reads aloud from some legal papers that Lady Dedlock is viewing in copy, she is struck by the handwriting, and asks who copied the document. Then she pretends not to care, but half fainting, she is carried out of the room. Tulkinghorn notes all of this. Sir Leicester says he has never seen Lady Dedlock swoon before.

Commentary on Chapter II Dickens makes a parallel between the world of the Court of Chancery and the fashionable world of the aristocracy. The same fog and rain are stagnating the fashionable world. Indeed, Lady Dedlock is involved in the Jarndyce lawsuit, although not hanging on its outcome for her wealth. She is "at the centre of the fashionable intelligence" and "having conquered her world," is bored. Lady Dedlock is a social climber who married an older husband for his title. She has pride and ambition, and she is cold. Now, middle-aged, she is still beautiful but with nothing left to conquer. Sir Leicester seems a "perfectly reasonable man" , expecting that his family name is the most important thing in the world. He may harbor expectations about his importance, but he loves his wife. Both husband and wife feel they are important because of their station, but the narrator points out that the servants have the upper hand of this class, for they know all their secrets and know how to manipulate their employers. The baronet thinks, for instance, that Tulkinghorn's dress is a "kind of tribute" to him, making him look "retainer-like" . Tulkinghorn, however, is a dangerous person to watch, for in his position as a lawyer, he involves himself in the family secrets, and he is watching Lady Dedlock's fainting spell with interest.


I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of
these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can
remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my
doll when we were alone together, "Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you
know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!" And so
she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful
complexion and rosy lips, staring at me--or not so much at me, I
think, as at nothing--while I busily stitched away and told her every
one of my secrets.

My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared
to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.
It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me
when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and
say, "Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!"
and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great
chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always
rather a noticing way--not a quick way, oh, no!--a silent way of
noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to
understand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding.
When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But
even that may be my vanity.

I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance--like some of the
princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming--by my
godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good
woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning
prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there
were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had
ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel--but she
never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good
herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown
all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every
allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so
poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained
with her--no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very
sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and
I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I
talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved
my godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have
loved her if I had been a better girl.

This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally
was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at
ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing
that helped it very much.

I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa
either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a
black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's
grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been
taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than
once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our
only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very
good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, "Esther, good
night!" and gone away and left me.

Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I
was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther
Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than
I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there
seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and
besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more
than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school
(I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my
great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me,
and I never went. I never went out at all.

It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other
birthdays--none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other
birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one
another--there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy
day at home in the whole year.

I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know
it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I
don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My
disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such
a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the
quickness of that birthday.

Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table
before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another
sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know how
long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the
table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me,
"It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no
birthday, that you had never been born!"

I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, "Oh, dear godmother, tell
me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?"

"No," she returned. "Ask me no more, child!"

"Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear
godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her?
Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,
dear godmother? No, no, no, don't go away. Oh, speak to me!"

I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her
dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,
"Let me go!" But now she stood still.

Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the
midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp
hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew
it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She
raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly
in a cold, low voice--I see her knitted brow and pointed
finger--"Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.
The time will come--and soon enough--when you will understand this
better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have
forgiven her"--but her face did not relent--"the wrong she did to me,
and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever
know--than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,
unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil
anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon
your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave
all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that
greatest kindness. Now, go!"

She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her--so frozen
as I was!--and added this, "Submission, self-denial, diligent work,
are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You
are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born,
like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart."

I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek
against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my
bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my
sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's
heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.

Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together
afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my
birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could
to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt
guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be
industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some
one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not
self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very
thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to
my eyes.

There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.

I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more
after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her
house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult
of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than
ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in
the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards
her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a
fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very
diligent.

One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books
and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was
gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the
parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found--which was
very unusual indeed--a stranger. A portly, important-looking
gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold
watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon
his little finger.

"This," said my godmother in an undertone, "is the child." Then she
said in her naturally stern way of speaking, "This is Esther, sir."

The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, "Come
here, my dear!" He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my
bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,
"Ah!" and afterwards "Yes!" And then, taking off his eye-glasses and
folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,
turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod.
Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I
made him my curtsy and left him.

It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,
when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was
reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock
as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St.
John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the
dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.

"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said
unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her!'"

I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head,
and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book,
"'Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And
what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'"

In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she
fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had
sounded through the house and been heard in the street.

She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little
altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so
well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and
in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers
might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her,
asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me
the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was
immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained
unsoftened.

On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in
black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.
Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone
away.

"My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge
and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."

I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.

"Pray be seated--here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no
use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you who were acquainted with the
late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her and that
this young lady, now her aunt is dead--"

"My aunt, sir!"

"It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to
be gained by it," said Mr. Kenge smoothly, "Aunt in fact, though not
in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs.
Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a--Jarndyce and
Jarndyce."

"Never," said Mrs. Rachael.

"Is it possible," pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses,
"that our young friend--I BEG you won't distress yourself!--never
heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!"

I shook my head, wondering even what it was.

"Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?" said Mr. Kenge, looking over his
glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he
were petting something. "Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits
known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce--the--a--in itself a monument of
Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every
contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known
in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause
that could not exist out of this free and great country. I should
say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs.
Rachael"--I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared
inattentive"--amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty
THOUSAND POUNDS!" said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.

I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely
unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even
then.

"And she really never heard of the cause!" said Mr. Kenge.
"Surprising!"

"Miss Barbary, sir," returned Mrs. Rachael, "who is now among the
Seraphim--"

"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Kenge politely.

"--Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And
she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more."

"Well!" said Mr. Kenge. "Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the
point," addressing me. "Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact
that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being
deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.
Rachael--"

"Oh, dear no!" said Mrs. Rachael quickly.

"Quite so," assented Mr. Kenge; "--that Mrs. Rachael should charge
herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress
yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer
which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and
which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the
lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow
that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly
humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself
by any stretch of my professional caution?" said Mr. Kenge, leaning
back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both.

He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I
couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great
importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with
obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music
with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much
impressed by him--even then, before I knew that he formed himself on
the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was
generally called Conversation Kenge.

"Mr. Jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the--I would say,
desolate--position of our young friend, offers to place her at a
first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,
where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall
be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge
her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased--shall I
say Providence?--to call her."

My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his
affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I
tried.

"Mr. Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing his
expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself
from the establishment in question without his knowledge and
concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the
acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she
will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of
virtue and honour, and--the--a--so forth."

I was still less able to speak than before.

"Now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded Mr. Kenge. "Take
time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!"

What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not
repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth
the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could
never relate.

This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I
knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all
necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.

Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was
not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known
her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough
of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one
cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone
porch--it was a very frosty day--I felt so miserable and
self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I
knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!

"No, Esther!" she returned. "It is your misfortune!"

The coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had not come out until we
heard the wheels--and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She
went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the
door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the
window through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the
little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old
hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first
thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost
and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her
own shawl and quietly laid her--I am half ashamed to tell it--in the
garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no
companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.

When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the
straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high
window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of
spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and
the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like
metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There
was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked
very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the
other window and took no notice of me.

I thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of
her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place
I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they
would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the
coach gave me a terrible start.

It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?"

I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a
whisper, "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must have been the
gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking
out of his window.

"Yes, you," he said, turning round.

"I didn't know I was crying, sir," I faltered.

"But you are!" said the gentleman. "Look here!" He came quite
opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his
large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed
me that it was wet.

"There! Now you know you are," he said. "Don't you?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"And what are you crying for?" said the gentleman, "Don't you want to
go there?"

"Where, sir?"

"Where? Why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman.

"I am very glad to go there, sir," I answered.

"Well, then! Look glad!" said the gentleman.

I thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of
him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face
was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of
his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not
afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying
because of my godmother's death and because of Mrs. Rachael's not
being sorry to part with me.

"Confound Mrs. Rachael!" said the gentleman. "Let her fly away in a
high wind on a broomstick!"

I began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the
greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,
although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and
calling Mrs. Rachael names.

After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to
me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into
a deep pocket in the side.

"Now, look here!" he said. "In this paper," which was nicely folded,
"is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money--sugar on
the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little
pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And
what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie!
Now let's see you eat 'em."

"Thank you, sir," I replied; "thank you very much indeed, but I hope
you won't be offended--they are too rich for me."

"Floored again!" said the gentleman, which I didn't at all
understand, and threw them both out of window.

He did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a
little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and
to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by
his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it
afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and
half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on,
he passed out of my mind.

When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and
said, "Miss Donny."

"No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."

"That is quite right," said the lady, "Miss Donny."

I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged
Miss Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her
request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put
outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid,
and I got inside and were driven away.

"Everything is ready for you, Esther," said Miss Donny, "and the
scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with
the wishes of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce."

"Of--did you say, ma'am?"

"Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce," said Miss Donny.

I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too
severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.

"Do you know my--guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma'am?" I asked after a good
deal of hesitation.

"Not personally, Esther," said Miss Donny; "merely through his
solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior
gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods
quite majestic!"

I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our
speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover
myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the
uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's
house) that afternoon!

But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of
Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while
and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my
godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than
Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the
clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.

We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It
was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my
qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in
everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in
helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other
respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made
in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more,
and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of
doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a
new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so
sure--indeed I don't know why--to make a friend of me that all
new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I
am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my
birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to
do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed,
indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so
much.

I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face
there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better
if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so
many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful
with them from New Year's Day to Christmas.

In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday
time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had
taken Miss Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to
Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval
I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer
acknowledging its receipt and saying, "We note the contents thereof,
which shall be duly communicated to our client." After that I
sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my
accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a
similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same
answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy
in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge's.

It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about
myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my
little body will soon fall into the background now.

Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had
passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a
looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when,
one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.

   Old Square, Lincoln's Inn

   Madam,

   Jarndyce and Jarndyce

   Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house,
   under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this
   cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn,
   directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your
   serces in the afsd capacity.

   We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr
   eight o'clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next,
   to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of
   our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as
   above.

   We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,

   Kenge and Carboy

   Miss Esther Summerson

Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused
in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was
so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my
orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful
natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would
have had them less sorry--I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it,
and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble
regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking
while it was full of rapture.

The letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. When every
minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in
those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took
me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and
when some cried, "Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my
bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and when others
asked me only to write their names, "With Esther's love," and when
they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me
weeping and cried, "What shall we do when dear, dear Esther's gone!"
and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had
all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a
heart I had!

And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the
least among them, and when the maids said, "Bless you, miss, wherever
you go!" and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had
hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to
give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the
light of his eyes--indeed the old man said so!--what a heart I had
then!

And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little
school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving
their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady
whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited
(who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring
for nothing but calling out, "Good-bye, Esther. May you be very
happy!"--could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by
myself and said "Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!" many times
over!

But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I
was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course,
I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying
very often, "Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!" I
cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was
longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my
eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.

I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off,
and when we really were there, that we should never get there.
However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and
particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into
us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began
to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey.
Very soon afterwards we stopped.

A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from
the pavement and said, "I am from Kenge and Carboy's, miss, of
Lincoln's Inn."

"If you please, sir," said I.

He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after
superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was
a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown
smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.

"Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular."

I had never heard of such a thing.

"A fog, miss," said the young gentleman.

"Oh, indeed!" said I.

We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever
were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of
confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we
passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through
a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there
was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance
to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some
cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.

This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman showed me through an
outer office into Mr. Kenge's room--there was no one in it--and
politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my
attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side
of the chimney-piece.

"In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the
journey, as you're going before the Chancellor. Not that it's
requisite, I am sure," said the young gentleman civilly.

"Going before the Chancellor?" I said, startled for a moment.

"Only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "Mr.
Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake
of some refreshment"--there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a
small table--"and look over the paper," which the young gentleman
gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.

Everything was so strange--the stranger from its being night in the
day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and
cold--that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what
they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it
was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep
at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the
room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables,
and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most
inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for
themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the
fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on
flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers--until the young
gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair--for two hours.

At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to
see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. "As you are going
to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor's
private room, Miss Summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you
should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord
Chancellor, I dare say?"

"No, sir," I said, "I don't think I shall," really not seeing on
consideration why I should be.

So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a
colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage,
into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young
gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was
interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen,
talking.

They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with
the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich
golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,
trusting face!

"Miss Ada," said Mr. Kenge, "this is Miss Summerson."

She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended,
but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short,
she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few
minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the
fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.

What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could
confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging
to me!

The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name
Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and
a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we
sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a
light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if
quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were
both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had
never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the
first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we
talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its
red eyes at us--as Richard said--like a drowsy old Chancery lion.

We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag
wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a
drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel
in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that
the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a
bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had
risen and his lordship was in the next room.

The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and
requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next
room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling--it is so natural to me now
that I can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and
sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship,
whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another
chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was
both courtly and kind.

The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's
table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the
leaves.

"Miss Clare," said the Lord Chancellor. "Miss Ada Clare?"

Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near
him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see
in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young
creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord
High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the
love and pride of parents.

"The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning
over leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."

"Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.

"A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.

"But not a dreary place at present, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.

"And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in--"

"Hertfordshire, my lord."

"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.

"He is not, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.

A pause.

"Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?" said the Lord Chancellor,
glancing towards him.

Richard bowed and stepped forward.

"Hum!" said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.

"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," Mr. Kenge observed in a low
voice, "if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable
companion for--"

"For Mr. Richard Carstone?" I thought (but I am not quite sure) I
heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.

"For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson."

His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy
very graciously.

"Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"

"No, my lord."

Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His
lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or
thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again
until we were going away.

Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the
door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can't help
it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a
little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had
well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she
would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why
she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and
then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated,
but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if
he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to
the candour of a boy.

"Very well!" said his lordship aloud. "I shall make the order. Mr.
Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge," and this
was when he looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady,
and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the
circumstances admit."

He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to
him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost
no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.

When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go
back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the
Lord Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.

"Well!" said Richard Carstone. "THAT'S over! And where do we go next,
Miss Summerson?"

"Don't you know?" I said.

"Not in the least," said he.

"And don't YOU know, my love?" I asked Ada.

"No!" said she. "Don't you?"

"Not at all!" said I.

We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the
children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed
bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us
with an air of great ceremony.

"Oh!" said she. "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to
have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty
when they find themselves in this place, and don't know what's to
come of it."

"Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.

"Right! Mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was
quite abashed. "I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,"
curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. "I had youth
and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of
the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court
regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in
the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray
accept my blessing."

As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady,
that we were much obliged to her.

"Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is Conversation
Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?"

"Quite well, quite well! Now don't be troublesome, that's a good
soul!" said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back.

"By no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me.
"Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both--which is
not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!"

She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but
we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still
with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And
hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray
accept my blessing!"

Whoa, total about-face as we flip into the voice of a first-person narrator, Esther. The third-person narrator specializes in sounding obnoxious, mocking everything he describes. Esther, on the other hand, is all about self-flagellation and self-deprecation. She is someone totally unlikely to want to write or talk about her life - and that's just how she sounds. She begins at the beginning, with her totally miserable childhood. Raised by a woman she knows as her godmother, Esther has no friends, no family, and no one who's nice to her. Her only companion is a doll, which she talks to. The godmother is cold, unloving, and generally miserable. Esther, though, keeps calling her very good, mostly because the woman is really, really religious. On Esther's birthdays, this godmother tells her how much better everything would be if she had never been born. Whenever Esther asks about her mother or father the godmother just quotes the Bible in response. Also, she says "your mother is your disgrace, and you were hers" . To a 10-year-old. Awesome. When Esther is 12, a chubby, important-looking man comes to the house, looks her over, and leaves. Nothing happens. Two years later the godmother has some kind of fit and dies. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The man comes back and introduces himself as Kenge from the law firm of Kenge and Carboy. He reveals that this godmother was actually Esther's aunt , but an aunt in fact and not in law . Kenge offers Esther the chance to go to a boarding school to learn how to be a governess, and eventually to work for Mr. Jarndyce. Esther is totally floored by this offer. She is pretty much totally floored anytime anyone is the slightest bit nice to her, actually. It's sort of awful and horrifying to read how little kindness she has ever experienced and how deeply she feels it whenever anything positive happens to her. Her response is usually to talk about how little she deserves it. Esther is enrolled at Greenleaf, a school where she spends six years learning stuff and then learning to teach the stuff she's learned. She loves it there. One day she gets a letter stating that in five days she will be off to London to be a governess for Mr. Jarndyce's ward, per the plan. She is sad to leave the school, and everyone there tells her how much they love her and will miss her. In London she comes to the Court of Chancery and meets Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. Richard and Ada are going to be Mr. Jarndyce's wards. Ada is about 17 and will be Esther's pupil. Richard is Ada's distant cousin and is about 19. Esther is 20. Esther and Ada become fast friends and after meeting with the Lord Chancellor, who OKs the Mr.-Jarndyce-wards thing, they leave the court building. Outside they run into the crazy little old lady who hangs out there. She blesses them, is impressed to meet "the wards in Jarndyce" and tells them that she is expecting a Day of Judgment. She seems to be mixing up the end of the world with the end of the court case. Pay attention here: the crazy old woman is kind of wacko, but in that way where you know that everything she is saying is actually really relevant, meaningful, and highly symbolic.

Esther Summerson, friendless and unloved, is raised at Windsor by her "godmother" , Miss Barbary. After the aunt's death, John Jarndyce, acting through his attorney Kenge, arranges to have Esther sent to Greenleaf, a boarding school at Reading. After six happy years as a student and teacher at Greenleaf, Esther is asked to serve in Bleak House, Mr. Jarndyce's household. At the Chancery Court, she meets and at once befriends Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. Like Esther, these two young people have been made wards of Mr. Jarndyce. As they leave Chancery, the three encounter a diminutive old lady , who has been driven partly mad by the never-ending, convoluted Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit.

This long chapter introduces and begins characterizations of the book's principal figures: Esther, Ada, and Richard. Curiosity about Mr. Jarndyce is heightened: We wonder why he is so benevolent. To characterize Esther sympathetically, Dickens utilizes the principle of contrast: Esther's naturalness and goodheartedness are all the more impressive when set against the background of her aunt's dour, unbending puritanism. Implied in this chapter is Dickens' criticism of his society for its element of cold self-righteousness and its inexcusable harshness toward children.

"A Progress" Esther Summerson takes over as a first-person narrator. She claims to be unintelligent. She remembers a doll she had when she was a child that she felt was the only person she could talk to. Esther's godmother, Miss Barbary, raised Esther, and Esther believes that she was fully virtuous but distant and strict. She says her birthday was always the saddest day of the year. On one birthday, Esther demanded to know what happened to her mother, and her godmother revealed that Esther was her mother's "disgrace" and that her mother was a disgrace as well. As a result, the distance between Esther and her godmother grows wider. One day, a stranger comes to the house and looks Esther over. Then he leaves. Two years later, when Esther is fourteen, her godmother dies suddenly. The stranger reappears and introduces himself as Kenge. He reveals that Esther's godmother was actually her aunt. He asks her if she's ever heard of a lawsuit called Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which she has not. Kenge says that as part of the lawsuit, Esther will live with Mr. Jarndyce. She will be educated and comfortable, but she must not ever leave the grounds without informing Mr. Jarndyce. Esther says goodbye to the housekeeper, Mrs. Rachael, who shows no emotion. Esther buries her beloved doll in the garden. Kenge takes her away in the coach, then drops her off near Reading. A maid, Miss Donny, leads her to a carriage and they go to an estate called Greenleaf, as arranged by Esther's new guardian, Mr. Jarndyce. Esther spends six years at Greenleaf. One day, she receives a letter from Kenge, saying she will be placed in a new home in five days. Esther leaves Greenleaf sadly but talks herself out of crying. At Kenge's office, she meets a young girl named Ada Clare, and Ada's cousin, Richard Carstone. All three young people are to be taken to Bleak House, where Mr. Jarndyce lives. Esther has been chosen as Ada's companion. Ada and Richard are somehow related to the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, but Esther isn't. Outside, a mad old woman approaches the three young people and claims that a judgment concerning the Jarndyce case will come soon

Fog, which appears throughout the beginning of Bleak House, both sets the mood of the novel and highlights the muddled state of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit. Fog literally covers London when the third-person narrator sets the scene on the first page of the novel. "Fog everywhere," he says simply. The narrator provides three paragraphs of gloomy, evocative description before introducing us to the Lord High Chancellor and the disaster that is the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. Much as London is covered in fog, our own understanding of what, exactly, this case entails is unclear. The narrator doesn't tell us exactly who is involved in the case or exactly what issue the case addresses. Indeed, the narrator acknowledges that "no man alive knows what it means"--the fogginess of the case is chronic. The gloomy aspects of fog are also connected to this case, and the narrator tells us that "no man's nature has been made better" by the doings. This pervasive image sets the tone of the narrative to come and adds to the already gloomy atmosphere the novel's title suggests. In chapter 3, Esther Summerson replaces the third-person narrator, a shift that has the effect of pulling us deeper into the story. Although Esther claims to have difficulty in telling her story and asserts right away that she isn't very clever, her voice is clear and unhesitating as she tells us about herself and how she became involved in the Jarndyce case. Esther comes across as slightly self-pitying in her descriptions of her strict, emotionally distant godmother and her unhappy birthdays, but her self-deprecation and constant denial of her own intelligence are manipulative gestures that both endear us to her and give her an excuse in case we don't like the story. In other words, she is so insistent that she is not clever and is so doubtful of her ability to tell the story correctly that she has a lot of leeway to tell the story according to her own very subjective view. If things turn out to be different from the way she describes them, she can claim she warned us of her fallibility from the start. Also, even though Esther claims to be unimportant to the story, she clearly relishes talking about herself. In the space of just five chapters , Dickens manages to introduce us to a host of lively, vivid characters. For example, in chapter 2 we meet Mr. Tulkinghorn, who Dickens describes as "old school . . . generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young." The chaotic Jellybys appear in chapter 4, when Dickens introduces the unforgettable Mrs. Jellyby, who is more concerned with writing letters about Africa than she is with her filthy, unhappy children. One of Dickens's greatest skills is his ability to draw such striking portraits with so few details in so little space. Dickens dismisses his characters and moves on to new ones after a few lines, paragraphs, or pages, giving the effect of a rollicking, speeding story that can stop for no one, not even the most interesting, quirky people that cross his protagonists' paths.

A Progress The narration now switches to the first person, being the early life story of a main character, Esther Summerson, who begins, "I know I am not clever" . Esther is an orphan brought up by her strict and cold godmother , Miss Barbary in Windsor. Esther is a shy and quiet girl who has "a noticing way" about her . She sees things but doesn't necessarily know how to put them together, for Esther is the soul of innocence. Though she tries to be good, her godmother scolds her for being a disgrace: "Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers" . She is told she is "degraded" and she must be submissive, for she bears "a life begun with a shadow on it" . She is never told about her parents but kept apart from others, even the other children. She is never allowed to celebrate her birthday, and this causes her great distress. Only her doll is her friend, the one she tells secrets to. She tries hard to please and be no trouble, but neither her godmother nor Mrs. Rachel, the housekeeper, is friendly to her. This is hard since she is affectionate by nature. She decides very early to be industrious "and to do some good to some one, and win some love to myself" . When she is fourteen, her aunt dies, and Mr. Kenge, of Kenge and Carboy in London comes to tell her that her Miss Barbary was her aunt. He brings up the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, but Esther is ignorant of it. Kenge explains that Mr. John Jarndyce wants to pay for her education and that he is her guardian now. Esther buries her one friend, her doll, and takes the coach to Greenleaf at Reading, the school run by Miss Donny. In the coach she meets an unidentified man who tries to cheer her when she cries with some sweets, but she says they are too rich for her, so he throws them out the window. At school, Esther claims not to understand why the other students love her or why she is given responsibility for teaching the others. She spends six years at school and afterwards she is taken to London by a clerk from Kenge and Carboy to the Lord Chancellor's chamber. There she meets Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, the two young wards in the Jarndyce case. She is to be the companion of Ada Clare, who is younger, but so beautiful and sweet that they become instantly like sisters. The Chancellor approves of Ada and Richard becoming wards of John Jarndyce of Bleak House in Hertfordshire. Esther is approved as companion. They meet the mad old woman in court who greets them as the Jarndyce wards, saying she too, was once a Jarndyce ward. Now she comes to court every day waiting for "the Day of Judgment."

Commentary on Chapter III Dickens interlaces Esther's first-person narrative throughout the other third-person narrative chapters to get various points of view. The dramatic irony created by Esther's astute but innocent perspective on the evil landscape of Chancery justice is juxtaposed with the grotesque underworld characters described in the other chapters. In typical Dickens fashion, he creates a mystery and develops separate threads in the beginning that will be interwoven as the narrative unfolds. All the threads and characters are connected to the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Esther is one of Dickens's almost too good Victorian heroines, completely self-effacing, but adored by all around her. She is humble, good, kind, and motherly, as we see her moving through all sorts of dark landscapes emitting order and light around her. Esther knows nothing of her parents or connection with the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She seems to be an illegitimate child, bound up with the past mystery of the case. The man in the carriage is her shy guardian, John Jarndyce, a very good man who tries to create justice out of the Jarndyce wreck, taking back the power to the family that was given away to the court. The old mad woman in court becomes a sort of prophetess warning the young people of their doom in being involved in the Chancery suit. She too was once a Jarndyce ward, she explains, before she went mad. She likes to see these new wards, for they still have youth and beauty and hope. She herself comes to court every day, waiting for the "Day of Judgment." Kenge, and earlier, Tulkinghorn, are among the many satirical portraits of lawyers and clerks and other people connected with the whole legal machinery. Kenge, for instance, is called "Conversation Kenge" because he likes to hear himself talk. Although many scenes occur in different houses outside London, London is the main hub of the story because it is the location of the Court of Chancery, the center of the spider web drawing all the characters together.