Barnaby Rudge, page 81
I groped my way into the Turret which it occupies, and saw before me, in a kind of loft, what seemed to be a great, old, oaken press with folding doors. These being thrown back by the attendant (who was sleeping when I came upon him, and looked a drowsy fellow, as though his close companionship with Time had made him quite indifferent to it) disclosed a complicated crowd of wheels and chains in iron and brass – great, sturdy, rattling engines – suggestive of breaking a finger put in here or there, and grinding the bone to powder – and these were the Clock! Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.6
I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its regular and never-changing voice, that one deep constant note, uppermost amongst all the noise and clatter in the streets below – marking that, let that tumult rise or fall, go on or stop – let it be night or noon, to-morrow or to-day, this year or next – it still performed its functions with the same dull constancy, and regulated the progress of the life around, the fancy came upon me that this was London’s Heart, and that when it should cease to beat, the City would be no more.
It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering house-tops, and you shall have within its space, everything with its opposite extreme and contradiction, close beside. Where yonder feeble light is shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at a few yards’ distance, is seen by eyes that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other a waking conscience that one might think would trouble the very air. In that close corner where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the handsome street, there are folks asleep who have dwelt there all their lives, and have no more knowledge of these things than if they had never been, or were transacted at the remotest limits of the world – who, if they were hinted at, would shake their heads, look wise, and frown, and say they were impossible, and out of Nature – as if all great towns were not. Does not this Heart of London, that nothing moves, nor stops, nor quickens – that goes on the same, let what will be done – does it not express the city’s character well?
The day begins to break, and soon there is the hum and noise of life. Those who have spent the night on door-steps and cold stones, crawl off to beg; they who have slept in beds, come forth to their occupation too, and business is astir. The fog of sleep rolls slowly off, and London shines awake. The streets are filled with carriages, and people gaily clad. The jails are full, too, to the throat, nor have the workhouses or hospitals much room to spare. The courts of law are crowded. Taverns have their regular frequenters by this time, and every mart of traffic has its throng. Each of these places is a world, and has its own inhabitants; each is distinct from, and almost unconscious of the existence of any other. There are some few people well to do, who remember to have heard it said, that numbers of men and women – thousands they think it was – get up in London every day, unknowing where to lay their heads at night; and that there are quarters of the town where misery and famine always are. They don’t believe it quite – there may be some truth in it, but it is exaggerated of course. So, each of these thousand worlds goes on, intent upon itself, until night comes again – first with its lights and pleasures, and its cheerful streets; then with its guilt and darkness.
Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every stroke! as I look on at thy indomitable working, which neither death, nor press of life, nor grief, nor gladness out of doors will influence one jot, I seem to hear a voice within thee which sinks into my heart, bidding me, as I elbow my way among the crowd, have some thought for the meanest wretch that passes, and, being a man, to turn away with scorn and pride from none that bear the human shape.
I am by no means sure that I might not have been tempted to enlarge upon this subject, had not the papers that lay before me on the table, been a silent reproach for even this digression. I took them up again when I had got thus far, and seriously prepared to read.
The hand-writing was strange to me, for the manuscript had been fairly copied. As it is against our rules in such a case to inquire into the authorship until the reading is concluded, I could only glance at the different faces round me, in search of some expression which should betray the writer. Whoever he might be, he was prepared for this, and gave no sign for my enlightenment.
I had the papers in my hand, when my deaf friend interposed with a suggestion.
‘It has occurred to me,’ he said, ‘bearing in mind your sequel to the tale we have finished, that if such of us as have anything to relate of our own lives, could interweave it with our contribution to the Clock, it would be well to do so. This need be no restraint upon us, either as to time, or place, or incident, since any real passage of this kind may be surrounded by fictitious circumstances, and represented by fictitious characters. What if we made this, an article of agreement among ourselves?’
The proposition was cordially received, but the difficulty appeared to be that here was a long story written before we had thought of it.
‘Unless,’ said I, ‘it should have happened that the writer of this tale – which is not impossible, for men are apt to do so when they write – has actually mingled with it something of his own endurance and experience.’
Nobody spoke, but I thought I detected in one quarter that this was really the case.
‘If I have no assurance to the contrary,’ I added therefore, ‘I shall take it for granted that he has done so, and that even these papers come within our new agreement. Everybody being mute, we hold that understanding if you please.’
And here I was about to begin again, when Jack informed us softly, that during the progress of our last narrative, Mr Weller’s Watch7 had adjourned its sittings from the kitchen, and regularly met outside our door, where he had no doubt that august body would be found at the present moment. As this was for the convenience of listening to our stories, he submitted that they might be suffered to come in, and hear them more pleasantly.
To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, and the party being discovered as Jack had supposed, and invited to walk in, entered (though not without great confusion at having been detected) and were accommodated with chairs at a little distance.
Then, the lamp being trimmed, the fire well-stirred and burning brightly, the hearth clean swept, the curtains closely drawn, the clock wound up, we entered on our new story – BARNABY RUDGE.
B. DICKENS’S ANNOUNCEMENT TO HIS READERS OF THE CONCLUSION OF MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK, OCTOBER 1841
In October 1841, Dickens announced to his readers that Master Humphrey’s Clock would come to an end with the conclusion of Barnaby Rudge and in three revealing paragraphs showed how frustrating he found the rigours of weekly publication. The manuscript draft and corrected proof of the address can be found in the Forster Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (This text is taken from John Butt and Kathleen Tillotson, Dickens at Work (London: Methuen, 1957), pp. 88–9.)
I should not regard the anxiety, the close confinement, or the constant attention, inseparable from the weekly form of publication (for to commune with you, in any form, is to me a labour of love), if I had found it advantageous to the conduct of my stories, the elucidation of my meaning, or the gradual development of my characters. But I have not done so. I have often felt cramped and confined in a very irksome and harassing degree, by the space in which I have been constrained to move. I have wanted you to know more at once than I could tell you; and it has frequently been of the greatest importance to my cherished intention, that you should do so. I have been sometimes strongly tempted (and have been at some pains to resist the temptation) to hurry incidents on, lest they should appear to you who waited from week to week, and had not, like me, the result and purpose in your minds, too long delayed. In a word, I have found this form of publication most anxious, perplexing, and difficult. I cannot bear these jerking confidences which are no sooner begun than ended, and no sooner ended than begun again.
Many passages in a tale of any length, depend materially for their interest on the intimate relation they bear to what has gone before, or to what is to follow. I sometimes found it difficult when I issued thirty-two closely-printed pages once a month, to sustain in your mind this needful connexion; in the present form of publication it is often, especially in the first half of a story, quite impossible to preserve it sufficiently through the current numbers. And although in my progress I am gradually able to set you right, and to show you what my meaning has been, and to work it out, I see no reason why you should ever be wrong when I have it in my power, by resorting to a better means of communication between us, to prevent it.
Considerations of immediate profit and advantage, ought, in such a case, to be of secondary importance. They would lead me, at all hazards, to hold my present course. But, for the reasons I have just now mentioned, I have, after long consideration, and with especial reference to the next new Tale I bear in my mind, arrived at the conclusion that it will be better to abandon this scheme of publication, in favour of our old and well-tried plan, which has only twelve gaps in a year, instead of fifty-two.
C. AT THE END OF BARNABY RUDGE, FROM
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK, NO. 88, 27
NOVEMBER 1841
At the conclusion of Barnaby Rudge, which was also the final number of Master Humphrey’s Clock, Dickens rapidly wrapped up the narrative framework that he had established so carefully in the journal’s opening numbers. Humphrey reflects briefly on the power of time and memory, and we then learn that he has died, leaving his property, apart from some charitable legacies, to the Deaf Gentleman and Jack Redburn. Mr Pickwick and the Wellers make their farewell, and the final words are those of the Deaf Gentleman who is ‘From certain allusions which Jack has dropped, to his having been deserted and cast off in early life,… inclined to believe that some passages of his youth may possibly be shadowed out in the history of Mr Chester and his son’. After this intriguing, if rather implausible, suggestion, we learn that: ‘The chamber … is deserted: our happy hour of meeting strikes no more: the chimney corner has grown cold: and MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK has stopped for ever.’
Appendix III: Preface to the Cheap Edition (1849)
As it is Mr Waterton’s opinion that ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England,1 I offer a few words here about mine.
The raven in this story2 is a compound of two great originals, of whom I have been, at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom of his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London, by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne Page,3 ‘good gifts,’ which he improved by study and attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable – generally on horseback – and so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius, to walk off unmolested with the dog’s dinner, from before his face. He was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil hour, his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely, saw that they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. On their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village public-house, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a consideration, and sent up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to administer to the effects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden – a work of immense labour and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind. When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill, all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master sent his duty with him, ‘and if I wished the bird to come out very strong, would I be so good as show him a drunken man’ – which I never did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people at hand. But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect, I am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to whom he was attached – but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been. Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile off, walking down the middle of the public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity under those trying circumstances, I never can forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his maw – which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps and a landing – but after some three years he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been ravenless.4
Of the story of BARNABY RUDGE itself, I do not think I can say anything here, more to the purpose than the following passages from the original Preface.
‘No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
‘It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate, and unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the “No Popery” riots of Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
‘However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, although he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers of its creed.
‘It may be observed that, in the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to the best authorities of that time, such as they are; and that the account given in this Tale, of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially correct.
‘It may be further remarked, that Mr Dennis’s allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author’s fancy. Any file of old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove this, with terrible ease.
‘Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the same character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated, exactly as they are stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they afforded as much entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there, as some other most affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned by Sir Samuel Romilly,5 is not recorded.’
That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for itself, I now subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH6 in a speech in Parliament, ‘on Frequent Executions,’ made in 1777.
‘Under this act,’ the Shop-lifting Act, ‘one Mary Jones was executed, whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press-warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands.7 The woman’s husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper’s shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket), “that she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but, since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.” The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn.’
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