Burrowing into Books - "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Essays on Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                     October 5, 2017

“Bleak House”

Charles Dickens

“Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog,

sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”

                                                                                                Charles Dicken (1812-1870)

                                                                                                Bleak House, 1853

We live in a litigious age. Bleak House is a reminder that many in the legal profession have long put personal interests first. “The one great principal of the English law is, to make business for itself,” Dickens wrote. Things haven’t changed. Last July, The New York Times reported about the artist Paul Klee’s painting “Swamp Legend.” It took twenty-six years for the courts to resolve an ownership law suit, and to reimburse the family from whom the painting had been stolen by the Nazis seventy-five years ago. The lawyers, we can assume, did not work pro bono. In the U.S. – again, exposed by the Times – was the story of a two-year odyssey in in the guardianship system. Susan Garland wrote of a daughter who sought permission to take her father to dinner. Before granting permission, the court-appointed guardian and lawyers racked up an “estimated $2,500 in fees.” Ms. Garland added: “The Government Accountability Office has found that state guardianship systems across the country are rife with exploitation.”

In England, it was the Court of Chancery that had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, trusts, wills and guardianships. In Bleak House, Dickens uses the fictional case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce to make his point, to expose the corruption of the courts and the lawyers who feed off them. In his introduction, he wrote of a case: “…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.”  (That would be roughly equal to $10 million today.) His view of lawyers is caustic: “…in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts.”

There are plots within plots, and even subplots within subplots. In the first chapter, Dickens sets the wintery scene: “As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth…” “Smoke lowering down from chimneypots, making a soft black drizzle…” “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits[1] and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping…”.

Bleak House is one of Dickens main novels, a sweeping evocation of England in the 1830s, told through the eyes of the estimable and empathetic Esther Summerson, Dickens only (I believe) female narrator. Ms. Summerson does not know her parents’ identity, only that her birth is “no cause for celebration.” As a young woman, she becomes a guardian of the decent and kind John Jarndyce, along with two other principal characters, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, both of whom are beneficiaries under the will in question. Through her, the reader is witness to birth and death, apathy and elation, misery and joy. Esther Summerson’s origins are hinted at, but kept from the reader until the novel nears its conclusion, when they are gradually unwrapped, providing answers to questions that had pestered but eluded the reader.

All is not bleak in Bleak House, though. Tragedy and drama are tempered with comic relief. Two such characters: Mrs. Jellyby, “A lady of very remarkable strength of character…devoted to the subject of Africa…the cultivation of the coffee berry…and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population.” Mr. Skimpole: “I turn my silver lining outward, like Milton’s cloud, and it’s more agreeable to both of us. That’s my view of such things, speaking as a child!”

Dickens is read for his characters, his stories, and his fictional depiction of inhumane conditions of the poor and the mean-spirited, demeaning individuals who take advantage of the unfortunate. His novels convey messages of wrongs that need righting. His success could be seen not only in the number of books he sold, but in the passage of reform measures.

Bleak House is one of Dickens’ longer books, but well worth the time.

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[1] Small islands found in the Thames.

"Burrowing into Books - 'Framley Parsonage'"

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

“Framley Parsonage”

Anthony Trollope

                                                                                                                                        May 31, 2017

“No one need put up with wrong that he can remedy.”

                                                                                                Anthony Trollope

                                                                                                Framley Parsonage

Sadly, Trollope is neglected among modern readers. He is considered not the equal of those 19^th Century British literary lions: Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Eliot, etc. (Classics don’t get the respect they should. Senator Al Franken was recently quoted: “I’m a senator. I don’t have time to read classics.” But he did admit to reading books by Amy Schumer, Tina Fey and Lena Dunham!) Trollope did not depict dark pictures of inequality suffered by Britain’s class system, as did Dickens and Bronte. While he was humorous, he did not have the light touch that memorialized Austen’s characters. It was not his purpose to relate an allegorical moral tale of great moment, as did George Eliot.

What he did have was unswerving eye for the strengths and weaknesses of Britain’s prelates, aristocracy and the politicians who represented them. And he had a moral compass that he used to guide his readers through his characters’ flaws. A recent book on the Harvard Business School, The Golden Passport, condemns the graduate school for failing to adhere to its founding doctrine: to impart “…a heightened sense of responsibility among businessmen.” Classes in ethics at business schools would be redundant if students in high schools and colleges read the classics, including Trollope. The world he inhabited was not one of relative values. His principal character in Framley Parsonage, Reverend Mark Robarts, was imperfect. “He had large capabilities for good – and aptitudes also for evil.” Robarts had a leg in two camps – the son of a man of modest means, he had come to know the wealthy aristocracy through school (Eton) and university (Oxford). Marriage and profession gave him a sense of duty and right. The former provided the devil on his left shoulder; the latter, the angel on his right.

Like many of us, Roberts was challenged – pulled in opposing directions. Nathaniel Sowerby, an MP, asked for his (Roberts) signature on a loan he could not afford. In return, Sowerby promised to introduce him to the highest levels in Parliament, so Roberts complied. Trollope wrote of Mark’s inner conflicts: “One is almost inclined to believe that there is something pleasurable in the excitement of such embarrassments, as there is also in the excitement of drink. But then, at last, the time does come when the excitement is over, and when nothing but the misery is left.” Like Adam, he was tempted and fell. Later, as he admitted his wrongs and began the process of redemption, he found it would not be easy: “But wounds cannot be cured as easily as they ae inflicted.”

Framley Parsonage, the fourth of the six Barsetshire novels, where Trollope follows the lives and fortunes of the Shire’s inhabitants, was written in 1861. Trollope is noted for the accuracy of his reporter’s eye, and for making fun of, England’s most powerful 19^th Century institutions – the Church of England and Parliament.

In Who Killed Homer?, Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Professors of Classics at California State University at Fresno and Santa Clara University respectively, rue the absence of classics being taught: “The Greeks gave us the tools to improve our material world, but also the courage and insight to monitor and critique that scary dynamism; we have embraced the former, but ignored the latter.”

Reading Trollope is not the same as reading Pericles in Greek or Tacitus in Latin, but his characters speak to us of human foibles and strengths from across the decades. They provide insights into minds of modern men and women, and bring a smile at the same time.