he said; "it was all up with it at last!" and burst out laughing too. ... "Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?" "Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do you say?" "I believe so," said Mr. Vholes. "And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?" "Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?" "Probably," said Mr. Vholes. Real-life cases In the preface to Bleak House, Dickens cites two Chancery cases as special inspirations, one of which was a "friendly suit": Based on an 1853 letter of Dickens, the first of these cases has been identified as the dispute over the will of Charles Day, a boot blacking manufacturer who died in 1836. Proceedings were commenced in 1837 and not concluded until at least 1854. The second of these cases is generally identified as the dispute over the will of the "Acton Miser" William Jennens of Acton, Suffolk. Jennens v Jennens commenced in 1798 and was abandoned in 1915 (117 years later) when the legal fees had exhausted the Jennens estate of funds; thus it had been ongoing for 55 years when Bleak House was published. Some commentators have theorised that the Jarndyce v Jarndyce case was inspired by the dispute over the will of Richard Smith, a West India merchant. When he died in 1776, the estate was tied up, and his daughter-in-law Charlotte Smith was pushed by financial necessity to write for money; she became a much-praised poet. That Chancery case has been reported to have taken 36 years to get through the court, although this may not be correct. Another theory holds that the case is partly based on that of Wedderburn v Wedderburn, which ran from 1831 until 1857. Others have cited the case of Thellusson v Woodford as the real-life basis but though it related to the will of a man who died in 1797 the suit was not actually filed until after the book was published. The will of Sir George Downing, who stipulated that his fortune be used to build for a new college at Cambridge, resulted in a lawsuit which lasted for more than 40 years, until March 1800. Cultural references More than a century after the novel's publication, Jarndyce and Jarndyce continues to be used