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He's hardly the only author from that period given to what today would be considered extravagantly verbose prose. Lots of things were different about that age - arguably the typical readers of a Dickens or Bronte novel wouldn't have the exposure to the variety of experiences we take for granted these days, and intricate descriptions of seemingly inconsequential details were their equivalent of the saturation of the senses we now get from TV/cinema etc. And remember he was also capable of sentences like "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"...which is about as succinct and powerful you can get given the complexity of what he was describing.

I could use that. I recently read a novel that had a secondary character - incorporeal being - but it had no description of appearance. Aaaargh. How I should see it?

I used to believe that too, but that's not the case it seems. https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/by-the-word.html