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.‘