Listen to the AudioBook: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

BLEAK HOUSE

I. In Chancery

London. Michaelmas term has just begun. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and never-washed) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in all the spiritless and stagnant places of the earth.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and never-washed) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in all the spiritless and stagnant places of the earth. Fog on the marsh where Saint Albans bleeds; fog on the wooed and the wooer; fog on the lawyer, and fog on the client; fog on the folio, and fog on the brief; fog on the cab, and fog on the hackney-coach, and fog on the saddle before the lady and her gentleman.

Fog in the eyes and biinding the world. Fog so, it cannot be seen. Fog so, it is as though the world had sometime been made, and since effaced, and fog smeared over the blankness. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, fog down the river...

This dense, all-pervading fog, had the effect of muffling the sound of the distant traffic, so that the city appeared to be in a state of utter quietude. Yet, beneath the muffling influence, the great machinery of London was at work, grinding slowly, ceaselessly.

In the Courts of Equity, especially, the work went on, veiled in a more than usual obscurity.

Through the heart of the city, past the silent, fog-encumbered warehouses, and the gloomy, gas-lit courts, a solitary hackney-coach lumbered heavily. The driver, perched on his box, was visible only as a shapeless mass through the thick moisture that clung to the glass. Inside, a young man was shivering, though not entirely from the cold.

He was thinly clad, and leaned forward, peering out into the spectral grey.

“Is this the way to Lincoln’s Inn, coachman?” he inquired, his voice muffled.

“It is the way to every where, if you go far enough,” the coachman responded, after a moment, his tone suggesting that the destination was irrelevant in the face of such universal fog.

The young man sighed. “I wish to get to Lincoln’s Inn before the Court rises. I must see Mr. Jarndyce.”

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I suppose?” the coachman grunted, pulling the reins. “A dreary business to be going to on such a morning, sir. Hope you haven’t got a suit on there.”

“I am interested in one,” the young man admitted, drawing his coat tighter. “It concerns the estate of the late Mr. Quale.”

“Quale or Kettle, or any other file in that great dust-heap,” the coachman remarked, with a weary air. “It’s all one to the fog, sir, and it’s all one to the Court, if you ask me. They grind on, sir. They grind on.”

The coach lurched forward, its wheels splashing dully in the unseen puddles. The young man, whose name was Richard Carstone, settled back, his anxiety increasing with every slow yard gained. He was an orphan, and his only hope, the only tangible link to a future he could barely imagine, lay within those ancient, fog-bound buildings where the great suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce had lingered for generations.

Finally, the coach stopped. Richard paid the fare, his gloved fingers fumbling for the coins in the gloom. He stepped out onto the damp stone of the courtyard. The great gates of Lincoln’s Inn loomed before him, black and imposing in the vaporous air.

He made his way toward the entrance of a particularly gloomy set of chambers, the brass knocker cold under his hand. He tapped, once, twice, and waited, listening only to the muted drumming of the fog upon the window panes.

A door opened slowly, revealing a short, stout man in spectacles, whose face suggested a life spent deciphering small print.

“Yes?” the clerk inquired, his voice dry as old parchment.

“I am here to see Mr. Jarndyce. My name is Carstone.”

“Wait in the outer office, Mr. Carstone. Mr. Jarndyce is engaged with a matter of some urgency, though all matters here are, I believe, equally urgent and equally fruitless.”

Richard was ushered into a small, sparsely furnished room. The air was stale, and the light struggled valiantly against the oppressive gloom filtering through the single window. On a nearby desk lay a scattering of documents, yellowed and brittle, tied with faded ribbon—the endless evidence of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Richard sat down, feeling the weight of the fog, the weight of the law, and the weight of his own desolate dependence settling upon him. He had come a long way, and the silence in the room seemed to stretch out before him, immeasurable and unbroken, like the suit itself.

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