My favourite Dickens passage is, without question, the opening to Bleak House. That astounding description of the fog and mud in the London streets and the possibility of a megalosaurus ‘forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill’. The manuscript is part of the Dickens exhibition on at the Museum of London at the moment, and while it’s fascinating to watch Dickens adjusting and editing to hone his effect, it was obvious to me that the great rush of words that carries you along in those first pages of Bleak House came rushing from his pen with the same crackle of energy you feel as you read it. Breathtaking.
(Lynn Shepherd’s new book, The Solitary House, is inspired by Bleak House)
In Chancery
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.
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