Bleak House

The Court of Chancery.

It is the theme of much of Dickens' best work and is the whole motive of Bleak House and the famous Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit.

The mixture of humor and pathos in the treatment of this subject tempts me to digress a little before explaining as best I may the actual state of the law at the time.

We are introduced to those who are interested in the vast machinery of the Court of Chancery as the great Jarndyce case drags its slow length along from the Lord Chancellor down to the starving law writer.

The Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls were the only available judges, and as population increased and conditions of life became more complicated, the grievances of the wretched suitors in Chancery became intolerable.

As you know in the prize ring, when a boxer had got his adversary into a hopeless position and could treat him as he liked, the beaten man was said to be in chancery.

It is generally supposed that the Chancellor in Bleak House is the famous Lord Eldon, whose tenure of the exalted office is almost the longest on record.

He was a man of many virtues and singularly kind-hearted.

Its tick is of the most languid and feeble character imaginable.

Like poor Joe's cart in Bleak House, it goes laboring and groaning up the hill, seemingly on the very verge of breakdown.

I am always glad to remember, when I observe these signs of diminishing vitality, that I have such an effectual restorative at hand in the shape of a key.

A few turns, and behold, what a transformation! In any proper clock, the revival wrought by the key is staid and respectable.

I'm trying to remember what book I

read it may have been Bleak House

which I have in my bag I'm

a terrible influence I'm like it's hard but I'm getting it and so yeah I write for myself absolutely and I think you should write for yourself I am interested in reaching a reader because I'm a reader but I don't believe in compromising to get there or there would have been way less gay sex in this book

Can't even tell you.

I'm walking around literally with new copies of Absalom, Absalom, because my brother ran off with mine.

And Bleak House, because every time I tried to read it, I got stopped.

And now I'm like, you know what? I just have to do a thing.

You know, I think he sort of may have flirted with the idea that he was in some way, you know, related to the crews.

Because, I mean, I think I explained like in Bleak House, Lady Deadlock is very much like Frances Ann Crewe.

You know, she has a secret as well, secret child.

But things like the coat of arms, which Dickens wrongly appropriated, or his father, where nobody's quite sure, even the family now, I'm told by members of the Dickens family now, they're not sure whether John was the first to use that coat of arms, but its very stock coat of arms bears similarity to the ones that Dickens decided he was going to nick.

So lots of reason to believe that Bleak House has a lot more resonance of his family's involvement with the cruise than we realised before.

We're going to talk a little bit about fraud and some more.

Dickens' maternal grandfather, who was Charles Barrow, died when Dickens was 14.

she's working class, pretty much.

And right before bleak house.

Oh, that's interesting.

I mean, they're all definitely deep looks into a certain strata of life.