Jarndyce v Jarndyce
drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in the course of time, become so
complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand
it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about
it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the
premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young
people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores
of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce v
Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary
hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a
new rocking horse when Jarndyce v Jarndyce should have been settled, has grown
up, possessed himself a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair
wards of court have faded into grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors
has come in and gone out…. there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth
perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee
house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce v Jarndyce still drags its dreary length
before the court, perennially hopeless [Bleak
House, 1853, Charles Dickens].
