The Bleak House
(Charles Dicken)

Childhood and Youth

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, in the southern central coastal area of England, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. By the time he was ten, his family had already moved twice and now resided in Camden, in North London. When Charles was twelve, his father landed in debtors’ prison for three months, owing to his inability to support his large family on his small income as a naval clerk. He was followed soon afterwards by his wife and Charles’s three youngest siblings. As a result, Charles had to temporarily leave school to work in a boot-blacking factory. Charles’s father was released from prison after his mother (Charles’s grandmother) died, allowing him to pay off his debts with his inheritance. At that point, Charles returned to school, this time to Wellington House Academy, the model for Salem House and its related characters in David Copperfield. In spite of the school’s abusive atmosphere and the mediocre education, Dickens’s intelligence enabled him to make the most of the experience, winning him the Latin prize by the time he graduated.

Early Career

At fifteen, Dickens worked as an administrative assistant for a lawyer. By 1829, he had learned shorthand and begun working as a reporter, establishing himself in 1831 as a Parliamentary reporter for the Mirror of Parliament, a weekly record of Parliamentary debates. In 1834, he began working for the Morning Chronicle as a journalist.

Love and Marriage

At seventeen, Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, a banker’s daughter. The relationship lasted four years until 1833, in part failing because of her family’s objections. Three years later, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he fathered ten children and whose father, George Hogarth, edited the Evening Chronicle, to which Dickens also contributed. About twenty years later, Dickens fell in love with the young actress Ellen Ternan, causing a final separation between him and his wife a year later. Dickens and Ternan’s relationship was not public, and they burned all related letters, but in his will, Dickens left Ternan enough money to support her for the remainder of her life.

Writing career

In 1833, when Dickens was twenty-one, his first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” appeared in the Monthly Magazine. From there Dickens went on to publish Sketches by Boz (his pen name) and The Pickwick Papers, which originally came out in serial form, a technique he used for many of his works. This was the beginning of his prolific output as an author, editor, and sometimes also publisher for various journals, including Bentley’s Miscellany (1836-1839), Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840-1841), Household Words (1850-1859), and All the Year Round (1859-1870). Major works included Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), The Olde Curiosity Shoppe (1840), Barnaby Ridge (1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843). Dickens’s so-called dark period, considered his mature period, began in 1848 with the publication of Donbey and Son, which was followed by twenty years of extraordinary creative output that would include such masterpieces as David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Dickens’s last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was interrupted by his death in 1870.

Conditions of the Times

Most of Dickens’s career took place during Queen Victoria’s reign, which began in 1837, when he was in his mid-twenties. Contemporary circumstances in England included severe working conditions, child labor, unemployment, and industrialization, which produced significant changes in the economy and labor conditions. Dickens’s work as a newspaper, court, and Parliamentary reporter, coupled with his detailed firsthand knowledge of London, thoroughly familiarized him with contemporary events and provided food for his stories.

Political and Charitable Involvement

Dickens himself was passionately opposed to the horrible working conditions of the times, and in 1841, he openly protested the laws that sustained them. In 1847, having returned to London after spending time abroad, he responded to a request for help from Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts, a philanthropist and one of England’s wealthiest heiresses. Her idea was to help establish Urania Cottage, a home where former prostitutes could learn a new way of life. Dickens managed the home for a decade. Sometime around 1850, he also became involved in amateur theater, which included many performances for charity.

Miscellaneous and Final Days

In 1842, Dickens and his wife went on their first tour to America, but even though the author was well received, his impressions of the country were negative, which had a negative effect on his popularity. In 1844, the Dickens family spent a year in Genoa, Italy, followed about a year later by six months in Switzerland and Paris, after which they returned to London. In 1858, Dickens began giving public readings, which benefited him economically but wore him down physically, costing him his health. In 1865, on his way back to London from Paris, Dickens, Ternan, and Ternan’s mother were involved in the Staplehurst rail accident, a major train disaster that resulted in the derailment of most cars, though it spared their own. The experience had a deep effect on Dickens. In 1867, he embarked on a second hectic tour of the United States, which had to be limited to the East coast because of his failing health. He was again well received in spite of his earlier negative statements on American ways. Back in London in 1868, he went on a final tour of farewell public readings, which also had to be cut short for health reasons. He died of a stroke on June 9, 1870, the same date as the Staplehurst rail disaster five years earlier. He is buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.

Background on the Court of Chancery

Function

The Court of Chancery dealt with matters of property, such as wills and estates, as well as issues concerning minors and insane people. There was neither a jury nor witnesses, all matters being handled through various legal representatives who read their written statements in court. Unlike the Court of Law, which dealt with criminal cases and resolved them according to common law, the Court of Chancery presumably relied on its sense of equity, or fairness, in reaching its decisions.

Court Officials

The Court of Chancery (or just “Chancery”) was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, whose prestigious position had a triple function that also encompassed cabinet membership and the leadership of the House of Lords. Subordinate to him were the three Vice-Chancellors, the Master of the Rolls, the judges, and the masters. The lawyers presenting the cases were called “barristers,” and these were hired by the solicitors, the clients’ legal counsel. Barristers and solicitors were just two examples of the many types of legal representatives in the Court of Chancery. In addition, there were clerks, stationers, and copyists, all of whom helped to turn the wheels of the Chancery’s often long, drawn-out cases.

Session Terms

The Court of Chancery had four specific session terms, each lasting roughly three weeks. These three-week terms were interspersed irregularly throughout the year and were called Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas Term. Respectively, their starting dates occurred in early January, mid-April, the third week of May, and early November. The four-month period between the last two terms was called “the long vacation.”

Locations

During these terms, the Court of Chancery was held in Westminster Hall, with the Lord Chancellor in charge of the proceedings. The year’s remaining sessions were held in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, one of the Inns of Court. There were four Inns of Court all together, the other three being Gray’s Inn, the Inner Temple, and Middle Temple. Together with the Inns of Chancery, which were attached but of a lesser status, the Inns of Court provided a place to live, work, and study for practitioners, students, and apprentices of the law.

Deteriorating Standards

By the time Dickens wrote Bleak House, the Court of Chancery had gained a reputation for extreme inefficiency and bureaucracy, not to mention excessive costs. The phrase “in Chancery” had become synonymous with these conditions and with a state of stalemate. The Chancery’s original purpose—to provide justice where the law was insufficient to ensure it—had been lost in both its ambition to reap the benefit of its multiplying fees and in its antiquated approach, which resulted in unnecessarily complicated and extended court cases. Some of these cases, like Bleak House’s Jarndyce and Jarndyce, lasted for decades, during which time the property under dispute was inaccessible.