The Bad Beginning: Chapters 1–3

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.

The three Baudelaire children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley—the word “rickety,” you probably know, here means “unsteady” or “likely to collapse”—alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner.

Like most fourteen-year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand than when she used her left.

Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.

Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.

“Your parents,” Mr. Poe said, “have perished in a terrible fire.”

“The fire department arrived, of course,” Mr. Poe said, “but they were too late. The entire house was engulfed in fire. It burned to the ground.”

As I’m sure you know, to be in one’s own room, in one’s own bed, can often make a bleak situation a little better, but the beds of the Baudelaire orphans had been reduced to charred rubble.

Their home destroyed, the Baudelaires had to recuperate from their terrible loss in the Poe household, which was not at all agreeable.

Mrs. Poe purchased clothing for the orphans that was in grotesque colors, and itched.

And the two Poe children—Edgar and Albert—were loud and obnoxious boys with whom the Baudelaires had to share a tiny room that smelled of some sort of ghastly flower.

And the two Poe children—Edgar and Albert—were loud and obnoxious boys with whom the Baudelaires had to share a tiny room that smelled of some sort of ghastly flower.

But even given the surroundings, the children had mixed feelings when, over a dull dinner of boiled chicken, boiled potatoes and blanched—the word “blanched” here means “boiled”—string beans, Mr. Poe announced that they were to leave his household the next morning.

“Good,” said Albert, who had a piece of potato stuck between his teeth. “Now we can get our room back. I’m tired of sharing it. Violet and Klaus are always moping around, and are never any fun.”

The Baudelaire orphans went to the bedroom and glumly packed their few belongings.

Klaus looked distastefully at each ugly shirt Mrs. Poe had bought for him as he folded them and put them into a small suitcase.

Violet looked around the cramped, smelly room in which they had been living. And Sunny crawled around solemnly biting each of Edgar and Albert’s shoes, leaving small teeth marks in each one so she would not be forgotten.

The children looked from the well-scrubbed house of Justice Strauss to the dilapidated one next door. The bricks were stained with soot and grime.

“I realize that my humble home isn’t as fancy as the Baudelaire mansion,” Count Olaf said, “but perhaps with a bit of your money we could fix it up a little nicer.”

Count Olaf turned to Mr. Poe with a glint in his eye like an angry dog. For a moment Violet thought he was going to strike Mr. Poe across the face.

They could see, in the space of pale skin between his tattered trouser cuff and his black shoe, that Count Olaf had an image of an eye tattooed on his ankle, matching the eye on his front door.

But the children knew, as I’m sure you know, that the worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.

One morning his note read, “My theater troupe will be coming for dinner before tonight’s performance. Have dinner ready for all ten of them by the time they arrive at seven o’clock. Buy the food, prepare it, set the table, serve dinner, clean up afterwards, and stay out of our way.”

Violet and Klaus read the note as they ate their breakfast, which was a gray and lumpy oatmeal Count Olaf left for them each morning in a large pot on the stove. Then they looked at each other in dismay.
“None of us knows how to cook,” Klaus said.

When they saw Violet and Klaus, looking forlornly at pieces of pitch-black toast, they laughed and laughed, and then made pancakes for the whole family.

“Justice Strauss!” Violet cried. “How lovely to see you.” She was about to add, “Do come in,” but then she realized that Justice Strauss would probably not want to venture into the dim and dirty room.

“What sort of case was it?” Klaus asked. Having been deprived of reading, he was hungry for new information.

Justice Strauss smiled. “It is a pleasure to see young people interested in books,” she said. “But first I think we’d better find a good recipe, don’t you?”
The children agreed, and for thirty minutes or so they perused several cookbooks that Justice Strauss recommended.