After the family reunion, we came down with Covid.  By “we,” I mean the whole family.  Ground zero: a picnic in a state park. I will always think of it as Covid State Park.

I dragged around the house for days in my nightgown, like an invalid in a Victorian novel. I carried a box of Kleenex from room to room. The Victorians would have used handherchiefs.

“We’re out of Kleenex again!” 

It is exhausting, painful, disturbing.  When you’ve got Covid, you think you want to curl up with Agatha Christie and other cozy mysteries.   You want to go strictly genre.  But the truth is, you spend so much of your time managing symptoms that it doesn’t matter what you read.

Eventually I escaped from Christie’s English vicarage to Victorian London in Bleak House.

Dickens’s masterpiece consists of (at least) three interwoven novels within a novel, which spiral out from Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a lawsuit that has ruined hundreds of lives, and driven one man to suicide. Ironically, this doomed lawsuit provides work for hundreds of lawyers, clerks, copyists, and journalists.  Dickens rages against the machine:  he bellows that there is no justice in Chancery. Chancery is a foggy nightmare, located a few blocks from Tom’s-all-alone, a plague-ridden alley where the homeless live and die.

In my favorite part of the novel, “Esther’s Narrative,” we meet Mr. John Jarndyce, a wealthy philanthropist who deplores Jarndyce and Jarndynce. This comical character, who is too eccentric to be a real hero – he frequently retires to the “growlery” when he feels “the East wind” – is the guardian of three young adults, Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone.  Esther is an orphan, no relation to Mr. Jarndyce, and hence not involved in the suit; but Ada and Richard, his distant relatives, have been raised with knowledge of the pending lawsuit.  Mr. Jarndyce patiently, grimly explains that the suit will never be settled. He emphasizes that all expectations will be disappointed, and that Richard will have to make a living.  Bright Ada understands, but Richard, unfortunately, becomes obsessed with Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

“Esther’s Narrative” is by far the best part of Bleak House:  honestly, she is my favorite of all Dickens’s characters, a charming, witty, observant young woman, beloved by a number of eccentric characters, including Miss Flite, a crazy old woman who haunts Chancery and plans to free her pet birds from their cages when her case is closed. Esther has a great affection for inky Caddy Jellyby, whose mother, Mrs Jellyby, dictates letters all day to Caddy regarding an obscure Borrioboola-Gha charity in Africa, and thus neglects her family.

Perhaps the darkest part of Bleak House is the satire of Lord and Lady Dedlock, who have a house in London and an estate in Lincolnshire. The elegant, disdainful Lady Dedlock is always “bored to death” and always on the move.  The Dedlocks are sketchily portrayed, because it more effective for Dickens to show them as cartoon silhouettes, who stand for a certain class and empty way of life. Since Lady Declock is also peripherally involved in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, her character is gradually revealed to us. She and Esther discover they are related. And partly because of this, she is persecuted by Mr. Tulkinghorn, a wealthy, truly evil lawyer, who likes to dig up dirt, and digs up quite a bit on Lady Dedlock.

Let me leave you with a passage from Dickens’ rant on Jarndyce and Jarncyce.

How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks’ Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man’s nature has been made better by it.

Rant on, Dickens! (And Kleenex, please! )