Bleak House

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens published in 1853. It was released in 20 monthly series, so that spills into 1852. Anyways, that last summary was anything but a summary but, as it tends to be, for me, at least, the longer the book, the shorter the summary. Since this is over 800 pages long, let's see.

Esther is the main character, since she narrates is the best argument, I suppose,. Well, for the sake of clarity, she is. The book is told by her and a third person narrator. The third person is very cynical and judgemental, the voice of Dickens, and the other is very innocent and well-meaning.

In London, the Chancery has had a case called Jarndyce and Jarndyce going on for over 70 years. It rules the book mostly, since it sucks everyone into it's influence. The case makes no sense, but there's a fortune to be one. It doesn't help that everyone in the court is useless though. There are two people always at court: a mad old woman (Later to be known as Miss Flite) who nobody cares about but can be seen with a bunch of documents; and Mr. Gridley, who is always very angry because of what Chancery has done to his life by his obsession with it, but to everyone else, he is entertainment only. The judge is very lazy and doesn't do anything. There are two wards of Jarndyce (to be known as Ada and Richard) who are involved with the case and are orphans, and also are cousins of Mr. Jarndyce. They are to come under his responsibility.

Esther's childhood is terrible. She doesn't know her parents at all, and is raised by her godmother. She says the godmother is nice, but that seems only to be because she is very religious. She is actually very cold, raises Esther in complete secrecy, and thus, lonely misery. Her best friend is a doll, and it's all very pathetic. A mysterious man (Mr. Kenge) comes once to examine Esther, and then, after her godmother has a fit, reciting lines from the Bible to wait for the second coming, she dies, and Mr. Kenge returns. He reveals that the godmother is her aunt and that she is to go to Greenleaf school to learn to be a governess, funded by Mr. JArndyce. Her caregiver, Ms. Rachel, feels no sadness in the parting, and from this, Esther resolves to be as good as possible so as to win love someday. After being in Greenleaf a while, she has to leave at Mr. Jarndyce's wish. The parting is sad for the children loved her. She gets to Chancery, meets the Chancellor, and is told she'll go to Mr. Jarndyce's place: Bleak House, with Ada and Richard, distant cousins. She immediately hits it off with Ada, who is absolutely beautiful and three years younger than her (20 now) and Richard is 19. No one knows who Jarndyce is.

Before going to Bleak House, they go to Mrs. Jellyby's at Jarndyce's wish, because Bleak House is far. Mrs. Jellyby is apparently an amazing hard-working philanthropist (a huge theme in this book) who does a lot for the made-up (by Dickens) country in Africa. However, the three younguns find that she completely neglects her house and is absolutely indifferent of her many children, uses her oldest daughter Cady as a writer, and is doing really superfluous stuff in Africa. Her husband hardly talks and seems eternally depressed by the war zone of a house. Esther quickly befriends Cady as Cady comes to see her miserable.

When they get to Bleak House, JArndyce is super affectionate, immediately likeable, and a bit too well-meaning, but wonderful generally. They quickly discover that he can't stand being thanked. Esther becomes housekeeper, which is a huge honour and she feels as though she belongs. They meet Harold Skimpole, a freeloader of Jardyce's who poses at being a man-child that doesn't understand money and responsibility. He asks Richard and Esther to lend him money to settle the debt he owes, collected by Mr. Coavinses. They help but Jarndyce settles it later. Esther quickly realises that Richard does not actually have a sensible understanding of money. Esther is told to call Jarndyce Guardian. She is called little woman, old woman, Dame Durden, and a multitude of other things.

This goes thus well for a while and nothing really happens except that Ada and Richard quickly fall in love. They visit Cady occasionally, which is nice, and other philanthropists who are also terrible domineering women doing no good in sacrifice for their families. This leads them to meet Jenny and Liz, some Brickmaker's wives. Jenny's baby had just died and Liz is very affectionate and helpful. Both are beaten by their husbands and living in extreme poverty. Esther leaves her handkerchief to cover the dead baby. The gang also, in a similar way, meet Miss Flite (Ada, Richard Esther Cady) and go to her apartment. She is very polite towards Ada and Richard, who she calls the Wards of Chancery, and to everything in general. She believes that the judgement of the case J&J will come simultaneously with the Last Judgement. In her apartment building, they meet Krook, a store-owner, in the bottom floor who is illiterate and a hoarder, but can only write the words Jarndyce & J and Bleak House. On the second floor, they are told a copier lives, and on the third, they see Miss Flite's poor bare room and cage of birds to be finally released onthe day of judgement. These birds are named things like Life and Hope and YOuth, things caged in by the Chancery. Many birds have died waiting to be released. They leave her money. Finally, a clerk called Mr. Guppy at one point asks Esther, out of the blue, to marry her, and then stalks her with puppy-dog pity expressions. It's very weird.

Meanwhile, nothing goes on with the case but we learn that the rich baronet Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wide Lady Dedlock are involved in J&J. Mr. Tulkinghorn is their lawyer and he is a very one-missioned, determined, intelligent man awith no emotions. He knows all the family secrets and regularly waltzes into their mansion to report things. Lady Dedlock is perpetually bored, being the highed of fashion in London but having nothing to interest her. Until one day, she exciedly asks of the handwriting on a paper of Tulkinghorn's, which she recognisess. Tulkinghorn investigates secretly by asking Mr. Snagsby, who works as a law stationer cross from Krook. Mr. Snagbsy is a very good person, nervous, soft-spoken, and kind. His wife is a jealous, less intelligent type. He directs Tulkinghorn to the copier with the handwriting to match Tulkinghorn's inquiry. The copier is the guy on the second floor of Krooks. He is found dead, overdosed on opium.

The copier is named Nemo, meaning no one in Latin. Miss Flite is sent to get a doctor. She gets two, one who confirms death and leaves immediately, and another who investigates, comforts, instructs, and takes care of traumatised Miss Flite afterwards. An inquest is held to identify Nemo, but there is no one but a street boy named Jo, who sweeps crap off the road for tips. He doesn't speakk well and doesn't understand fully christianity, which is enough reason for the Chancellor to disconsider him, so Nemo is dumped in a very poor cemetery, only a foot from the ground. Jo is a heartbreaking character as he comments softly on how only Nemo was good to him, and he sweeps he step leading to the graveyard often. At the inquest, mr. Snagsby pities him and gives him a half-crown, secretly.

Back at Bleak House, Ada and Richard have become engaged. They star to try to find jobs for Richard but whatever he tries fails because he hasn't a mind for work. The kind doctor turns out to be Mr. Woodcourt and comes over often. His mother is annoying. She only speaks of status and how her son cannot marry beneath him. Mr. Woodcourt is lovely, as Esther thinks also. The gang already met Mr. Boythorn, who visited Bleak House, neighbor of the Dedlocks and old friend of Jarndyce. He is very nice, funny, and owns an adorable bird. He mysteriously was detained from being married a long while back.

Back with the Dedlocks, they move occasionaly to stay boredom but are rather uneventful. Lady Dedlock gets close to her very loyal housekeeper Mrs. Rouncewell's apprentice, Rosa. Rosa is very pretty, and though Lady D is usually cold, she is motherly to Rosa. She finds that Rosa is in love with Walt, who is Mrs. ROuncewell's godson. Mrs. Rouncewell has two sons, one who disappeared in war and another who is very successful upstairs in the iron business and is called the Ironmaster. Sir Dedlock tends to be described very sarcastically about how posh he is. Mr. Tulkinghorn, on the other hand stays very active. He is always working in his office with a paining on the ceiling of a Roman guy pointing a finger downwards. May be the third person narrator, may be accusatory, may be Dickens, may be Tulkinghorn.

Jo, meanwhile in his miserable lifestyle, goes on knowing nothing about anything. He is visited by a mysterious woman in a black gown and veil. She asks him to take him to where Nemo lived and where he is buried, which Jo does. She gives him a sovereign (huge) with a small, white, bejewelled hand. Most of this is stolen away though, because with the little money he earns every day, Jo pays the meagre rent at Tom-all-alone's the slums. Being a godforsaken slum, most of what he earns is gone quickly.

On visiting Cady next, Esther finds that she is helping Miss Flite a lot so as to learn how to keep house. She's engaged! We find out later that this is to Prince Turvydrop, names so by Mr. Turvydrop, who is respectable only because of his very magnificent deportment, whilst he actually depends entirely on his son financially, as he did on his wife until she worked herself to death. Prince is a very good hard-working dance-instructor and in love with Cady.

Skimpole announces that his nemesis Coanvinses has died. Hooray! Well, no. Coavinses was just doing his debt collecting job and had three children to support and was a widower. So hearing this, Jardnyce sets off with Esther to check how the kids are. They're doing terribly, though all cheerful, disgustingly mature, and surviving. Charley (13) is the oldest and goes about working as a laundress to support Tom and Emma, the baby. They are disliked by many because of their father's job, but are taken pity on by others, like their landlady and Mr. Gridley. They meet Mr. Gridley here, who goes into a rage about chancery , and then after that's done with, kindly invites the kids to have ginger cookies at his place and we immediately like him. Jarndyce starts supporting them.

Also an issue at Bleak House is that first Richard quit being a doctor, then quick being a lawyer, and now is in the army, having bought a commission. He seems in danger of never settling down with a job, but instead, getting obsessed with Chancery and ruining his life. The Chancery is like the casino. There is no chance of winning but you believe in it enough that you let it drain you of everything whilst you insist on loving gambling. For these reasons, Jarndyce advises Richard and Ada to break off the engagement for now. They do, but they are clearly still in love.

Jo gets bullied by a sheriff to move on. Then, a sheriff could just pick any homeless guy, say he's dangerous, and say move on, though Jo has no where to move on to. This is when the Snagsbys were waiting for the Chadbands to come for tea. Mr. Chadband is a self-proclaimed preacher that is absolutely idiotic but people, like Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby are fooled to admire him by his grand way of speaking. They show up, and the Jo commotion happens right outside so they come in and Snagsby says that Jo isn't dangerous. The officer said he found a bunch of money on Jo that a guy like him shouldn't have unless he's a criminal. Jo explains the veiled woman story, and seems so miserable now that it ever happened. No one seems to believe him, and Mrs. Snagsby, a normal, cold, Dickensian Londoner, tries to kick him out. Guppy enters, who heard the commotion, and the officer leaves Jo with Guppy, who hears the veil story and then, upon saying he works for Kenge (law firm) Mrs. Chadband says she knows him. Turns out Mrs. Chadband is Mrs. Rachel Chadband, former cold governess of Esther who raised her in isolation. Guppy is astounded and all the closer to the Lady Dedlock mystery. meanwhile Jo is subjected to Chadband's terrible speech, made to promise to return, and then leaves with whatever food Snagsby managed to sneak to him. The maid Guster (suffers from epilepsy) pities him.

Mr. Guppy looks into the Dedlock case and meanwhile is visited by his friend Tony who just got fired for stealing, so he sets him up with Nemo's old job, living where Nemo lived. To escape the consequences of stealing, he takes on the name of Mr. Weavle. He immediately befriends Krook and we find out that there's a rumour that Krook is actually incredibly rich and has no one to bequeath it to, so Weavle may get it. When the two visit Nemo's place, he sees a portrait of the famous Lady Dedlock hanging in Nemo's room. This gives him a jolt and he is the first to realise that Lady Dedlock looks like his beloved Esther. He starts enquiring about her and shows that he knows that Esther's real last name is Hawdon and that they look alike and that Nemo's real name was Hawdon and that he has some of Hawdon's letters if she'd like them. She says yes, Tulkinghorn walks in and is as suspicious as ever. Guppy goes to Nemos to pick them up. He doesn't actually have them, but Weavle is supposed to get them from Krook that night. However, when they go downstairs, at midnight, they find that he's not there but the whole place is oily. Then they see Krook;s evil cat eating his carcass. He died of spontaneous human combustion.

The Bleak House folks go to vacation at Boythorn's place, which is very fun, and a strange thing happens. When visiting him, they met Miss Dedlock in a rainy place, an Esther finds her very intimidating for some unknown reason, and who brought old memories to mind, like the face of her aunt, who looks like Lady Dedlock. Lady D treats Ada and Esther like children and is friendly with Jarndyce, though it seems he was closer to her sister. When Lady D's ordered ride comes, Hortense (her tempered French maid) and Rosa (her lovely sorta adopted girl) come out. She sent for the usual maid and they didn't know which. It was Rosa and the Rosa and Lady D leave in the two-person carriage and Hortense, enraged, takes off her shoes and stalks off in the rain, at which everyone is at a loss for words. Hortense is fired and enraged, comes to Esther's at one point to aggressively beg for work, and is extremely enraged constantly, especially when Esther refuses.

Tulkinghorn, always suspicious with Lady D and how her secret may harm Sir D, continues investigations. He has Jo brought in, as the only person who knew Hawdon, and he uses a Detective Bucket to find Jo. Bucket is very skilled and intelligent, but through his work, we see that he is a pretty decent, emotionally intelligent guy too. Bucket gets Snagsby to help him find Jo (street name Toughey) at Tome-all-alone's. Finally they find Jenny and Liz, the brickmaker's wives. We see Jenny holding a baby. It's Liz's but she thinks of him as her own, and she says that Jo went out to get medicine for Liz, who is sick. So they catch Jo, bring him to Tulkinghorn's and there reveal a veiled gowned woman. Jo freaks out and says it's the veiled woman, the exact clothing, but on seeing her hands, sees that it isn't actually her. Tulkinghorn deduces from this that the veiled woman (who is currently Hortense) is actually Lady D in Hortense's clothes. Jo is very worries by all this, insists that he'd rather be left alone, and he gets more money, which really doesn't compensate for all the trauma. Snagsby feels guilty for no reason, since all this is so suspicious, and he so unaware, and he becomes very paranoid.

We meet Mr. George, who was in the army, is handsome, and is always army-ish in a good way. He has a long debt from Mr. Smallweed, a bitter old man who hates everyone and is paralysed from waist-down. We find that his house of weird and bitter people uses and extorts Charley, the Coavinses girl. George, who runs a somewhat failed shooting range, comes to Smallweed on paying day to pay interest, on which day they smoke together. Mr. George is a very principled person and is generally very good. We see that with his friendship with his assistant in the shooting range, Phil. Phil is deformed and probably wouldn't have found a life anywhere else. Because he knows Richard, since as part of his army training he goes to the shooting range, Mr. George later comes to Bleak House, as most characters tend to, and is taken aback by the sight of Esther, who reminds him of someone.

As it's Richards last day before army stuff, Esther and he go to Chancery to see the J&J case that Richard is by now stupidly certain will make him and Ada rich soon. Esther is shocked at how nothing gets done and Richard looks really worn out but insists that he believes everything will be fine. At court, they meet Mr. George, who is psyched to see them and asks if they know Miss Flite. They introduce her and he takes them all to his shooting range because Gridley, who he'd been housing, is there dying of illness (caused by stress with J&J) and needs to see Miss Flite. When they get there, a really nice doctor is waiting outside, but once they're in, turns out to be Bucket. He'd been looking for him concerning debts, but is again very decent about it all. Jarndyce shows up since Esther left a note, and they all watch Gridley die, Bucket encouraging him to live, and miss Flite holding his hand. Miss Flite and Gridley are very alike in their craziness from the J&J and he says she is his last friend, and dies.

This is what happens a bit later with Mr, George. He is friends with the Bagnet family, who is the only perfect family in the book, with a strong, kind, good wife, a loving husband, though somewhat shy, and three adorable children. they run a music shop, to which George goes regularly. Going on with the George story, though it comes in intervals, he gets called in by Tulkinghorn concerning a sample of the handwriting of his old Captain Hawdon. George says Hawdon's dead and wouldn't give the sample anyways since Tulkinghorn refuses to explain why he wants it. We are very proud of George's principles. Thus very sad when he has to fold them because he is manipulated by Tulkinghorn. Tulkinghorn is in alliance with Smallweed and they send George an out-of-the-blue notice that he expects all payment for the next day, which George can't do. As it's paying day tomorrow, the Bagnets come to cosign the loan, and George is faced to tell them that as he cannot pay, they'll be hounded for all they have now. This, George can't allow, so he and Mr. Bagnet go to Smallweed's to beg, and are directed to Tulkinghorn's next. There they meet Mrs. Rouncewell, who salutes them and talks of her military son. George is very awkward. At Tulkinghorn's he trades hawdon's letters for an extension and the promise of Bagnet immunity. He is very aware of the painting above him. That night, he goes to the Bagnets very depressed and speaks to the son of never worrying his mother, as George had done to his, and how that is the most important thing.

Richard is by this point lost to J&J, obsessed with it, though still in the army. He is in debt because he spends all his money dealing with the case through the evil lawyer Mr. Vholes, who is sponging him. Also, Skimpole is sponging off Richard, making Jarndyce cut him off. Vholes turned Richard against Jarndyce and there is nothing anyone can do. Mr. Woodcourt goes abroad because he is poor from helping all the poor people and finds a job as a sea doctor. Before leaving, he gives Esther flowers, which she dries and saves. They're in love, obviously.

Charley was given to Esther as a maid by Jarndyce, which is great, and they become best buds. Charley tells Esther about her friend Jenny needing Esther's help. Esther goes with Charley to Tom-all-alone's to find Jo sick, being nursed by Liz and Jenny, as he helped them before. Jo freaks and is scared of Esther because she wears a veil. He realises she's different but is delusional from illness. The brickmakers are coming home, so they need everyone out, and Esther and Charley take Jo to Bleak House. He is very weak. They keep him in the outside cottage, not understanding germ theory yet, after some opposition from Skimpole. When they check the next morning, he is gone. However, Charley has gotten the disease (I think smallpox, since it's disfiguring)and Esther nurses her in isolation. Charley gets better, but then Esther gets sick and asks Charley to nurse her in isolation. Esther goes blind for a bit but gets eventually all better, except that when she wakes there are no mirrors in the room and Charley weeps. Turns out her face is disfigured and she's lost all her beauty. Drat. Esther pulls herself together and everyone is just so happy she's fine.

When she wakes, she goes to Boythorns for a while with Charley to fully recover. It's nice there and she grows confident, but she meets Lady D, who knew of her illness and was awaiting until recovery to meet her. She, since Guppy's revelation had known that Esther is her daughter, who she thought was stillborn, but that her sister raised Esther in isolation to save her image, as it was out of wedlock with Hawdon. We find out that Esther's aunt, then, is Lady D's sister. She tells Esther everything and Esther has forgiven her, and says to Lady D that she'll keep the secret for her sake. Esther is now an illegitimate child. Lady D says they shall never meet again.

Meanwhile, (There's ALOT of meanwhile in all Dickens) Lady D is very attached and motherly to Rosa but Mr. Rouncewell, the one in the north 'The Ironmaster', comes and says that as his son Watt is in love with Rosa, he wants to let him marry her. However, that would require her getting an education, which means leaving Lady D. Sir D is offended that Mr. R think so low of their influence, and Lady D won't part with Rosa.

Esther comes back to Bleak House and doesn't tell anyone, though she eventually tells her Guardian. She takes the measure to go with Charley to see Guppy, since Guppy said he'd be looking in on her, and to confirm that he stop. He says alright, and seeing her face, ungraciously confirms that any form of engagement between them is dissolved. Jarndyce also proposes to her, as he says he'd wanted to do for so long, and she says yes, but it's weird in the sense that she has always thought of him as her father, and can't say no because she owes him so much.

She finds out how bad Richard's gotten and she goes to visit him at military place. He's planning on selling his commission to finance J&J. She tries to stop him and convince him or Jarndyce's goodness, but it doesn't work. Richard is in a terrible state mentally, bodily, financially. Ada has become the only good thing about him and he is failing her. When there, she runs into Woodcourt at the bay, returned from sea. She finds earlier, from Miss Flite, that he had become a hero because there was a ship wreck and he saved a lot of people and was very decent. Everyone' proud. He is no richer though. Woodcourt is sorry for her face and saddened, at which Esther is glad because it squashes any chance that he and she can ever have anything. She had already burnt his flowers. Woodcourt is very nice and happy to see her though, and at her wish, promises to befriend Richard, which he does loyally.

Esther only tells Ada about her engagement to Jarndyce, and finds her troubled. It's not because of the engagement though. Esther visits Richard again, and he is now living greatly in debt near Vholes, miserably and she finds that he and Ada had secretly marries and she had given all her inheritance to him. Richard is hopeless and Esther leaves Ada, sad though. Ada is to Esther as Rosa is to Lady D. Jarndyce is worried. Luckily, Woodcoourt seems to be the couple's only solace and Esther and Woodcourt visit them very often.

Meanwhile, Tulkinghorn had cracked the Lady D secret and told her he knows. Lady D had Esther with Captain Hawdon out of wedlock. Esther was raised in secret by Lady D's sister, and Captain Hawdon was said to have died, but obviously hadn't until the discovery of him at Krook's. Tulkinghorn says he'll tell Sir D when he wishes. Lady D is prepared to leave, but is told to stay as if nothing changed.

Meanwhile, Woodcourt walks about Tom-all-alone's at night, looking for people to save. He helps Jenny, who was beaten by her husband, and when leaving, passes Jo. Jenny yells Stop him! and Woodcourt, assuming he'd robbed her, chases and catches him. He recognises Jo from the inquisition, and JO is in a terrible state of agony, living in the street fearing always that Bucket is around the corner. Turns out that he was taken from the cottage that day at Bleak House and told to stay out of London. Jenny tells Jo what happened to Esther's face and Jo is very sad and remorseful. Woodcourt can hardly stomache it, but grows compassionate and gets Jo on his feet and through Miss Flite, to George's George houses Jo because Esther had liked Jo, and there Jo continues his illness. He tells of the veil again and again, still traumatised, and meets Snagsby as a sort of confessional, during which sentimental Snagsby gives him two crowns. Jo asks Snagsby to make his will, which should say in really big letters, that he is extremely sad to have caused Esther pain. Esther meets him too and is only smiles. When almost dead, Woodcourt is at his bed-side through the scene that made me sob. Near the end, Jo says he's moving on to the burying ground, the poor one, near Nemo. He teaches Jo the Our father, his first ever prayer, and Jo dies mid-prayer.

Meanwhile, Cady had gotten married and now has a kid named Esther who is very weak. She works hard and is happy to make a home for her father and siblings, husband and daughter. Woodcourt helps her through the post-birthing illness.

Lady D dismisses Rosa to try to spare her the shame of being employed by Lady D, the sinful woman. Tulkinghorn, angry at her being conspicuous, though it seems he's just looking for an excuse, announces that he will tell Sir D everything. That night, gunshots are heard, and next morning he is found dead beneath the pointing painting. George, who is a the Bagnet's for Mrs. Bagnet's birthday party, after a wonderfully nice scene, is interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Bucket who becomes the life of the party. George and Bucket leave together, and Bucket arrests him because he is suspected of the murder, as George had been going to Tulkinghorn and yelling at him all the time about his debt. This is done decently of course. The gang try to get him out of prison but he refuses to get a lawyer. At court, he realises that Lady D was outside Tulkinghorn's when he was that night of murder because he associates Esther's silhouette with Lady D's, and seeing Esther at prison, remembers. Esther is afraid her mom will be suspected.

Mrs. Bagnet comes up with a plan to go find George's mother, who through a lot of stuff, she has deduced to be Mrs. Rouncewell. She goes off to get her, and when she comes, George agrees to get a lawyer and we find that he thought he was terrible because he didn't live up to his own dreams and was unsuccessful whilst his brother was Ironmaster, an so out of pride, had ended contact with her. She loves him dearly. Awww. Anyways, George is released though because Bucket found the real murderer.

He had been working out of the Dedlock house and had been intercepting letters accusing Lady D of murder. She was there that night, as confirmed by porters, but after some work with his amateur detective wife, at Tulkinghorn's funeral (where no one shows up but where he gets suspicious of Hortense by a certain look) he and his wife wait for her to incriminate herself, which she does a lot. They find her writing the accusing letters, find the gun she threw in a lake, and other things. When decently and gently revealing this to Sir D, Bucket is interrupted by Mrs. Snagsby, Mr. Chadband and Mr. Smallweed who had been investigating and suspecting Lady D. Bucket shoos them and says it was Hortense and she's arrested. However, earlier, Mrs. Rouncewell got Hortenses accusatory letter and asked Lady D to confess for George's sake. Thinking all will be revealed, as it was, Lady D leaves what seems to be a suicide note, and goes off on foot. Sir D forgives her everything and clearly loves her. He sends Bucket off in search to save her, but then has a stroke and is sick in bed. He stays so a while and is taken care of by George and his mother.

By the way, George goes up north to meet his brother. It goes really well. Yeah!!

Bucket gets Esther because she's the daughter and so may help in stopping Lady D from being rash when they find her. They trace her north, and when they get to Jenny's they go farther north because they said she did, and Lady D had Jenny go back to London, for some reason. They go north, lose the track, and Bucket has a revelation and races back to London. He traces her to Snagsby's and Guster, who is mid-epileptic shock, had gotten a letter from her about her travels, that she wanted to be sent to Esther. When walking to Snagsby's, Esther and Bucket meet Woodcourt, who stays with them and is a great comfort to Estehr. Guster reveals that she gave Lady D directions to the burying ground where Hawdon is. They go, and there find jenny on the step. Esther is restrained and Bucket gently tries to explain that Jenny and Lady D switched clothing, Jenny went north and then back home, whilst Lady D, dressed as Jenny, went back to London. This means nothing to he delirious Esther though, who goes to jenny and finds Lady D dead. She cries and Woodcourt comforts, and then in narration, Esther skips forward.

Mrs. Woodcourt had been staying at Bleak House a while. Woodcourt got a job in York in months. He isn't going back abroad, which makes Esther happy. He's as good to Richard as ever. Ada's pregnant. Oh no.

A development in J&J!!! Bucket runs into Bleak House with a document he'd seized from Smallweed, that he'd found at Krook's. The document is a will that outdates all other wills, making everything much clearer and leaving most the estate to Richard and Ada. As this is being processed Esther starts planning the wedding to Jarndyce, which will be in a month. He still isn't calling her his wife though, but just the mistress of Bleak House. On day, on the way back from Ada and Richard's Jarndyce doesn't show up to pick Esther up, so Woodcourt and Esther walk alone for the first time. At their residence in London, Woodcourt confesses his love to Esher, and she starts crying because she's happy, an sad that she can't return the love due to engagement. They decide to be friends an Woodcourt says he'll love her forever.

She pushes onwards but then Jarndyce takes her to the house he'd bought and made up in the style of Esther for Woodcourt. Esther loves it. Jarndyce calls it Bleak House. He then explains that he'd been selfish in asking her to marry him, since she had no choice. He says he loves her and knows she loves him, and knows he could make her happy, but can't go trhough with it if he so clearly sees that someone else could make her happier. So he dissolves the engagement and reveals that he'd been planning her and Woodcourt, and invited his mother to stay so she could get over her marrying upwards thing and grow to love Esther as all do. She did, and approves, and crying, Esther thanks Jarndyce, gets engaged to Woodcourt, marries him in a month, and becomes mistress of this new Bleak House.

However, when passing court together, they find out that J&J had ended, not because of the will, but because the entire sum of the estate had now been spent on court costs and there is nothing left to win. They immediately get Richard, go to Richard and Ada's house, and help him. Jarndyce shows up and Richard apologises and acknowledges that Jarndyce is an amazingly good person. Ada weeps and forgives him everything and prepared to star up again, Richard says he'll begin the world and dies.

The book ends with a seven years later. Esther and Woodcourt have two daughters. Cady's husband Prince is now lame so she works for him, but happily. Her daughter is deaf and dumb but she is an excellent mother. Ada gave birth and returned to Jarndyce. Her son is named Richard and he is lovely. In Bleak House, the new one, there is a room just for Jarndyce to stay at.

Read, folks. Read.

Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, or the death of the sun. (1)

Some say she really is, or was, a party of a suit; but no one knows for certain, because no one cares. (1)

He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man. (2)

Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. (3)

'Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch! (3)

while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intention possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. (4)

'I wish I was dead!' she broke out. 'I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us.' (4) Cady

'"For," says he, "It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains."' (5) Krook

'My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could possibly be either.' (5) richard

'The wind's in the east.' (6) Jarndyce

'It is said that the children of the poor are not brought up, but dragged up.' (6) Jarndyce

'With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. he birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe.' (6) Skimpole

'It should be strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change should never with it. The base word money should never be breathed near it!' (6) Skimpole

I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another; how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God. (8)

With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate — with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life — here, they lower our dear brother down a foot or two: here, sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside: a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together.

Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon, or stay too long, by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to every passer-by, “Look here!” With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in between the bars; stands looking in, for a little while. It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. It does so, very busily and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and so departs. Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who “can’t exactly say” what will be done to him in greater hands than men’s, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: “He wos wery good to me, he wos!” (11)

Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject. (12) 'Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach.' (14) Krook

Jo lives - that is to say, Jo has not yet died - in a ruinous place (16)

“It may seem strange to you, sir,” returned Gridley; “I should not have liked to see you, if this had been the first time of our meeting. But, you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so I don’t mind your seeing me, this wreck.” (24)

“This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken.” “Accept my blessing, Gridley,” said Miss Flite, in tears. “Accept my blessing!” “I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were, until I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have been wearing out, I don’t know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody, here, will lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so many years.” (24)

They said there could be no East wind where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was sunshine and summer air. (30)

“They dies everywheres,” said the boy. “They dies in their lodgings — she knows where; I showed her — and they dies down in Tom-all-Alone’s in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according to what I see.” Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, “If she ain’t the t’other one, she ain’t the forrenner. Is there three of ’em then?” (31) Jo

“See there, my boy,” says George, very gently smoothing the mother’s hair with his hand, “there’s a good loving forehead for you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree.” Mr Bagnet’s face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence. “The time will come, my boy,” pursues the trooper, “when this hair of your mother’s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles — and a fine old lady she’ll be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head, I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have that by you, Woolwich!” (34)

I repeated the old childish prayers in its old childish words, and found that its old peace had not departed from it. (35)

This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me. (36)

The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school; and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and admiration stood in her bright eyes, “He’s a dear good fellow, miss; but he can’t write, yet — he’s going to learn of me — and I wouldn’t shame him for the world!” Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man’s daughter! (36)

'Some pride is left in me, even yet.' (36) Lady Dedlock

how far beyond my deserts I am beloved, and how happy I ought to be. (36)

His digestion is impaired, which is highly respectable. (39)

'if you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy.' (41) Lady Dedlock

Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him: native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee. (47)

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day. (47)

Take me as I am, and make the best of me.”

“A bargain,” said Mr Woodcourt. “Do as much by me in return.”

“Oh! You,” returned Richard, “you can pursue your art for its own sake; and can put your hand upon the plough, and never turn; and can strike a purpose out of anything. You, and I, are very different creatures.” (51)

It was right that all that had sustained me should give way at once and that I should die of terror and my conscience. (59) Lady Dedlock letter

I cannot use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard’s youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away. (60)

His laugh had not quite left him either; but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful. (60)

'I see him at his worst, every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite determined, Esther, if Heaven would help me, never to show him that I grieved for what he did, and so to make him more unhappy. I want him, when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this, and this supports me.' (60) Ada

'My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead — stood beside your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my life!' (64) Jarndyce

'I shall be found about here somewhere. It’s a West wind, little woman, due West! Let no one thank me any more; for I am going to revert to my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I’ll run away, and never come back!' (64) Jarndyce

'I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the world.' (65) Richard

“It was a troubled dream?” said Richard, clasping both my guardian‘s hands eagerly. “Nothing more, Rick; nothing more.” “And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?” “Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?” “I will begin the world!” said Richard, with a light in his eyes. (65)

Long Day's Journey into Night

Long Day's Journey into Night is a play written by Eugene O'Neill in 1940. It's the only one of O'Neill's I've read but it's supposed to be a masterpiece. Pretty darn good, I think. Tragedy in four acts. It made me cry and it inspired a poem from me: a rare occasion. I'll add it near the end. Very very sad. It should never be watched by a cheerful person because it's sad all the way through. Thankfully, I have a doleful side. This is about O'Neill's life and is actually very accurate. Names even, except that his autobiographical character is called Edmund. Strangely enough, a character within the play, Edmund's older brother who dies as an infant before Edmund was born, is named Eugene. And also, his mother wasn't actually a morphine addict.

Quick bio: The Sad Life of Eugene O'Neill. (1888 - 1953) His father and mother, James and Mary, were Irish immigrants. Mary disliked Broadway, and James was a very famous Shakespearian actor, but sold out with a title role in Count of Monte Cristo which he played over 6000 times, thus losing versatility for money. For the first seven years of his life, Eugene was dragged along with his mother on James' tours, leading to Mary's loneliness. Eugene, his older brother Jamie, and his father were all alcoholics and depressed. Eugene was sent to a Catholic boarding school, where he buried himself in books, and growing rebelliousness was either thrown out or just left of Princeton University. It's obscure. The family spent summers in a house in Connecticut. He spent several years at sea and got tuberculosis. He went then to a sanatorium from 1912 to 1913. There, he devoted himself to writing plays, though he was late in achieving success. His mother, father and brother died within three years of each other. His brother drank himself to death at age 45. Eugene had occasional suicide attempts. After achieving fame, his life still remained troubled. He married three times, during which he had three children, Eugene Jr by his first marriage, and Shane and Oona by his second. He left his second wife and children for the actress Carlotta Monterey and stayed with her until he died. She became addicted to potassium Bromide which caused their marriage to be riddled with separations. Long Day's is dedicated to Carlotta. He disowned Oona when she was eighteen for marrying fifty-four year old Charlie Chaplin, and he never saw her again. He was very distant with his sons. Eugene Jr was an alcoholic and committed suicide in 1950. Shane was a heroin addict and committed suicide in 1977, but Eugene was already dead. He was ill all his life and for the last ten years, lost the ability to write (dictated) because of a severe tremor in his hand. Dictation proved a n impossible way for him to work though. He died at age 65 and Long Day's was published three years later. It was his second to last book.

Saddest story ever, huh. Well, it's a pretty simple story. There are issues, and every issue, you could pretty much just see what's going to happen. The worst possible thing: that's what happens. The problems get gradually worse and the causes for it getting worse are gradually revealed as well, but plot-wise, its pretty much speech-drama rather than action drama. I love it!!! ANd guess what. UNITIES!! This actually follows them. My god I love this play. Brain Snack: The three unities of theatre are that it takes place at one setting, it takes place in 24 hours, and it has a consistent plot (no subplot).The subplot is iffy, but there is generally one plot that the characters focus on. The CHARACTERS!! Great thing about this play is that except for the second girl Cathleen, there are only four characters and each are very deep, have their own issues and are amazingly written. You have to have a crazy good cast for this. So amazing. My favourites Edmund. Well, let's go.

Act 1: Living room of the Tyrone's summer home 8;30 am of a day in August, 1912. So the set is incredibly detailed. Everything is used too. Chekhov's gun!!

Living room with two parlours at back with double doorways.

Right parlour is front parlour, arranged neatly as though never used. Left parlour is dark and windowless, only used to connect to dining room.

Small bookcase between doors with books like Nietzche, Ibse, Marx, Engels, Shaw, Strindberg, Wilde, Kipling, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Swinburne

Large book case by left wall with three complete works of Shakespeare, Dumas, Hugo, history books

Shakespeare portrait hung above small bookcase

Round table with small lamp surrounded by three wicker chairs and one oak rocking chair.

Left wall: three windows looking at grounds in back. Wicker couch against wall.

Right wall rear has screen door to porch. Farther forward three windows looking at front lawn to harbour

Cool set, I think. Just wait. Mary and James enter, all happy. Mary (54) is very beautiful. Her hair is pure white and hew face does not have make-up but doesn't need it at all. She looks distinctly Irish. She has dark brows, straight nose, sensitive, full lips, high forehead and big brown eyes, and she has a nice figure but is a bit filled out. Her healthy body doesn't match her pale, thin face. She wears simple, but befitting clothing. Her hands look as though they were once very beautiful but are now warped by rheumatism. They are fidgety, and she always seems nervous. James Tyrone (65)looks ten years younger than his age and is very handsome. He has a fine profile. He is broad-shouldered and deep-chested. He looks more slender an tall than he is because he carries himself like a graceful actor, and though not on purpose, he instinctively has the touch of an actor in every movement. He wears casual shabby clothes, collarless shirt, ready-made suit, shineless shoes, handkerchief around his neck, ready to garden. He's very healthy. Never been really sick. Never nervous. Somehow peasant-ish. Grey, thinning hair.

They look very happy. Tyrone happily comments on her having gained weight and how beautiful she is, hugging her. She's happy with him, but worries that Edmund hadn't eaten much at breakfast, blaming it on his summer cold. When Tyrone worries of her worrying, she accuses him of watching her too closely, which he denies. Jamie and Edmund had stayed back and Tyrone suspects Jamie's getting Edmund to play a joint joke on him. The subject of MacGuire comes up, a guy, according to Mary, who sells Tyone bum property and Tyrone dumbly trusts. Mary says she didn't sleep well last night because of the foghorn and Tyrone's snoring. James says she has to take care of herself since she only just came back to the family. All this tiny stuff is important, trust me.

Jamie (33) and Edmund (23) enters. He resembles his father but is less handsome, though good-looking. He has early signs of dissipation. He's taller an more slender than Tyrone but looks stockier. He appears very cynical with a perpetual scorn. His nose is aquiline, unlike any less in the family, resembling Mephistopheles'. When he occasionally smiles, he regains his Irish charm. He is less shabby than Tyrone, with collar and tie.

Edmund is tallest and wiry. He takes after his mother, with her forehead, eyes, lips, and large, nervous long-fingered hands. He has her nervousness too. His face is brown from the sun. He has his father's nose. He looks clearly very ill, is too skinny, and his cheeks are sunken. Shirt, collar, tie, flannel trousers, brown trainers. They all flatter Mary and Edmund immediately appears as Mary's obvious favourite. Jamie quotes Othello in making fun of James' snoring, and James accuses him of gambling too much on horse races and says he should memorise more Shakespeare (a pet subject of theirs). Edmund and Mary quickly put out the fight. Edmund distracts everyone by telling what he and Jamie were talking of, which is that the tenant of James' farm got in a fight with his millionaire neighbour in an inn, (Mary scolds Edmund for drinking when the doctor said not to) concerning the tenant's pigs, a broken fence, and the millionaire's pool. The tenant wins the fight, being intimidating, and James laughs until he realises this may end up involving him in a law suit. Edmund says James likes that the tenant put a rich guy down but is scared of law suits. This goes with a characterising theme that starts up at this moment: that James is very stingy and cheap, afraid always of growing broke. So, sensitive, James gets angry at Edmund and for no apparent reason, turns on Jamie and calls him even worse and talentless. Edmund storms off exasperated, mentions that James is always going on about the same things, an also mentions forgetting his book upstairs (He's poetic and bookish.)

When Edmund leaves, Jamie mentions that he's really sick and James turns on him sharply. It's a taboo subject, Edmund's sickness. Jamie calls him the Kid. Mary freaks out and Tyrone says Doctor Hardy said it might be malarial fever that Edmund caught in the tropics, but it'll be fin. Mary won't believe it because Doctor Hardy's a cheap quack doctor sucking money from them. James and Jamie commence with flattery when Mary suddenly becomes self conscious about her hair, after mentioning medical dependency. Reassured, she goes to talk to the cook about the food for the day.

The second she leaves, the mood completely changes and James blows up at Jamie for mentioning the illness. Jamie says they should stop kidding her and that he thinks it's consumption (tuberculosis). He accuses James of using Hardy even though he's incompetent because Hardy is super cheap. The conversation run off as it seems it has a thousand times over. Jamie concedes in an unsatisfactory way saying James won't ever change or really listen and James accuses Jamie of not appreciating money, always wasting all his money on whores ans whisky until he's broke. he says Jamie has the talent and youth to be a great actor, but is wasting away. Jamie brings them back to Edmund and we find out that Hardy's calling around lunch to confirm whether Edmund has consumption. Edmund has no idea. James talks about how Edmund deliberately ruined his health with his mad lifestyle since he was thrown out of university. He says Jamie was a bad influence and left him to those things with his cynicism. Jamie accuses James of giving up on Edmund already and believing an Irish myth that consumption is always fatal. James defends Ireland and says for all the wildness, Edmund at least had he guts to go off on his own for what he wanted. They reveal that Edmund went off to see for a few years, living a wretchedly poor life in South America. James mentions Edmund's success in writing. Jamie jealously accuses Edmund of getting himself in his situation and quickly takes it back. James mentions Jamie's failure in writing, and Jamie angry, James switches to talking of Mary. Apparently Mary has been very well for two months and the house has been almost a home, like they'd never known it for so long. They're very worried of her since she seems to be slipping with the anxiety of Edmund's illness and the fact that her father died of consumption. Jamie seeming suspicious admits that at three o'clock he caught her moving to the spare room. He pretended to be asleep and she stopped by his and Edmund's rooms to check that they were asleep. The spare room was where she went when whatever's wrong with her was wrong. James yells at him for being suspicious and insists that it was to escape his snoring, but he seems worried too. Jamie says he was wrong and James mentions that it was during her long illness following Edmunds birth that whatever is wrong went first wrong. They insist on not saying what it is aloud. Jamie accuses James of blaming Edmund for her 'curse' because he was born, and James says no. Jamie blames the doctor that looked at her then, saying he was another cheap quack like Hardy.

Mary re-enters and they immediately cover everything and talk about cutting the hedges. James flatters her a little as she insults her own hands and they go out to cut the hedges. Before leaving, Jamie awkwardly tells Mary he's proud of her and that she should be careful. She's resentful and he's hurt and leaves with James. For a moment, Mary is alone, showing desperation and fidgeting with her hands, when Edmund enters. he avoided the fight. He has a book. She turns a motherly face to him. They both worry of each other. Mary insists that Edmund is exaggerating his illness and Edmund seems far more concerned with her than himself. Mary talks of how she's lonely, has no friends, and blames James for raising them in a way that neither Edmund nor Jamie have respectable friends or know nice girls. Edmund says James can't be changed. As Edmund keeps worrying Mary aggressively accuses Edmund of being suspicious and not trusting her. She wails about being trapped in the house alone. He reveals that he knew she went to the spare room, but filled with guilt, Edmund says he trusts her and apologises. She says that her promises must mean nothing o them by now, with all the ones she's broken, and he continues to deny mistrust. She's really abusing him by making him guilty, worried and frightened all at once, and he finally proposes that he go outside and fakes a laugh, as does Mary. He exits to the lawn, and Mary sit, relaxed and relieved. She suddenly jerks with sudden panic and then starts drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair

ACT 2 Scene 1: The same, around 12:45. The formerly clear day is getting hazy. Edmund is reading, but her looks more like he's waiting to hear something from upstairs and trying to concentrate on the book. Cathleen enters with Whisky and she guesses that he and Jamie will sneak drinks from James' whisky bottle. Edmund admits to it lightly bu gets clammy when she mentions that Mary wasn't taking a nap, like she told Edmund she would, but was lying in he spare room with eyes wide open, complaining of a headache. Edmund clearly is concerned but forcedly trusting her.

When she leaves, he immediately grabs a drink, but hearing Jamie entering, leaps back into he chair. Jamie knows what's up and they chuckle at their both being alcoholics. Jamie pours two drinks of water into the bottle and shakes it to hide what they stole. When Edmund says he's not hungry, Jamie worries that he shouldn't drink, but Edmund says he'll stop after Hardy gives him the bad news, which he believes will be malaria. Jamie, concerned, tells him to be prepared for anything and then they switch the subject and Edmund says Mary's upstairs. Jamie freaks out that he left her alone and Edmund defends her. Apparently Mary used to have most her meals alone upstairs when she was whatever she was. Jamie's angry and Edmund tells him about her accusations of suspicion. Jamie says he knows he' annoyingly cynical but he knew about the thing for ten years before James and he told Edmund so he knows better. They hear Mary coming down though, and Jamie admits that he was wrong.

Edmund has a coughing fit. She plays things normally, as does Edmund, but Jamie seems suspicious, and at the first occasion, she yells at him for sneering at his father and everything else. Edmund tries being peacekeeper. Mary then starts rambling about the past and how experiences change you, and how James always made her go second-rate, and how he is stingy. Edmund, uncomfortable goes off to call James and Jamie accuses her of slipping, telling her to look at her own vacant eyes. Edmund returns, and seeing what happened, yells at Jamie for accusing Mary. Mary is increasingly icy and singing, and Edmund insists more desperately that all is fine and accuses Jamie of being a cruel liar. Mary hears James coming and leaves to inform the cook, and Edmund sits looking sick an hopeless. He accuses Jamie of being a liar again but Jamie is convinced he is right. James enters and eyes the whisky and clearly knows what Jamie had done. Edmund proposes a drink and James hesitates, on account of Hardy's advice, but after little convincing, James agrees, and they all have a drink. James toasts to health and happiness and Edmund bitterly laughs.

Mary enters and rambles about how James refused to make a home for her, and James, realising she's slipped, transforms into an old, tired man. The brothers bitterly leave to the dining room and Mary, seeing James staring, fusses about her hair. James is angry and accuses her of slipping. Her denial finally breaks to a suggested admitting of guilt, and James breaks to feel sorry for her, bu then she goes quickly back to pretending as though she has no idea what he's talking about. They walk into the back parlour together, James hopeless.

ACT 2 Scene 2: The same, about a half hour later. They're returning from lunch and James and Mary's entrance is similar to their's in Act 1 but that it is now very cold and James refuses to touch her. Edmund and Jamie follow, Jamie with defensive cynicism and Edmund attempting the same but clearly heartsick and ill. Mary enter rambling with fumbling nervous hands, and she seems to be ignoring everything she says, like the others do. James, with a cigar, looks out the screen door, and Jamie, with a pipe, stare out the right window. Edmund sits facing away from Mary. Mary is complaining of the help, and how she can't wait for the summer to end and to be rid of them. Tyrone vaguely accuses her and she denies is and continues on about how her father's home was wonderful and how James stole her from it.

The phone rings and everyone tenses. James takes it, saying it must be McGuire, but clearly it's the doctor and James' reactions sound bad. James just say it's a confirmation for the appointment at four though. Mary complains that Hardy's a quack and hypothetically talks of a doctor that knows nothing and humiliates you as you plead for medicine that a quack just like him had given you initially, to hook you. It sounds very much like a memory and it seems pretty clear by now she has some kind of addiction. They stop her and she says she'll go upstairs to fix her hair, and then accuses James of suspicion. She leaves and Jamie says 'Another shot in the arm!' and Edmund yells at him.

Things get a bit philosophical. Edmund says Jamie is too dark and pessimistic. Jamie says he'd think Edmund would be too considering the darkness of the books he reads and the poems he write. We find that the Nietzche book is Edmund's and as for that, the entire back shelf. James says Catholicism is the way, at which Jamie and Edmund join sides against him, having a God-is-dead discussion because of he futility of James' prayers for her. James gives up hope and angry, Edmund announces he'll talk to her later and storms upstairs.

Jamie quickly turns to James and asks of the phone call. It's for sure consumption, and Jamie is heartbroken. He says Edmund'll have to go to a sanatorium and then warns James about being cheap about this too, think Edmund as good as dead and so to die in some state farm. James gets angry at the accusation but it blows over with Jamie's decision to go with Edmund to get the news. James is to meet Hardy before four. Jamie halts as he sees Mary coming. Her eyes are brighter and manner more distanced. She is increasingly receding. The fog is thickening.

Mary doesn't want to be alone, but their leaving her whilst they go to the hospital. She pretends that there's nothing wrong and James continues to condemn her. She is complaining of his alcoholism and he's giving his worn excuse. He never missed a performance. He suggests she takes a ride in the car whilst they're gone and gets then stuck on the subject of money and waste, as she never takes the car. She goes on the subject of loneliness and recalls her convent days, when she had youth and friends. James takes this as a sign of quick receding. James mentions a time she ran out of 'it' and half-crazy ran out and tried to throw herself off the dock. Then she remembers how she travelled all over with James on tours and how it tired her to e in the cheap hotels. She says that having Edmund was the last straw and the cheap hotel doctor James got for her knew nothing. Mary then gets to the subject of Eugene. She blames herself for Eugene's death because she left him with her mother when she joined James on tour. If she'd been with him, maybe Jamie wouldn't have infected him wit measles. She believes Jamie did it on purpose. Then she regrets having Edmund at all, since she must have learned from Eugene that he wasn't fit to be a mother.

Edmund enters and asks James for cab-fare and he begins to scold but stops and gives him ten pounds. Edmund is floored and happy until he suspects that Hardy old James Edmund will die. James is hurt by this and Edmund takes it back, and Mary accuses Edmund's depressing books for making him think of dying. She always calls him the baby of the house, faking for attention. Edmund tries to talk to her but she pretends not to understand and Edmund gives up. She says nobody believes her and when nobody does, the Virgin Mary will save her. She asks Edmund not to drink. She says she'll go to the drug store and Edmund is tortured. Jamie calls the heartbroken Edmund away and they all leave to go uptown, leaving Mary alone. She drums about with her hands and looks forsaken, saying she's lonely, and then insists that she's happy they're gone with a sort of alter-ego, and again says she's lonely. Every line tears you apart.

ACT 3: The same, around 6:30 that evening. he fog is now thick and the foghorns sounds regularly. The whisky is back from Act 2 scene 2 and Cathleen and Mary are talking. Cathleen has clearly been drinking and Mary is more distant and creepy. Mary hates the foghorn but likes the fog because it hides you from everybody and everybody from you. Stage directions say the present doesn't matter to her any more, and she acts all chatty and talks to Cathleen like they're best buds. Her hairs a bit messy.

Mary says the guys probably won't be home for dinner, staying at the bars away from her. She insults James as too simply to care of anything but poverty. She says she once wanted to be a nun back in the convent. She had Cahleen go to the drug store to get the 'medicine for her rheumatism' and Cathleen was embarrassed because the druggist treated her like a thief. Mary goes off about how she was a promising pianist and her generous father would have sent her to Europe to study if she hadn't married. She says her hands remind her of all she lost but the pain is far away now. Cathleen finally notices Mary is acting weird and Mary looks more and more like an innocent convent girl. She talks of meeting James. Her father took her to his play and he fascinated her and they were instantly in love. That was 36 years ago and Mary is proud that there'd never been a hint of disloyalty from him. Cathleen asks to leave and Mary seems to prefer being alone anyways. Mary orders dinner at the regular time but says she won't eat. Cathleen says it's the medicine, which Mary completely denies. It's been obvious for a while that Mary is a morphine addict.

Foghorns and bells sound but she doesn't notice. She suddenly looks ageing and tired. Mary calls herself a sentimental fool for cherishing her meeting with James since her truly happy days were in the convent before him. She tries to pray but thinks a 'dope fiend' (used often in the play) can't fool the Virgin and decides that she hasn't taken enough morphine.

James and Edmund enter and Mary offers whisky. Jamie stayed back to keep drinking, which Mary guesses and says he's jealous of Edmund and wants to drag him down to his failed level, as he was jealous of Eugene. She blames herself for Eugene dying. (He was two years old) James blames Jamie too. As Mary goes on talking of babies, and how Edund was always frightened as a baby, and James regrets coming home for which Edmund yells at him. Apparently Jamie was wonderful until he started drinking and blames James for using a spoonful of whisky as a remedy for everything when they were little. James is offended and Mary qualifies tat it's not his fault because he left school at 10 and his Irish peasant family were ignorant and believed Whisky was good medicine. James is about to explode but Edmund stays peacekeeping.

Mary realises how angry he is and brings up how they met and they have a loving moment when they say they'll love each other forever, but then she says she wouldn't have married him if she knew how much of an alcoholic he was, and that on their honeymoon and all through their marriage, she has had to wait up at home waiting for him to show up wasted. Edmund is angry at his father for this and seems to blame him for Mary turning to addiction. He asks her to forget but she can;t and moved onto the happier memory of their wedding when her father got her an expensive dress and how James would never spend enough money on her. She says here mom wanted her to be a nun and thought her father was spoiling her and so she won't be a good wife. She asks James if she has been a bad wife and he laughs it off but she's concerned so falls back to girliness and goes on about the dress. She wonders where she had put it.

James changes the subject to dinner and notices that the whisky is way watery and accuses Mary of drinking, and Edmund defends her immediately. She gets angry at accusations and semi-accuse Edmund for being born. We find out that James even refuses to turn light on because he's so cheap. James leaves to get a bottle of whisky for Edmund and him, and when he's gone, Mary explains a bit of his past. His father abandoned his mother and the six kids a year after moving to America to go back to Ireland because he thought he'd die soon and wanted to die in Ireland, which he did quickly. James thus was forced to work at a machine ship at age 10.

Edmund accuses her of not caring for him, having not asked of the hospital. Mary evades the topic and brings up when she tried to run off the dock, and that was when Jamie and James told Edmund about their the morphine. Edmund says he'll have to go to a sanatorium and Mary freaks. She says being away from her will kill him like it did Eugene and that Jamie is so jealous of Edmund for being her favourite that he's trying to tear them apart. Edmund mentions her father and Mary says consumption has nothing to do with anything, and then Edmund breaks and says it's tough having a dope fiend for a mother. He immediately takes it back. She talks of the foghorn and Edmund leaves out the screen door. Mary says she wishes she'll overdose so she'll die but be forgiven because it was accidental suicide.

James enters and Mary says Edmund probably left to go drink with Jamie. She says he has no appetite but it's the summer cold. James shakes his head and Mary breaks, saying Edmund will die and that he hates her and that she blames herself for having him and allowing him to suffer seeing her. He comforts her, but when Cathleen enters, immediately commands her to stop crying. Cathleen announces dinner drunk and says she was offered the whisky. She leaves and Mary says she won't eat and will just go upstairs and he accuses her. She says he's as bad as Jamie and Edmund and he goes broken into the dining room.

ACT 4: The same, around midnight. James looks broken, sitting playing solitaire in almost complete darkness. He has gone through 3/4 of the bottle and has an extra one. He's drunk but still not escaped. Edmund enters and turns on a lamp. James says to turn it off but he doesn't. Edmund is drunk too, but like his father, not much changed but that he's more aggressive. They argue of money. Edmund accuses James of only believing what he wants to. James eventually gets angry enough to threaten a beating unless Edmund turns off the light but he then remembers the illness and apologises. Edmund then regains his guilt complex (very active throughout) and he apologises for getting angry over nothing and is about to turn the light off when James says don't and turns all the light on in the chandelier. He doesn't care about reaching the 'poorhouse' any more, at which Edmund laughs.

James comments that Edmund understands the value of money, unlike his brother, and asks where he is. Edmund says he didn't go to meet him though. He went to walk on the beach. As Edmund split his money with Jamie earlier, James guesses that he's at the whorehouse. Edmund gets annoyed and James passes him the whisky. Edmund says he likes the fog and when James says he should have more sense then walk about alone, he says to hell with sense, everyone's crazy. Then he goes on a reciting spree. First is a bit of a poem by Ernest Dowson called They Are Not Long. I'll stick all the full poems below and mark in brackets the bits Edmund says. This one he says the whole thing. He essentially says that whatever happiness conjures up, it's but fleeting, and a dream, and he says in the fog, he felt that, with all the houses blinded away, he could disappear, and become but a ghost of a drowned man, trailing in the fog, the ghost of the sea, seeing everything not as it is, because what is real can turn you like Medusa, into stone. James calls him a morbid poet and pushes on Shakespeare. Edmund insists that all they can do is get drunk and forget, whilst James pushes resignation. Edmund recites, with bitter, ironical passion, the Symon's translation of Baudelaire's prose poem, Be always drunken, again in full. It says be drunk all the time, with wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish, and that's the best way to survive life, if you wish not to live a martyr of time. James says it's morbid, mentions Jamie, and Edmund recites Epilogue, Baudelaire, Symons, in full.This one's about how the people who are hunted by the vices of the city (Paris) secretly enjoy watching these vices, enjoying pleasures 'the vulgar heard (regular people) will never understand.' Edmund thinks Jamie thinks himself superior in his hunted state as one of unknown pleasures, but in the end understands that he is just a miserable loser. James says he should turn to the church. Edmund ignores and recites Cynara by Dowson, thinking Jamie will be reciting this to some whore. Only partly. It's about the I voice saying how though he sleeps with whores, he still is desolate and sick of his old passion for Cynara and in his desolation, has been faithful to Cynara, in his own fashion. But Edmund says Jamie has never had a Cynara, a true love or true anything. Edmund says it's all mad, and James agrees, saying, like Cathleen does earlier, to have faith is to have sanity, and Jamie has neither.

Edmund says Dowson died of booze and consumption, laughs, stops, looks frightened and then says he's going to change subjects. (this will happen a lot) James derails his literature, saying they're all whore-mongers and degenerates. Edmund says Shakespeare was a drunk, James excuses this and says Rossetti was a drug-addict. Oops, awkward, announcing change in subject. Edmund reminds James that he knows Shakespeare since he memorised Macbeth's part in a week once. They're interuppted by hearing Mary walking upstairs. They both are worried but drink and try to forget. JAmes talks of how Mary tries to revert to tthe past, as though her convent days were her only happy days. Talking of how her father wasn't as good as she makes out, he says booze and consumption killed him and Edmund says they can't avoid unpleasan topics. They play Casino (a card game) but neither of them really do. James goes on about how she never could've been a nun or pianist anyways. The think she's coming down and pretend to play cards but she goes back (I think a foghorn sounds here. It seems she likes the fog because it hides her, like the morphine hides her from the present issues [Edmund's TB] and she hates the horn because it calls her out of the fog, like her hands or her family calling her back to the present out of the past). The two are very relieved.

Edmund blames James for her addiction since she never would have known of it if it weren't for his hiring a quack doctor when she was sick. This by the way is the first time anyone actually outright says the word morphine. James is hurt and says he didn't know the doctor was bad. Edmund says this is a lie and says that even though, as James says, he asked for the best doctor to the hotel, he 'cried poorhouse' first to make it obvious that he wants a cheap one. Edmund insinuates that James did this again this afternoon, for his TB, but quickly focuses back on Mary. He blames James for not sending her to a cure earlier, and when he says he did later, Edmund says that it didn't matter because James never gave her anything to quit for. When describing the life on the road, Edmund hates James, and James gets very angry at him for repeating all of Mary's accusations that she only makes when she's high. And he was generous enough to let her have a nurse for the kids, at which point the subject turns to the Edmund-caused-it-all-by-ever-being-born thing, that James immediately takes back but Edmund immediately shows he's always believed and is sure Mary does too.

They move on, forgive each other, admit they like each other despite all their failings, and 'play' the game. Things explode again when James says Edmund'll get better and Edmund accuses James of thinking he'll die, and so not wanting to spend too much money on him. Thus Edmund is being sent to Hilltown sanatorium, a public one that's pretty useless. Jamie suspected that he'll cry poorhouse so he wormed the truth from Hardy. James accuses Jamie of infecting Edmund's mind. Edmund keeps going on how James has property worth a quarter million (HUGE back then) and even let McGuire sell him another stick of bum property after the hospital visit, which Jamie and Edmund found out at the bar. James lies feebly and then Edmund comes out with the big guns. He's not so much angry at the fact that he's obviously going to die in a state farm, but the fact that his father has no pride, because obviously hardy and the specialist and McGuire are going to talk, and the world will know he wished his son off on charity because he's that stingy. Breaking with rage, Edmund says he won't let James get away with it and kill him off, and he descends into a violent fit of coughing.

James is broken and admits to it all and says he's wrong. He says that he's addicted to buying property because it seems reliable as opposed to banks. He says that, though Edmund said he understood what James went through as a kid because of his time on his own at sea, he definitely didn't and it was all romantic adventure. Edmund brings up sarcastically when he tried to commit suicide, which James blames on drinking. Edmund says it was because he had been sober too long and started thinking.

James goes on about his childhood and how his father abandoned them and died (it seems by suicide, which Edmund confirms but James denies) and then how he worked with machines. The description is terribly sad and wins a lot of sympathy for James, especially when he describes his incredible mother and the day they had enough to eat when she was tipped for her work. Edmund agrees that she must have been wonderful.

James says Edmund can go wherever he wants - within reason (at which there's humour). Then James describes a nice place that's still inexpensive but quite nice, that they agree on, and then James confesses a story of his terrible stinginess that he'd never said before. It was how he was an amazing Shakespearian actor, on stage with Edwin Booth and all, but sold out for an easy role that lost him his versatility and talent for money. Edmund feels closer to him now, forgives him, and they turn off the extra lights with a laugh at crazy life. James wonders where his recording of Booth's compliments are and Edmund mentions the wedding dress, changes subjects, James brings up again, Edmund drinks to forget, and then, AWESOME SPEECH! He shares the highlight memories of his life, all to do with the sea, and how he feels, there, as though he is apart, forgotten of his own life, an all life, within something greater than God, and anything, because he becomes the sea and all of it, in peace. He says it is a mistake that he is a man, and not some fish or gull, and that because of it, he shall never want, never be wanted, never belong, and always be a little in love with death.

Now, James days this is all poetic but too morbid, and Edmund says it's the truth, sounding very much like O'Neill's own voice. The they hear Jamie stumbling in drunk and James is very annoyed, and walks out so as to not meet him, and of course, lose his temper. Jamie enters and calls it a morgue, recites Kipling and calls James Gaspard, a running joke of his. Brain snack: Gaspard is one of the main characters in the operette Les Cloches de Corneville. Gaspard in that is a miser that ruins everyone's life, but it all ends in a comedic, happy way. He has an adopted girl-servant and niece whom are both beautiful and mysterious, who he is trapping in the castle he lives in. He isn't the real owner so the castle bells don't ring and the place is haunted, but after finally the rightful owner returns, the two girls start slipping from him as people start investigating in his business. Turns out one of them is actually an important person, allowing her to marry the rich, rightful owner, who forgives Gaspard and releases his other girl. Connections to the play? I think so.

Jamie goes off about James' sending Edmund off to a cheap sanatorium, and drinks more, clearly trying to pass out and forget, but unable to get there. Edmund somewhat defends James, understanding him better after the story, but Jamie is cynical and saying he's still fooling Edmund and just sending him to another state farm. Changing the subbject, Edmund asks if he went to the whore house, which he did and he picked Fat Violet because she was about to get fired and he felt bad. He likes fat chicks but not that fat, so she thought it was for a joke he brought her upstairs, especially after Jamie started reciting poetry, and she cried and went off. Jamie told her he loved her because she was fat and stayed with her to prove it, and by the end, she said she'd fallen for him and kissed him and they cried together in the hall, for which the head hostess thought he'd gone mad. This, Edmund observes, is the secret pleasures the vulgar heard do not understand. Jamie throughout recites Wilde's The Harlot's House. They joke about and Jamie recites from Kipling's Sestina of the Tramp-Royal, saying he's a tramp on a weary road leading nowhere, as all suckers end up there.

He dozes off a bit and suddenly becomes very mean, saying there's absolutely no hope left, and recites from Mother O' Mine by Kipling sarcastically. He starts insulting mary and Edmund hits him in the face, which Jamie doesn't resent at all. Jamie reveals that he's very hurt because he had actually begun to believe Mary would be fine. The two months meant so much to him, and now all is lost, and he begins to sob and weep terribly, soberly. He says that he discovered it all when she was in the act, and he couldn't believe it. He switches to being brotherly and saying he made Edmund's success through his influence, at which they joke. Then after some extreme blaspheming, Jamie suddenly reveals that he's been dragging Edmund down on purpose because he is envious of the baby of the family. He wants him to be worse than him, and will continue to try, and will lie, so now he wants to warn Edmund from future bad influence. He even says he hates Edmund for being born and ruining everything. All throughout, Edmund is pitifully pleasing for him to stop. Jamie expains that there is a dead part of him and a minor living part, and the dead part wants Edmund to not heal. He even is happy that Mary's back ill. He says the dead part of him needs to avenge his death by taking revenge on the world, and is lonely as the only corpse in the house. He wants Edmund to think of him as dead and escape his wrath in the future. He mentions Reading Gaol by Wilde.

He passes out and James enters, reassuring Edmund that James has been a bad influence but likes to exaggerate the worst bits of himself. But Jamie wakes to his abuse and James and Jamie enter a fight, in which Jamie recites Rossetti's A Superscription. Jamie insults James' acting. Edmund forces peace at the cost of Mary coming down an Jamie goes to sleep. Edmund sits, described as hunted and nervous. Suddenly all bulbs of the chandelier are turned on by the hall switch and the opening of one of Chopin's simpler waltzes is heard played very badly. Then Mary enters dressed like a girl, in a sky-blue dressing gown slippers with pom-poms, hair in braids and eyes psychotically bright. She carries neglectfully her wedding dress. She acknowledges them like furniture only. Jamie announces her as Ophelia, and James and Edmund look to slap him, Edmund getting him first.

Mary comments on her own piano-playing and looks at her warped hands, wondering how they got that way. She thinks that she is her young self in the convent. James tries to talk to her but can't get through. She doesn't recognise him. Jamie recites Swinburne's A Leave-Taking, partly, of how Mary will not notice their terror anymore than anything else. She is gone. James sinks into his chair sober, and Jamie as well is sober after a plea. Edmund is a 'bewilderly hurt little boy' and impulsively grabs her arm and yells that he has TB, at which she seems to return, looking terrified, but yells No! grows very distant and ceases to recognise Edmund. She sits on the sofa, lost in the past, and James says this is the worst it's ever been.

All our sitting, and Mary to herself reveals how she announced that she would be a nun, but the Sisters told her to wait, and experience the world a little first to make sure. She looks confused and says that she prayed to the Virgin and was soothed by her, but then what happened? That was winter, and in spring, things changed. 'I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.' James stirs and the brothers are still, close curtain.

Read, folks. Read.

James: You made him old before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom, when he was too young to see that your mind was so poisoned by your own failure in life, you wanted to believe every man was a knave with his soul for sale, and every woman who wasn't a whore was a fool! (1)

Jamie: Another shot in the arm! (2,2)

Edmund: 'God is dead: of His pity for man hath God died. James: [ignores this.] If your mother had prayed too - She hasn't denied her faith, but she's forgotten it, until now there's no strength of the spirit left in her to fight against her curse. (2,2)

James: If you're that far gone in the past already, when it's only the beginning of the arternoon, what willl you be tonight? (2,2)

Mary: She sees no one in he world can believe in me even for a moment any more, then She will believe in me, and then it will be so easy. (2,2)

Mary: It hides you from the world and the world from you. (3)

Edmund: (They are not long) They are not long, the weeping and the laugher, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.

They are not long, the hays of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for awhile, then closes Within a dream. (4)

Edmund: The for was where I waned to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of he other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbour, where he road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed a part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost....Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. I'm talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? It's the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and urn to stone. Or it's Pan. You see him and you die - that is, inside you - and have to go on living as a ghost. (4)

James: You have a poet in you but it's a damned morbid one! (4)

James: 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.' (4)

Edmund: We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let's drink up and forget it. (4)

James: All we can do is try to be resigned - again. (4)

Edmund: (Be always drunken)Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth to be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or the wave, or the star, or the bird, or the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: 'It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. (4)

Edmund: (Epilogue) WITH heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,

Where evil comes up softly like a flower, Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;

But, like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.

Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,

I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand. (4)

Edmund: (Cynara)Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae (Latin: I am not what I was under the rule of a good Cynara)

Last night, ah yesternight betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine, And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in fashion.

[All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.]

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind, But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when he feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. (4)

James: There was no damned romance in our poverty. (4)

James: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings. (4)

Edmund: Yes, she moves above and beyond us, a ghost haunting the past, and here we sit pretending to forget, but straining our ears listening for the slightest sound, hearing the fog drip from the eaves like the uneven tick of a rundown, crazy clock - or like the dreary tears of a trollop spattering in a puddle of stale beer on a honky-tonk table top!....You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Bueonos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in he moonlight, towering high above me. I become drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself - actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of man, to Life itself! To God, if you want t o put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring form the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. The peace, the end of the quest, the last harbour, the joy of belonging to a fulfilment beyond man's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beautitude. Like the veil of the things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!...It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death. (4)

Edmund: Well, it will be faithful realism, at leas. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people. (4)

Jamie: Had enough to sink a ship, but can't sink. (4)

Jamie: (The Harlot’s House) We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille,

Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing.

[Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.'

But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz,] The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Jamie: Speakin' in general I 'ave tried 'em all, The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.' Not so apt. Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Gets you nowhere fast. that's where I've got - nowhere. Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it.

Jamie: (Sestina of Tramp-Royal) [Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all, The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.] Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done, An' go observin' matters till they die.

What do it matter where or 'ow we die, So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all -- The different ways that different things are done, An' men an' women lovin' in this world -- Takin' our chances as they come along, An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?

In cash or credit -- no, it aren't no good; You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die, Unless you lived your life but one day long, Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all, But drew your tucker some'ow from the world, An' never bothered what you might ha' done.

But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done? I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good, In various situations round the world -- For 'im that doth not work must surely die; But that's no reason man should labour all 'Is life on one same shift; life's none so long.

Therefore, from job to job I've moved along. Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done, For something in my 'ead upset me all, Till I 'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good, An', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die, An' met my mate -- the wind that tramps the world!

It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world, Which you can read and care for just so long, But presently you feel that you will die Unless you get the page you're readin' done, An' turn another -- likely not so good; But what you're after is to turn 'em all.

Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done -- Excep' when awful long -- I've found it good. So write, before I die, "'E liked it all!"

Jamie: (Mother o' Mine) [If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still,] Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

He begins to sob, and the horrible part of his weeping is that i appears sober, not the maudlin tears of drunkenness.

Jamie: I'll do my damnedest to make you fail. Can't help it. I hate myself. Got to take revenge. On everyone else. Especially you. Oscar Wilde's 'Reading Gaol' has the dope twisted. The man was dead and so he had to kill the thing he loved. That's what it ought to be. The dead part of me hopes you won't get well. Maybe he's even glad the game has got Mama again! He wants company, he doesn't want to be the only corpse around the house!

James: He love to exaggerate the worst of himself when he's drunk.

Jamie: (A Superscription) [Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;] Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am I But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

Jamie: (A Leave-taking) [Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. Let us go hence together without fear; Keep silence now, for singing?time is over, And over all old things and all things dear. She loves not you nor me as we all love her. Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know. Let us go seaward as the great winds go, Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here? There is no help, for all these things are so, And all the world is bitter as a tear. And how these things are, though ye strove to show, She would not know.]

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep. We gave love many dreams and days to keep, Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow, Saying, `If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.' All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow; And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep, She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love. She shall not hear us if we sing hereof, Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep. Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough. Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep; And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care. Though all the stars made gold of all the air, And the sea moving saw before it move One moon?flower making all the foam?flowers fair; Though all those waves went over us, and drove Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair, She would not care.

[Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see. Sing all once more together; surely she, She too, remembering days and words that were, Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we, We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there. Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me, She would not see. ]