There is only one other point on which I offer a word
of remark. The possibility of what is called
spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death
of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite
mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing
to have been abandoned by all authorities) published
some ingenious letters to me at the time when that
event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion
could not possibly be. I have no need to observe
that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers
and that before I wrote that description I took pains
to investigate the subject. There are about
thirty cases on record, of which the most famous,
that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was
minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini,
a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished in
letters, who published an account of it at Verona in
1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome.
The appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed
in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook’s
case. The next most famous instance happened
at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in
that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons
produced by France. The subject was a woman,
whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered
her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was
acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that
she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous
combustion is given. I do not think it necessary
to add to these notable facts, and that general reference
to the authorities which will be found at page 30,
vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of
distinguished medical professors, French, English,
and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself
with observing that I shall not abandon the facts
until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous
combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences
are usually received.
In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic
side of familiar things.
1853
* Another case, very clearly described by a dentist,
occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States
of America, quite recently. The subject was
a German who kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate
drunkard.
CHAPTER I
In Chancery
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the
Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.
Implacable November weather. As much mud in
the streets as if the waters had but newly retired
from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful
to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling
like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
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, for the death of the sun.
Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely
Copyrights
Bleak House from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
