Bleak

Bleak (pronounced bleek)

(1) Bare, desolate, and often windswept.

(2) Cold and piercing; raw.

(3) Without hope or encouragement; depressing; dreary.

(4) A number of species of fish, the best known of which is probably the European freshwater fish, Alburnus, having scales with a silvery pigment used in the production of artificial pearls.

(5) Pale (obsolete).

1300-1350: From the Middle English bleke (also bleche, source of the Modern English bleach, and bleike (due to Old Norse), and the earlier Middle English blak & blac (pale, wan), from the Old English blǣc, blǣċ & blāc (bleak, pale, pallid, wan, livid; bright, shining, glittering, flashing) and the Old Norse bleikr (pale, whitish), from the Proto-Germanic blaikaz (pale, shining). It was cognate with the Old Norse bleikja & bleikr (white), the Old High German bleih, the Dutch bleek (pale, wan, pallid), the Low German blek (pale), the German bleich (pale, wan, sallow), the Danish bleg (pale), the Swedish blek (pale, pallid), the Norwegian bleik (pale), the Faroese bleikur (pale) and the Icelandic bleikur (pale, pink).  Akin to bleach, the primitive Indo-European root was bhel- (to shine, flash, burn (also "shining white").  Bleak is a noun & adjective, bleakness a noun, bleakish, bleaker & bleakest are adjectives and bleakly is an adverb; the noun plural (of fish) is bleaks or bleak (especially of a large number).

The original English sense (pale, wan etc) is long obsolete; the meaning modern meaning "bare, windswept" emerging in the 1530s, the figurative sense of "cheerless" first noted circa 1719.  The same Germanic root produced the Middle English blake (pale (bacc in the Old English)), but this fell from use, probably from confusion with blæc (black); the surviving surname “Blake” a demonstration of this, its roots traced variously to both "one of pale complexion" and "one of dark complexion".  Bleak has survived, not in the "pale" sense, but meaning only "bare, barren."  Common related words and synonyms include desolate, austere, dreary, chilly, cold, grim, lonely, harsh, somber, sad, dark, gloomy, dismal, bare, blank, burned, cleared, desert, deserted & exposed.

Jarndyce v Jarndyce,  Court of Chancery

Although now thought a conventional novel, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published Bleak House in twenty serialized episodes between March 1852 and September 1853, a technique popular at the time.  It’s the recounting of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, a long-running (fictional) case in the Court of Chancery and is a critical satire of the English legal system.

In the novel, the matter of Jarndyce v Jarndyce ran in the Court of Chancery for generations, ending not in resolution but closing only when it was found that legal costs charged over the years had absorbed all the money in the estate.  The legal profession was critical of Bleak House, claiming it was much-exaggerated and hardly typical of the cases heard in Chancery but Dickens’ depiction was not wholly fictional, there being a number of cases which had dragged on for decades, ending, like Jarndyce v Jarndyce, only because legal costs had consumed all the funds which were the source of the original action, two decades-old Chancery cases mentioned in the author's preface as his inspiration.  Nor was Dickens alone in his criticism of this judicial lethargy, many, including some within the profession, had long advocated reform and the author's interest was also personal.  One, he'd worked as a legal clerk and had successfully brought before Chancery an action for breach of copyright but, despite winning the case, had been forced to pay costs because the other party declared bankruptcy.

A bleak visage.

The Court of Chancery (or court of equity) was one half of the English civil justice system, running in parallel with the common-law courts.  Chancery had evolved into a recognizable form in the fourteenth century as a court concerned more with justice and fairness than the rigid and precise rules under which the common-law courts operated, its most famous innovation being the laws of trusts which exist to this day.  However, Chancery’s increasing remit begat its own bureaucratic inertia and as early as the sixteen century the court was criticized for its leisurely pace, long backlogs and high costs; despite sporadic attempts at reform, especially during the early nineteenth century, the problems persisted.  The core of the problem was that every delay in the process meant another fee was charged and those fees were paid to the court's officials, thus providing an economic incentive for them to find reasons for delays.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

A number of enquiries concluded the difficulties (obvious to all except those benefiting from the system) were structural, the solution: dissolution.  In 1873 and 1875 the Supreme Court of Judicature Acts dissolved the Chancery and created a unified High Court of Justice, with Chancery becoming one of three divisions of the High Court, thus preserving equity as a parallel stream of law but resolving many of the administrative impediments to judicial efficiency.  The reform didn't infect the whole judicial system; even in the twentieth century, the House of Lords once took nearly eighteen years to hand down a decision.  The judicial indolence surprised few, Sir Patrick Dean (1909–1994; UK Ambassador to the US 1965-1969) of the foreign office once noting business in the Lords was often "conducted at a leisurely pace".

Charles Dickens' former "holiday cottage", overlooking Viking Bay in the Kent town of Broadstairs, came to be called Bleak House after the novel was published.  Built in 1801, it's said to be where the author wrote his his eighth novel, David Copperfield  (1849-1850), the manuscript for which reached the publisher with the informative title The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account).