Getting started on another Dickens. This time starting with chapter 3, we’ve got a female narrator. There’s a protracted law suit going on, and most of the main characters are beneficiaries of one of the litagants, John Jarndyce. There’s our narrator, Esther, as well as two distant cousins, Ada and Richard. And then there’s the charming Harold Skimpole, the self-described care-free and careless person who has no understanding of money and the ways of the world. He describes Ada thus: “We will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is a child of the universe.” Mr Jarndyce replies, “The universe makes a rather indifferent parent, I am afraid.” Before the chapter ends, Richard and Esther pool what little money they have to keep Harold from being arrested for a delinquent debt. More later.
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