Bleak House

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of acompany of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring underany suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though theshining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thoughtthe 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 ofprogress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing tothe "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared,had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by nomeans enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believeby 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 ofthis book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or toMr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must haveoriginated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an aptquotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

　　"My nature is subduedTo 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 knowwhat has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, Imention here that everything set forth in these pages concerningthe Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth.

　　The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actualoccurrence, made public by a disinterested person who wasprofessionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrongfrom beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853) thereis a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty yearsago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known toappear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amountof seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is(I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it wasbegun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yetdecided, which was commenced before the close of the last centuryand in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand poundshas been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities forJarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to theshame 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 beendenied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes(quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to havebeen abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious lettersto me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing thatspontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need toobserve that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readersand that before I wrote that description I took pains toinvestigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record,of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de BaudiCesenate, was minutely investigated and described by GiuseppeBianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished inletters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which heafterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond allrational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observedin Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous instance happened atRheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is Le Cat,one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. The subjectwas a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of havingmurdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he wasacquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had diedthe death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. Ido not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and thatgeneral reference to the authorities which will be found at page30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences ofdistinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, inmore modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall notabandon the facts until there shall have been a considerablespontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrencesare usually received.

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