We're in a chapter book, not a short story. Expect a slower beginning, since each part is in proportion to the length of the piece.
Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose,
Who press the downy couch while slaves advance
With timid eye to read the distant glance,
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease
To name the nameless, ever-new disease,
Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure,
How would you bear in real pain to lie
Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
How would you bear to draw your latest breath
Where all that's wretched paves the way to death?
--Crabbe.
The epigraph; perhaps a prologue. This is the stating the theme. The poet contrasts the rich hypocondriac with the genuinely ill poor person.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Setting the scene, providing a backdrop for the action to come. A stormy night is naturally dramatic. Opening your novel with a weather report has become a cliche; it became a cliche because it works so reliably and so often.
Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way.
A rough neighborhood, and we're introduced to our first character two sentences in. Remember that most stories start with a person in a place with a problem. Our person here is a common laborer, or perhaps a ruffian. He is certainly not afraid to walk out in a bad part of town. The first reason we have to care is this: The question "What brings a guy out on that kind of night?" Most readers have been out in bad weather and know what it's like, and know that only the most compelling reason will force it.
He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with.
He's well-known in an area where the police fear to tread. This is characterization. Also, we're given his problem. He's looking for something, something rare in that quarter.
All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent.
Very hard to find; and the man is a brute. Everyone knows what it's like to search for something they can't find, whether it be a cup of sugar or the car keys. What he said would have been literally unprintable in the 19th century, thus the circumlocution.
At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added, "But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!"
We're given the man's name. We care what the man's name is by now, since we've known him for four sentences and are sympathetic to his plight. Dialect has fallen out of favor since the 19th century. Its main purpose was to guide the person reading aloud in how to pronounce the words in the proper accent. With more silent reading by individuals this is less important.
Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would allow.
Indirect discourse. A bit of a cheat, since while the POV is close enough to hear the words a description of the object isn't given. More reinforcement of Dummie's character and of the severity of the weather. (The mention of the ample pocket is the first note of Dummie's profession -- he's a pickpocket -- but we won't be told that until later. At the moment we don't care what Dummie does as his day job, so we aren't told.) We're gaining more sympathy with Dummie, and learning that despite his appearance he's capable of thought.
He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames Court."
Pure description. Nothing much happens between getting the object and arriving at the destination, the reader has no reason to care about the interval, so it isn't given. Because it's where Dummie (who we care about) is going, we care, so the name of the place can be given.
Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door.
Description. We care about what it looks like since we know its name and need a mental picture to tie that tag onto.
He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a
comely rotundity of face and person.
Character two. We don't care about her yet, so no name, and the description is spare enough that if we forget it, it doesn't matter.
"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.
This woman (again speaking in dialect), ties herself into Dummie (she knows him), and to the object. She's now important enough to care about.
==============
For the sake of the folks who are wondering exactly what Dummie was after that was so hard to find in that district, it was a Bible. What the butcher gave him, instead, was a leather-bound copy of the works of Shakespeare. The reason the landlady wanted a Bible was because one of the young ladies there is dying; it doesn't matter that what's provided isn't a Bible because she can't read.
We're starting a story comparing and contrasting life in the upper and lower parts of society, and highlighting the injustices of the English penal system. "Knowing yourself" is a compelling reason for any reader to pick up a novel.
Paul Clifford had the largest first printing of any novel up to that time; it sold out on the first day. This was a crime novel, and of an entirely new subgenre within crime novels: the hero is the criminal himself.
Bulwer-Lytton wrote the novel with the intent of reforming English criminal justice. Its current obscurity (other than as a bad joke) is further proof of Sam Goldwyn's dictum: "If you want to send a message call Western Union."
