Please help! Bleak House

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Hi all,I'm currently reading Bleak House.  Could you please explain this paragraph to me? Thanks in advance."Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, but he thinks, ‘We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise."what does he mean by 'as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure?'A liberty taken somewhere?Please explain this excerpt: 'it has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.'  Thanks a million

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

First let me say, "Brutal." I never read this. His simulation of upper-class stream-of-consciousness here is a tour-de-force. This language is not only so old-fashioned as to be barely English to a modern reader, it employs that peculiar obliqueness you get in the toff of that day. I went and read the first part of your chapter, and I am surprised you got this far.

languageenthusiastHence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure.

Sir Leicester is feeling the first effects of gout, a disorder that runs in his family. He muses hyperbolically and with good humor that the disorder is like an ancient inherited estate ("feudal tenure" - you won't find this concrete "tenure" in modern dictionaries) that he pays the tax on with his legs as money. He will soon be unable to walk.

languageenthusiastHe feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere,

*** has exceeded his authority in afflicting one so noble as Sir Leicester with such a disorder, which makes him lie down and suffer pains in his legs. This is tongue-in-cheek, and the delicacy is that obliqueness I mentioned.

languageenthusiastit has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.

The vaults are the family burial chambers, and the park is the grounds of a country house, usually quite extensive. Here is the obliqueness again. To make the vaults interesting is to die and have your body placed there like some curio. To do so by dying of anything less dignified than the family gout would ignoble, again with Dickensian humor.

Please help! Bleak House

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