Catholic Fiction

As I write this, the Catholic diocese of Spokane, (like my own Archdiocese of Portland, OR) is going through bankruptcy proceedings brought on by sex abuse cases. I don’t know what the Portland numbers are, but in Spokane, according to this Catholic News Agency report, fully half of the $48 million to be awarded the victims will go to…you guessed it, lawyers.

In such a case, it is normal, I think, to call to mind Dick the Butcher’s famous line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 2, offered as one bullet on a laundry list of things to be done come the Revolution:  "First thing we do," Dick affirms, "let’s kill all the lawyers."

I acknowledge that the rule of law is essential to society, and that in the specific case of the sex abuse scandals a lethal combination of Good Old Boy hilltop mentality among segments of the clergy and hierarchy, coupled to several decades of loosey-goosey sexual morality, is the primary culprit at work, not the legal system. Still, something has gone dreadfully out of whack when lawyers end up with half of what’s to be had. Half, let us remember, of sums to be ponied up by the laity, whose children were at risk in the first place, and who some of these lawyers, it sometimes appears, wouldn’t mind seeing divested of their very parishes, if that’s what it took to make Payday.

But when it comes to providing a good legal literary reaming, we’re all amateurs compared to Charles Dickens. Never much of a fan of the legal profession, Dickens does for lawyers and England’s Court of Chancery what he did for (or rather, to) Yorkshire boys’ schools and their so-called "schoolmasters" in Nicholas Nickleby.

Bleak House tells the story of a group of people drawn together by connections to the Court of Chancery, where, in England’s ancient legal system, cases related to inheritance and property are heard. Though several of the minor characters are in Chancery because of their own small cases (Miss Flite, Mr. Gridley), the focus of everyone’s attention is the infamous case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce. It’s a convoluted case involving a huge estate and a contested will, and notorious even by Chancery standards for its byzantine complexity and decades-long duration. This thing is such a mess and has been going on for so long that lives have been wasted waiting for its false promise of riches. One man, the uncle of the present Mr. John Jarndyce, despaired over the shattered dreams and false hopes promised by the case, and blew his brains out. This tragedy induced John Jarndyce, quite wisely as we see in the course of this novel, to eschew all thoughts and hopes related to the J vs. J settlement. He takes up instead a life devoted to the wise administration of his own estate, Bleak House, and to doing good wherever he can in the matters that come his way.

One of the matters that comes his way is that of an orphaned girl, almost certainly illegitimate, raised by an old friend of Jarndyce’s. The orphan, Miss Esther Summerson (her real name is unknown) has the disgrace of her parentage strongly impressed upon her by the rigid, uncaring caretaker. Esther is raised to believe that her unknown mother was her disgrace and that she was her mother’s. Because of this blemish on her background, Esther would seem to have no hope of a normal life, until the caretaker dies and John Jarndyce takes it upon himself to educate her and eventually bring her to Bleak House.

Good Mr. Jarndyce offers Esther double employment at Bleak House: first, as the housekeeper (a position implying great trust on Jarndyce’s part), and secondly as the companion to another young woman, Miss Ada Clare, a distant cousin of Jarndyce’s. Ada is one of the so-called "Wards in Jarndyce"—orphans whose status as potential heirs of the vast Jarndyce estate have legally placed them in the custody of the Court of Chancery. The Chancery’s sitting judge sees fit to send them to Bleak House under John Jarndyce’s care until they come of age.

The other "Ward in Jarndyce" is young Richard Carstone, a handsome and talented youth who, apart from promptly and steadfastly falling in love with Ada, can’t seem to find his way in life. Jarndyce encourages both Ada and Richard to ignore the whole rotten Jarndyce vs Jarndyce mess, and tries to persuade Richard, who has little money of his own, to train for some profession. Poor Richard, however, can’t seem to stick with anything, except his devotion to Ada and his growing fixation, in spite of all Jarndyce’s warnings, with the Chancery case. The way Richard sees it, if he can just take matters into his own hands and get the proper legal representation, he will win the Jarndyce case and he and Ada, whom he hopes to marry, will be set up for life.

Meanwhile, as is almost always the case in Dickens, there is a second plot-thread running through the book. In Bleak House it is the story of Lady Honoria Dedlock, a beautiful woman with a dangerous secret in her past. Another acquaintance of Jarndyce’s, Lady Dedlock is also one of the many contenders in the Jarndyce case. When her lawyer, the formidable Mr. Tulkinghorn, gets wind that there may be something amiss with Lady Dedlock, he takes it upon himself—perhaps out of longstanding loyalty to Sir Leicester Dedlock’s family, perhaps out of sheer love of power—to find out Lady Dedlock’s secret. And Tulkinghorn is not a man to be trifled with; indeed, he may be considered, in his too-smooth way, one of Dickens’ greatest villains.  

As is also always the case in Dickens, the two plots finally converge, both personally and around the Jarndyce case. As it unfolds we are treated to the shenanigans of some of the most memorable characters in all of literature—not just power-hungry Tulkinghorn, unjaundiced Jarndyce, mysterious Lady Dedlock, and flighty Miss Flite, with her collection of caged birds ( to be "freed on the day of Judgment"), but so many others as well: Mr. Guppy (a small-fry lawyer swimming with sharks) who takes a fancy to Esther; Mr. Krook, Miss Flite’s crooked landlord, who is addicted to collecting other people’s stuff almost as much as he is to swilling gin, and may therefore be sitting on the answers to a whole lot of questions; Smallweed, the paralytic moneylender who loves to make mischief whilst being carried around on a litter like an Eastern potentate. (In a hilarious if a little disgusting motif, Smallweed is forever yelling at his subservient granddaughter to give his vertebrae a nice cracking: "Shake me up, Judy!?" he cries); Mr. Skimpole, the gentlemanly freeloader who sponges off Jarndyce (and anyone else who comes in his path) with the excuse that he is too innocent for the wicked ways of the world: "I’m a child," he insists, "a mere child!" In a book in which children are constantly having to take on the responsibilities of adults because the adults are constantly acting like children, Skimpole’s childlike (or not) "innocence" includes abandoning his own wife and children to their devices, while living the good life himself at others’ expense. Not to mention, taking bribes from lawyers wanting an introduction to the Wards in Jarndyce.

To sort all these folks out comes Mr. Bucket, the deceptively plodding police inspector investigating two different but related deaths occuring in the book. Bucket’s unassuming air, rumpled clothes, social missteps, and seemingly offhand approach to sleuthing were surely something of a model for TV?s famous Detective Columbo.

Speaking of Inspector Bucket and sleuthing, this case-solving sub-plot of the sprawling Bleak House holds the distinction, in literary history, of being one of the earliest and most formative examples of "detective fiction" in English literature, right after Edgar Allan Poe and his three famous (and genre-creating) detective novels set in France, starring Auguste Dupin.

I won’t, of course, give away how any of this wonderfully absorbing but occasionally devastating tale unfolds, but please don’t let the sheer size of Bleak House put you off: The "payoffs" in this doorstopper, with its indelible cast of characters, are well worth all the pages Dickens uses to set them up. There is, after all, a reason this book is considered, not only a classic, but one of Dickens’ finest.

Just don’ expect to come away from Bleak House with tender feelings toward the legal profession.

(P.S. The BBC, known for its excellent adaptations of classic literary works, completely outdid itself in 2006 with one of the finest TV adaptations ever filmed. If nothing else, familiarize yourself with this classic tale by means of the Beeb!)