+It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same miry afternoon. It is not so unlike

+the Court of Chancery, but that we may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both

+the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and usage; over-sleeping Rip

+Van Winkles, who have played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather; 1 sleeping

+beauties, whom the Knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to

+turn prodigiously!

+It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which has its limits too (as your Highness

+shall find when you have made the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the void beyond) , it is a

+very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and true people in it; it has its

+appointed place. But the evil of it is, that  it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and

+fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round

+the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

+My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days previous to her departure for

+Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks; after which her movements are uncertain. The

+fashionable intelligencey says so, for the comfort of the Parisians, and it knows all fashionable things.

+To know things otherwise, were to be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she

+calls, in familiar conversation, her ‘place’ in Lincolnshire.2 The waters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch

+of t he bridge in the park has been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground, for half

+a mile in breadth, is a stagnant river, with melancholy trees for islands in it, and a  surface punctured

+all over, all day long, with falling rain. My Lady Dedlock’s ‘place’ has been extremely dreary The

+weather, for many a day and night, has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft

+loppings and prunings of the woodman’s axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. The deer,

+looking soaked, leave quagmires, where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist

+air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped,z that makes a

+background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock’s own windows is alternately a lead

+coloured view, and a view in Indian ink.aa The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the

+rain all day; and the heavy drops fall, drip, drip, drip, upon the broad flagged pavement, called, from

+old time, the Ghost’s Walk, all night. On Sundays, the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken

+pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Dedlocks

+in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir

+at a keeper’s lodge, and seeing the  light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the

+chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a

+wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says

+she has been ’bored to death.‘

+Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in Lincolnshire, and has left it to the rain,

+and the crows, and the rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the

+Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the

+housekeeper has passed along the old rooms, shutting up the shutters. And when they will next

+come forth again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and

+present, but not the future—cannot yet undertake to saySir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet,ab but there is no mightier baronet than he. His family is as old

+as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on

+without hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the whole admit Nature to be a

+good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence) , but an idea dependent for its

+execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all

+littleness and meanness, and ready, on the shortest notice, to die any death you may please to

+mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable,

+obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.

+Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He will never see sixty-five again, nor

+perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty-seven. He has a twist of the goutac now and then, and walks a little

+stiffly He is of a worthy presence, with his light grey hair and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure

+white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious, stately,

+most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest

+estimation. His gallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little

+touch of romantic fancy in him.

+Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about, that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir

+Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough, and could dispense with any more. But

+she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine

+ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward; and for years, now, my Lady

+Dedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence, and at the top of the f ashionable

+tree.

+How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, 3 everybody knows—or has some

+reason to know by this time, the matter having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock,

+having conquered her world, fell, not into the melting, but rather into the freezing mood.4 An

+exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or

+satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to

+Heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend without any rapture.

+She has beauty still, and, if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its autumn. She has a fine fa ce

+originally of a character that would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into

+classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her figure is elegant, and has the

+effect of being tall. Not that she is so, but that ‘the most is made,’ as the Honourable Bob Stables has

+frequently asserted upon oath, ‘of all her points.’ The same authority observes that she is perfectly

+got up; and remarks, in commendation of her hair especially, that she is the best-groomed woman in

+the whole stud.

+With all her perfections on her head,5 my Lady Dedlock has come up from her place in Lincolnshire

+(hotly pursued by the fashionable intelligence), to pass a few days at her house in town previous to

+her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements

+are uncertain. And at her house in town, upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old

+fashioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law, and eke solicitor of the High Court of Chancery,ad who has

+the honour of acting as legal adviser of the Dedlocks, and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office

+ with that name outside, as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjurer’s trick,6 and were

+constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the

+passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliant in the seasonae and very dismal out of itFairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in—the old gentleman is conducted, by a Mercury in powder,af

+to my Lady’s presence.

+The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocratic

+marriage settlements and aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious

+halo of family confidences; of which he is known to be the silent depository. There are noble

+Mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks, among the growing timber and the fern,

+which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of Mr.

+Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school—a phrase generally meaning any school that

+seems never to have been young—and wears knee breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or

+stockings. One peculiarity of his black clothes, and of his black stockings, be they  silk or worsted, is,

+that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He

+never converses, when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless but quite at

+home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses, and near doors of drawing-rooms,

+concerning which the fashionable intelligence is eloquent; where everybody knows him, and where

+half the Peerageag stops to say, ‘How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?’ he receives these salutations with

+gravity, and buries them along with the rest of his knowledge.

+Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady, and is happy to see Mr. Tulkinghorn. There is an air of

+prescriptionah about him which is always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of tribute.

+He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn’s dress; there is a kind of tribute in that too. It is eminently respectable, and

+likewise, in a general way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the legal mysteries,

+the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.

+Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may not; but there is this remarkable

+circumstance to be noted i n everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class—as one

+of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes herself to be an inscrutable

+Being, quite out of the reach and kenai of ordinary mortals—seeing herself in her glass, where indeed

+she looks so. Yet, every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to the manager of the

+Italian Opera,7 knows her weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices; and lives

+upon as accurate a calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature, as her dressmaker takes

+of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of

+jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are deferential

+people, in a dozen callings, whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her,

+who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby; who do nothing but nurse her all their

+lives; who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience, lead her and her whole troop after

+them; who, in hooking one, hook all and bear them off, as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet

+of the majestic Lilliput.8 ‘If you want to address our people, sir,’ say Blaze and Sparkle the jewell ers

+meaning by our people, Lady Dedlock and the rest—‘you must remember that you are not dealing

+with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and their weakest place is

+such a place.’ ‘To make this article go down, gentlemen,‘ say Sheen and Gloss the mercers,aj to their

+friends the manufacturers, ’you must come to us, because we know where to have the fashionable

+people, and we can make it fashionable.‘ ’If you want to get this print upon the tables of my high

+connexion, sir,‘ says  Mr. Sladdery the librarian, ak ’or if you want to get this dwarf or giant9 into the

+houses of my high connexion, sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment, the patronage of my

+high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me; for I have been accustomed to study the

+leaders of my high connexion, sir; and I may tell you, without vanity, that I can turn them round my

+finger,‘—in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not exaggerate at allTherefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the Dedlock mind at present, it is

+very possible that he may.

+‘My Lady’s cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr. Tulkinghorn?’ says Sir Leicester,

+giving him his hand.

+‘Yes. It has been on again to-day,’ Mr. Tulkinghorn replies; making one of his quiet bows to my Lady,

+who is on a sofa near the fire, shading her face with a hand-screen.al

+‘It would be useless to ask,’ says my Lady, with the dreariness of the place in Lincolnshire still upon

+her, ‘whether anything has been done.’

+‘Nothing that you would call anything, has been done to-day,’ replies Mr. Tulkinghorn.

+‘Nor ever will be,’ says my Lady.

+Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It is a slow, expensive, British,

+constitutional kind of thing. To be sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part in

+which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a shadowy impression that for his

+name—the name of Dedlock—to be in a cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous

+accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of

+justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a something, devised in conjunction with a variety of

+other somethings, by the perfection of human wisdom, for the eternal settlement (humanly

+speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion, that to give the sanction of his

+countenance to any complaints respecting it, would be to encourage some person in the lower

+classes to rise up somewhere—like Wat Tylert.am

+‘As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file,’ says Mr. Tulkinghorn, ‘and as they are short,

+and as I proceed upon the troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any

+new proceedings in a cause;’ cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no more respon- sibility than

+necessary; ‘and further, as I see you are going to Paris; I have brought them in my pocket.’

+(Sir Leicester was going to  Paris too, by-the-bye, but the delight of the fashionable intelligence was in

+his Lady.)

+Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them on a golden talisman of a table

+at my Lady’s elbow, puts on his spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.

+‘ “In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce—” ’

+My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal horrors as he can.

+Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles, and begins again lower down. My Lady carelessly and

+scornfully abstracts her  attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the fire, and appears to have

+a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities, as ranging among the national bulwarks. It

+happens that the fire is hot, where my Lady sits; and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than

+useful, being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the papers on the table

+looks at them nearer—looks at them nearer still—asks impulsively:‘Who copied that?’

+Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady’s animation and her unusual tone.

+‘Is it what you people call law-hand?’an she says, looking full at him in her careless way again, and

+toying with her screen.

+‘Not quite. Probably’—Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks—’the legal character which it has,

+was acquired after the original hand was formed. Why do you ask?‘

+‘Anything to vary this detestable monotony 0, go on, do!’

+Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater, my Lady screens her face. Sir Leicester dozes,

+starts up suddenly, and cries ‘Eh? what do you say?’

+‘I say I am afraid,’ says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily, ‘that Lady Dedlock is ill.’

+‘Faint,’ my Lady murmurs, with white lips, ‘only that; but it is like the faintness of death. Don’t speak to

+me. Ring, and take me to my room!’

+Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet shuffle and patter, silence ensues.

+Mercury at last begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to return.

+‘Better now,’ quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down and read to him alone. ‘I have been

+quite alarmed. I never knew my Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying—and she

+really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire.‘ \ No newline at end of file