The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Hello Fellow-Curiosities,

Since I won't be near a computer tomorrow, I'm going to post the new threads today. This week’s instalment does a bit more to connect some of the characters and work out the plot, but it also introduces another character (as if there were not enough of them already), and it makes a revelation which I think unlucky for it spoils the mystery hovering around one major character.

Chapter 11 introduces us to “Some Affairs of the Heart”, and it starts from the perspective of Miss Peecher, who is described by the narrator as “little” Miss Peecher – in order to imply that this is a woman of homely and honest virtue. Miss Peecher, the narrator says,

”[…] loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or certificated out of her.”

All her mind is concentrated on the object of her idolatry, Bradley Headstone, who has not the faintest inkling of this. With Miss Peecher, we have the second minor character who is unlucky in love, next to Mr Venus – and these two thwarted lovers are joined by the rather elusive major character Rokesmith, who seems smitten with Bella Wilfer. Unrequited love may therefore be another of the numerous motifs of this novel.

By a very clever, and seemingly disinterested, examination of her pupil Mary Anne Miss Peecher manages to find out where Mr Headstone spends so much of his time lately, and she also derives some information on Lizzie Hexam’s address and calling. No sooner has she done that, but Mr Headstone himself arrives, and his arrival is presented in a somewhat darkish tone:

”[…] when the schoolmaster’s shadow came in before him, announcing that he might be instantly expected.”

Watching a lot of movies (esp. westerns and films noirs), I am very sensitive to the use of shadows and found this little detail quite disturbing for it presents Bradley almost in the role of a villain. Bradley is just on a flying visit to leave his key with Miss Peecher because, as he says, he has some other business to attend to, and the poor schoolmistress mentally adds the place where this business is going to be done. While Mr Headstone is approaching his destination, our narrator uses the time to allow us a glimpse into the young man’s soul – and it is a soul that is well represented by an ominous shadow indeed for it is basically characterised by suppression of feelings and by self-restraint (undoubtedly with a view to social climbing and achieving respectability). However, setting eyes on Lizzie has rekindled the long-suppressed feelings in Bradley’s heart, and they have become an idée fixe with him:

”It had been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon her. It seemed to him as if all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as if all that he could restrain in himself he had restrained, and the time had come—in a rush, in a moment—when the power of self-command had departed from him. Love at first sight is a trite expression quite sufficiently discussed; enough that in certain smouldering natures like this man’s, that passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire does in a rage of wind, when other passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be broached—in these times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody for something that never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else—so these less ordinary natures may lie by for years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst into flame.“

Simultaneously, Bradley even feels some shame about his corset of self-restraint having been swept away by a simple glance at “Hexam’s sister” – a term Bradley always uses and which suggests distance and even a trace of scorn. I find this development of his character a very powerful example of the later Dickens’s craft as a writer, showing us the darker side of love, or rather passion. When Bradley arrives at Lizzie’s home, there is at first only Jenny Wren for him to talk to, and the young lady frankly tells him that she dislikes his use of the term “Hexam’s sister” because she dislikes Charley, whom she deems egoistic. By extension, Headstone is left to conclude that she also dislikes him. I must say that Jenny Wren is starting to get on my nerves in that I find her rather impertinent and meddlesome. With the information provided in an earlier discussion I now have a better understanding of what made her become the person she is, but still I don’t really like children who are precocious and talk like adults. They have some eerie elfish quality about them, if you ask me.

Luckily, it’s not long before Lizzie herself arrives but things are not getting any better for Bradley because Lizzie refutes Jenny’s offer to withdraw – a sign that she feels uncomfortable in the presence of Bradley and that she does not want to hear any very confidential talk from him. The upshot of Bradley’s interview with Lizzie is that he wants to make her change her mind about having rejected Charley’s offer of having her tutored by Bradley in favour of Eugene’s offer. Lizzie, however, is not willing to do this, saying that they – meaning Jenny and herself – are getting along very well with their teacher, so much so that in a little time they will even be able to carry on their studies on their own. The effect of this turn on Bradley is anything but prepossessing:

”At all events he went on with much greater firmness and force of emphasis: though with a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious tight-screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching palm of his left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was unwilling to cry out.”

He even admits to Lizzie that he is a “man of strong feelings” but also of the habit of keeping them down. All in all, Lizzie comes to regard her visitor with “some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear” – and frankly, I can understand every single ingredient in this mix of feelings even if I cannot understand that she should prefer Eugene over her own brother. At the end of the interview, Bradley asks her to be allowed to come back to that subject someday in the future, and the meeting concludes in this manner:

”He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone.“

When they are finally left alone, Jenny turns the conversation into a direction that plainly shows that she suspects Lizzie of having certain tender or romantic feelings for Eugene, and that she is quite worried about what may come of all this.

The next Chapter promises us, and this will be good for Peter, still “More Birds of Prey”. We are introduced into the shabby neighbourhood where Roger Riderhood has set up his dwellings and where most people, though it be poor, shabby and not in high reputation, shun him as a dubious character. The narration acquaints us with Pleasant Riderhood, our friend’s only daughter, who gets her living as a small-scale pawnbroker for seamen and who also rents rooms to them. She regards seamen as her rightful prey in that she has no qualms about charging them too much for the poor rooms and board they get and about fleecing them in her pawnbroker’s business. As to her outward appearance,

”[…] she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as she really was.”

She is twenty-four, by the way. The narrator also makes it clear that despite the violence and neglect she experienced at her father’s hands, and despite the poverty and social misery around her, she is not a very bad person. The evening at which our chapter starts, a stranger, apparently a sailor, enters her place, and she immediately notices that according to his hands he cannot have been aboard a ship for quite some time. The stranger wants to speak her father and proves immune to any attempts on her side to lure him into leaving his money with her. He also tells Pleasant that one time in his life he was left for a drowned man by dubious characters who were after his money. His story ends like this:

”‘Did you get the parties punished?’ asked Pleasant.

‘A tremendous punishment followed,’ said the man, more seriously; ‘but it was not of my bringing about.’

‘Of whose, then?’ asked Pleasant.

The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood felt more and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so stern, so self-possessed.”

His self-composed attitude finally even makes her feel slightly afraid of this strange man – all the more so as his words imply that he knows quite some things about her father’s trade. When finally Rogue Riderhood arrives on the scene, the stranger’s talk implies that he has already, once, set foot into his dwelling, but Riderhood cannot remember ever having seen him before. The stranger tells him that he knows Riderhood through a friend of his, a sailor named George Radfoot, but who has died by now. He becomes even more suspicious, and horrible to Pleasant, when Rogue recognizes his knife – the stranger uses it to open a bottle of brandy he has Pleasant bring and then puts both the knife and the bottle on the table, so as to make sure that Riderhood’s eyes will be caught by the knife – and his coat as the property of the late George Radfoot. Riderhood implies that maybe, since he has the property of a dead man in his possession, he will even know more about the man’s death, but the stranger soon gets the upper hand in their conversation by exclaiming in a scornful way: “’What a liar you are!’” He also makes more mysterious allusions, like this:

”‘And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that invented story,’ said the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable sort of confidence, ‘you might have had your strong suspicions of a friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you know.’”

And now, by and by, the purpose of the stranger’s visit becomes clear: He wants Riderhood to give a written statement of Gaffer Hexam’s innocence in the case of the Harmon murder – and he says that he’ll be back soon to have it. The stranger says that Riderhood knows Harmon was innocent:

”‘Because you knew him,’ replied the man; ‘because you had been one with him, and knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the night which you had afterwards reason to believe to be the very night of the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his having left his ship in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was there no stranger with him?’”

Riderhood is not immediately ready to comply with the stranger’s wish. He even threatens him and he says that words cannot hurt a dead man, something I found very ironic because the very man whose reputation he destroyed used to say that you cannot steal money from a dead man since a dead man has no use for money any longer. Pleasant, however, for fear of her father prevails upon him to do as the stranger bids. When the stranger says that you can hurt a dead man’s children with your words, Pleasant adds that Harmon had a daughter and a son but that only the daughter was living with him at the time of his death. Finally, Riderhood gives in, all the readier as the stranger implies that it will not be to his financial detriment.

Chapter 13, which is called “A Solo and a Duett”, disappointed me a little because it unravels the mystery of John Harmon – when we are only halfway into the novel. I immediately asked myself why Dickens would have done that and how he is going to maintain the reader’s interest.

When the stranger leaves the Riderhood household, stepping back into a stormy and rainy night, he removes his beard and hair, and underneath those two, we see the features of John Rokesmith. Then, unfortunately, Rokesmith begins to speak, or think aloud, like an actor in some mediocre melodrama, or a singer in an opera, who is stabbed by a sword and then spends the next fifteen minutes singing that he is going to die with his friends around him listening instead of fetching a surgeon. All this usually goes against the grain with me, and it did so this time, but this is what we learn during this artificial soliloquy, in which Rokesmith tries to get his thoughts into order, as he says:

First of all, we learn that John Rokesmith is none other than John Harmon. When he was on his journey back,

”’[…] mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father’s intention of thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the two dear noble friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or that of my heartbroken sister’”,

he noticed that the third mate on board, George Radfoot, had a remote likeness to him, and he soon began to think that he could introduce himself in the guise of a seaman in order to give the Boffins a glad surprise but also to see what kind of person Bella was. Together with Radfoot, he plans this incognito arrival – why he needs Radfoot for this, is beyond me – but the mate has plans of his own, and, to cut a long story short, he leads him, first to Riderhood (where, as it became obvious to Harmon later on) Radfoot obtained a drug, and then to a pub, where Radfoot used this drug to knock Harmon out. A little later, Harmon found himself floating in the Thames and with his last reserves of strength saved his life. In the course of further events, he found out that Radfoot, too, had been thrown into the river by his partners in crime, and since he and Radfoot had exchanged clothes before, apparently with a view to pursuing Harmon’s plan of arriving on the scene not as John Harmon but as somebody else, everyone now thought that Harmon had become the victim of a crime.

At first, John Harmon was determined to make use of this turn of events to follow out his original plan, but now he realized that innocent people might suffer from this, and he also feels uncomfortably aloof from everyone else:

”‘It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,’ said he, ‘to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel. […]’”

He is also dithering as to whether he should drop his mask or continue to lead a modest existence as the secretary John Rokesmith – and, in a way, he feels inclined to do the latter, seeing how the Boffins have managed to turn the ill-omened wealth of his father into a means of furthering good aims and procuring happiness at last. Then, however, he feels that he is deeply, and unhappily, in love with Bella:

”’[…] To come into possession of my father’s money, and with it sordidly to buy a beautiful creature whom I love – I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason – but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner. [...]'"

Lost in his thoughts, Rokesmith/Harmon arrives at the Boffins’ house and there begs for an interview with Bella during which he more or less declares his love for her, which leaves her indignant at such impudence – thus actually confirming the hardly encouraging impression he has of her. The outcome of this interview also confirms John in his determination to keep John Harmon dead.

All in all, this week’s instalment gave away a major secret about one of the principal characters, made a further character connection (between Rokesmith/Harmon and Lizzie Hexam, albeit not immediately) and established an interesting parallel: It started with an unhappy interview (actually with two, Peecher-Headstone, Headstone-Lizzie), and it also concluded with one.

Tristram wrote: "No sooner has she done that, but Mr Headstone himself arrives, and his arrival is presented in a somewhat darkish tone:

”[…] when the schoolmaster’s shadow came in before him, announcing that he might be instantly expected.”
"

You caught some good foreshadowing there, Tristram. Every description we're given of Headstone seems carefully selected to give us the willies. Poor Lizzie is forced to interact with him for Charley's sake. One wonders if she or Charley will, at some point, be forced to make a choice. If so, I suspect it will be Lizzie who, once again, sacrifices her own needs and desires for Charley, and not the other way around. I think Jenny is probably a good judge of character!

Tristram wrote: "The next Chapter promises us, and this will be good for Peter, still “More Birds of Prey”. We are introduced into the shabby neighbourhood where Roger Riderhood has set up his dwellings and where m..."

I don't envy you, Tristram, for being the one to have to unravel these chapters. I had to read this one twice, and it is still very hard to make sense of.

I got a bit tired of Riderhood's overuse of the the term "poll parrot" (and its variations), and had to look it up. I learned it means pretty much what you'd think - chattering nonsense like a parrot, which hardly seems to describe poor Pleasant, who undoubtedly would have a sisterhood of sorts with Lizzie and Jenny.

Which brings me to another motif in OMF - that of daughters who parent their fathers. We have the three I just mentioned, but also Bella Wilfer. While her mother is still in the picture, Bella seems to be the only one to give Rumty any real affection, and we see her mothering him when, for example, she's combing his hair with her fork (ick). Perhaps John can enlighten us as to whether this is addressed in his Smiley biography. I wonder if Dickens had a similar relationship with any of his daughters?

Tristram wrote: "artificial soliloquy"

A perfect description! While I enjoy this book, these last two chapters are a huge disappointment. I wonder if the original installments were greeted with the same enthusiasm that Everyman has had for the seeming lack of plot and abundance of unrelated characters, and Dickens felt the need to do a big revelation in order to keep people talking and interested. It was about as subtle and nuanced as a cinderblock falling on one's head. It doesn't happen often, but every now and then Dickens disappoints me. The revelation of John Harmon is one of those times.

...how he is going to maintain the reader’s interest...

There is still plenty to keep us wondering:

~ the Lizzie/Bradley/Eugene triangle
~ what Wegg is up to
~ the Boffins' adoption of Sloppy (though even I'm not riveted to that storyline as it stands now)
~how poor Georgiana will escape the clutches of the duplicitous Lammles.
~ and while Harmon has been revealed to the reader, it's still a mystery to the other characters. How will it affect the Boffins and Bella to learn that Harmon has been under their noses all this time?

Tristram wrote: "Hello Fellow-Curiosities,

Since I won't be near a computer tomorrow, I'm going to post the new threads today. This week’s instalment does a bit more to connect some of the characters and work out ..."

Tristram

Your knowledge of film noir serves you well in this chapter. The dark shadow that precedes Headstone into Lizzie's room is ominous. It is one part of Headstone's visit. The shadow is the only part of Headstone's visit that is not in some way bathed in physicality, agressive language, and borderline rudeness. Jenny sums up his visit with the phrase "I wish he was so strange a man as to be a total stranger." I agree with her. It makes me wonder the degree to which Charley can be influenced, or even be used by Headstone. Lessons in a classroom are academic; lessons on the street are life forming. What type of character will Charley turn out to be?

Jenny Wren's long and beautiful hair is a focus in this chapter. It will be interesting to see how Dickens evolves this physical feature which forms such a contrast to the rest of Jenny's twisted and painful body.

The ending of this chapter is both poignant and puzzling. As Jenny asks Lizzie to hold her tight there is a clear plan in Jenny's mind for she whispers to herself " My Lizzie, my poor Lizzie! O my blessed children, come back in the long bright slanting rows, and come back for her, not me. She wants help more than I, my blessed children." Jenny may ask for Lizzie's comfort, but it is the wise Jenny who is providing comfort to Lizzie. The dolls' dressmaker talks to her dolls as if they are human. In her mind, they are. Here, I see Dickens giving the reader an insight as to how Jenny, whether it is her own pain or another's pain, is soothed by using a vision. These visions, seen earlier on the roof garden of Riah's do not interfere with Jenny's ability to survive; they inhance her ability to survive.

Chapter 13 is rather melodramatic. I wonder how it would play as a stage play or movie? I rather liked it. The major mystery of why John Rokesmith has been so mysterious and detached is resolved. The irony of Harmon not being recognized by the Boffins is left hanging, but we do now understand Mrs Boffin's strange willies. We learn that Harmon, because he is alive, can claim his inheritance and marry Bella who he is attracted to for her own merits. The mystery of how and when he will reveal himself to anyone/everyone is still left unresolved. To me, this chapter makes the novel much more accessible and interesting.

Tristram wrote: "I must say that Jenny Wren is starting to get on my nerves in that I find her rather impertinent and meddlesome."

Me too.

I didn't remember the mystery of Rokesmith/Harmon/Julius Hanford is told to us in the middle of the novel, I thought it came later and I've even read it twice before. One thing I like about the big mystery being known is now I won't have rewrite a third of the commentaries to hide that. And walking around talking out loud when no one else is around is just strange. :-)

I have spent an amazing amount of time this evening being told I can't post anything in our club because I'm not a member. When I attempted to just go to my profile page I was told I didn't have the authority to do so, or something like that, I should "friend" myself first. This has been going on for the last few hours and since I seem to be a member right now, it's letting me post anyway, I better get right to it before I am once again not myself. :-)

And here we go:



"Meaning," returned the little creature, "Everyone of you but you. Hah! Now, look this lady in the face. This is Mrs. Truth. The Honourable. Full-dressed."

Book 2 Chapter 11

J. Mahoney

Household Edition 1875

Text Illustrated:

The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of being vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried face. Truly, in his breast there lingered a resentful shame to find himself defeated by this passion for Charley Hexam's sister, though in the very self-same moments he was concentrating himself upon the object of bringing the passion to a successful issue.

He appeared before the dolls' dressmaker, sitting alone at her work. "Oho!" thought that sharp young personage, "it's you, is it? I know your tricks and your manners, my friend!"

"Hexam's sister," said Bradley Headstone, "is not come home yet?"

"You are quite a conjuror," returned Miss Wren.

"I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her."

"Do you?" returned Miss Wren. "Sit down. I hope it's mutual." Bradley glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending over the work, and said, trying to conquer doubt and hesitation:

"I hope you don't imply that my visit will be unacceptable to Hexam's sister?"

"There! Don't call her that. I can't bear you to call her that," returned Miss Wren, snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient snaps, "for I don't like Hexam."

"Indeed?"

"No." Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express dislike. "Selfish. Thinks only of himself. The way with all of you."

"The way with all of us? Then you don't like me?"

"So-so," replied Miss Wren, with a shrug and a laugh. "Don't know much about you."

"But I was not aware it was the way with all of us," said Bradley, returning to the accusation, a little injured. "Won't you say, some of us?"

"Meaning," returned the little creature, "every one of you, but you. Hah! Now look this lady in the face. This is Mrs. Truth. The Honourable. Full-dressed."

Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation — which had been lying on its face on her bench, while with a needle and thread she fastened the dress on at the back — and looked from it to her.

"I stand the Honourable Mrs. T. on my bench in this corner against the wall, where her blue eyes can shine upon you," pursued Miss Wren, doing so, and making two little dabs at him in the air with her needle, as if she pricked him with it in his own eyes; "and I defy you to tell me, with Mrs. T. for a witness, what you have come here for."

"To see Hexam's sister."

Commentary:

The woodcut for Book Two, "Birds of a Feather," Chapter Eleven, "Some Affairs of the Heart" in what was originally the Ninth Part (January 1865) pursues an aspect of the multi-strand plot which Marcus Stone did not address in his serial illustrations — Bradley Headstone's growing obsession with Lizzie Hexam at this point in the story. The interview between the dolls' dressmaker and the schoolmaster occurs in Jenny's parlor, which doubles as her workroom, although all that Mahoney shows of that aspect of the room is the can of glue and the scraps of material under the table.

Jenny Wren, physically deformed and wise beyond her years, possesses a judgment of persons and events that corresponds closely with that of the narrator. Consequently, when she intimates that Bradley Headstone's attitude towards Lizzie is not that of the disinterested schoolmaster and mentor of Charley Hexam, we are inclined to accept her interpretation rather than trust Mahoney's suave image. Her doll, Mrs. Truth, becomes a puppet in her hands, as Jenny becomes the puppet-master. Although Mahoney rarely employs symbolic objects for editorial comment, the proximity of Headstone and the bellows (center) might be underscoring his blown-up pretensions and self-centeredness.

"Miss Riderhood at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Marcus Stone

Commentary:

Stone's illustration for Book 2, Chapter 12, "More Birds of Prey," makes an interesting basis for comparison with the far less detailed character study of Pleasant Riderhood and her surly father in Sol Eytinge's series for the same novel in the Diamond Edition, published by Dickens's principal American distributors, Ticknor Fields.

Whereas Eytinge in his 1870 Diamond Edition illustrations for Our Mutual Friend chose to focus on the abusive relationship between Rogue Riderhood and his adult daughter in "Rogue Riderhood and Miss Pleasant at Home" depicting her as cowering and lacking the ability to stand up for herself even verbally, Marcus Stone in "Miss Riderhood at Home," the first illustration for Part 9 (January 1865) shows her as far more self-assured, and places her figure in the context of a cluttered shop, "little better than a cellar or cave" in Limehouse Hole. What is so pronounced here is the utter blurring of domestic and business spaces and roles, for this cramped room is both Miss Pleasant's home and the nexus of two businesses — an unlicensed pawnbroker's and a seamen's rooming house.

Both artists have elected to depict the young "unlicensed pawnbroker" in her characteristic pose, with both hands to her head as she attempts to put her tumbling, unruly hair back into a more workplace format. Dickens emphasizes how the habitual untidiness of her hair frustrates her designs to accomplish her business and reflects the general untidiness of the dual-natured apartment. Nevertheless, despite its "ill-lighted window" , the room has objects that reflect upon the nautical and riparian nature of its occupants: "a flaring handkerchief or two, an old pea coat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some horrible sweets". Although the viewer gradually notes these contextual objects, the viewer's attention is drawn immediately to the two vividly realized, realistic figures: Miss Pleasant herself, twisting her hair into place with both hands, and a young, profusely bearded merchant sailor seated with his gunny sack at his feet. Stone deliberately avoids showing the sailor's hands, which, though a sunburnt, have a peculiarly "unused color and texture", suggesting that he is not what he seems. From his posture one may deduce that this is the passage that Stone had in mind:

"Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close before her.

Is your father at home?' said he.

'I think he is,' returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; 'come in.'

It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance. Her father was not at home, and Pleasant knew it. 'Take a seat by the fire,' were her hospitable words when she had got him in; 'men of your calling are always welcome here'

Although, as in the text, Pleasant has taken "her observant stand on one side of the fire" , she has in fact already completed her first attempt at tidying up of her "ragged knot" by the time her guest seats himself. Stone's sailor is sitting as the text describes, "his left arm carelessly thrown across his left leg a little above the knee." But the viewer cannot see all that Pleasant sees, namely that his "right arm as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand curved, half open and half shut". Moreover, Miss Pleasant sees by his thoroughly complete nautical kit that the sailor in the pea coat is not looking for a pawn broker's: "you've got too much of an outfit on you for that" may be taken as a clue that, in fact, this young sailor is too well equipped, as if he were an ersatz-sailor trying too hard to look precisely like the merchant seamen he has known and observed at close quarters. Thus, the illustration prepares the reader for the subsequent scene in which John Harmon removes his disguise.

Compared to Eytinge's illustration of a subsequent scene between the young woman and her domineering father, Stone does a better job of realizing in its details the setting of the Riderhoods' domestic circumstances, the parlor in Stone's version replete with such homely details as the hearth with a kettle on the boil, the laundry line and ironing board, and Pleasant's ample apron and numerous hats. The Eytinge illustration better conveys her sense of domesticity as quarrelling and fighting, and her father's frequently verbally and physically abusing her. Since her hair is constantly falling out of its "ragged knot," Stone logically depicts her as having to adjust it ("winding herself up with both hands") before she can proceed with her ironing and continue her "Poll Parroting" with nautical visitor, while Eytinge conflates that action with a much later scene involving her father's throwing one of a pair of sea-boots at her at the very close of the chapter, after the stranger's departure.

Marcus Stone in the monthly illustration is inviting the reader to penetrate John Harmon's disguise, just as Dickens in the accompanying text tempts us to interrogate the sailor's identity when Pleasant asks, "But you're a seafaring man?" , evidently not satisfied with the plausible exterior of the nautical personage she sees before her in what is clearly (given her working again on her hair) the precise moment depicted:

The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant's hair in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at the man. In taking stock of his familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand, and of a whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted club with a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of his loose outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her; but, with these appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity of bristling oakum-colored head and whisker, he had a formidable appearance.

Instead of offering these clues to the sailor's bogus identity, Stone has elected to communicate the true nature of the sailor merely through his excessively bushy beard and smooth skin; moreover, Stone makes his scene a complement to Dickens's text rather than simply a repetition of it. Clearly, this "sounding out" scene Stone — perhaps in conjunction with the novelist's own inclinations — found of far greater interest than Rogue Riderhood's menacing his daughter with a boot, the rather more melodramatic scene that ensues and that Eytinge elected to depict in the Diamond Edition for American readers.

"Rogue Riderhood and Miss Pleasant at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Sol Eytinge Jr.

1870 Household Edition

Commentary:

This illustration for "More Birds of Prey" continues the narrative-pictorial sequence involving the Thames watermen Gaffer Hexam and Rogue Riderhood, last depicted in the fourth woodcut, "The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters." Comparing the two illustrations, the viewer concludes — based on the distinctive facial features with which Eytinge has realized and individualized the surly character — that Riderhood is the square-headed fellow wearing the cloth cap. The postures and juxtapositions of Riderhood and Miss Pleasant imply that he is another misogynistic alcoholic of the Jerry Cruncher variety in terms of his domestic establishment. Riderhood menaces his long-suffering daughter with a boot raised in his left hand as he clutches a bottle recently acquired from his just departed visitor (in fact, John Harmon in disguise) in his right as Pleasant puts her hands to her head, apparently covering her ears to protect herself from the inevitable beating. Eytinge telegraphs the nature of the father-daughter relationship much more effectively than Marcus Stone in the equivalent illustration for the very same chapter in his series of forty, "Miss Riderhood at Home," which originally accompanied the ninth monthly part (January 1865).

A decidedly unsavory character with a squinting leer, Rogue Riderhood has probably been robbing the bodies living as well as dead that he fishes up from the Thames. Subsequently foiled in his hopes of blaming Gaffer Hexam for his supposed role in the death of John Harmon (and thereby rendering himself eligible to claim the reward posted by Boffin), Riderhood vents his ill-temper on his adult daughter, Pleasant, "an unlicensed pawnbroker" who runs a "Leaving Shop." Although neither illustrator captures the "swivel eye" that she has inherited from her father, both Marcus Stone and Sol Eytinge convey her anxious nature, if not her "meagre, . . . muddy complexion." Chapter 12 of Book Two is the first occasion in which Dickens focuses on the Riderhoods, and both illustrations are positioned so that one has encountered them at some length in the text before encountering them in the visual medium. Stone does a better job of realizing in its details the setting of the scene, the parlor of Riderhood's unappealing residence in Limehouse Hole, the Dalziel plate of the Chapman and Hall edition giving us the hearth with a kettle on the boil, the laundry line and ironing board, and Pleasant's ample apron and numerous hats. The Eytinge illustration better conveys her sense of domesticity as quarreling and fighting, and her father's frequently verbally and physically abusing her. Her terrified pose well suggests that she has been brought up to expect that paternal duty amounts to "a fist or a leathern strap, . . . being discharged to hurt her". Since her hair is constantly falling out of its "ragged knot," Stone logically depicts her as having to adjust it ("winding herself up with both hands") before she can proceed with her ironing and continue her "Poll Parroting" with nautical visitor, while Eytinge conflates that action with a much later scene involving her father's throwing one of a pair of sea-boots at her at the very close of the chapter, after the stranger's departure:

Therefore, not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw a pair of sea-boots at Pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing, using her hair for a pocket-handkerchief.

Stone has captured instead a single moment much earlier in the twelfth chapter of Book 2, when Pleasant adjusts her hair as the seafaring stranger with the strangely soft hands takes a seat by the fire, before her father returns home from the river:

"The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant's hair in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at the man."

Riderhood Checkmated

Book 2 Chapter 12

Felix O. C. Darley

1866

Text Illustrated:

"[Rogue Riderhood] leaned across the table to see it nearer, touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve-lining (the man, in his perfect composure, offering not the least objection), and exclaimed, "It's my belief as this here coat was George Radfoot's too!"

"You are right. He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last time you ever will see him — in this world."

"It's my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!" exclaimed Riderhood; but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be filled again.

The man [John Rokesmith in disguise] only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of confusion.

"Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!" said Riderhood, after staring at him, and tossing his last glassful down his throat. "Let's know what to make of you. Say something plain."

"I will," returned the other, leaning forward across the table, and speaking in a low impressive voice. "What a liar you are!"

The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in the man's face. The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger half knowingly, half menacingly, the piece of honesty thought better of it and sat down again, putting the glass down, too.

"And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that invented story," said the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable sort of confidence, "you might have had your strong suspicions of a friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you know."

"Me my suspicions? Of what friend?"

"Tell me again whose knife was this?" demanded the man.

"It was possessed by, and was the property of — him as I have made mention on," said Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the name.

"Tell me again whose coat was this?"

"That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore by — him as I have made mention on," was again the dull Old Bailey evasion.

"I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in his keeping out of the way. The cleverness would have been, to have got back for one single instant to the light of the sun."

Commentary:

It is quite likely that both Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sol Eytinge, Jr., the first American illustrators of Our Mutual Friend first read the novel as a monthly serial in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June 1864 through December 1865 — in other words, in installments that were exactly one month later than the monthly parts issued in Great Britain (May 1864 through November 1865). Thus, the ninth installment, which would have contained the twelfth chapter of the second book, Darley would probably have read in February 1865, perhaps just a year ahead of when he executed the four frontispieces for the Hurd and Houghton "Household Edition" initiated five years earlier by New York publisher James G. Gregory. Among the periodical articles that American readers consumed with the third monthly part of the novel in Harper's New Monthly Magazine was an illustrated non-fiction piece of reportage relating directly to the material in this ninth installment, "Treatment of the Apparently Drowned" in August 1864 (pp. 377-9).

There are thirty-six (of the forty) plates included, reproduced from the original illustrations by Marcus Stone. Illustrations began to be issued with the second number (in July 1864), and initially related to the number published the previous month; hence the text of the second part (published in July 1864) included 'The Bird of Prey' (referring to chapter 1), and 'Witnessing the Agreement' (referring to chapter 4). This pattern continued until the third monthly number, in which four plates appeared. [Queen's University Belfast]

Consequently, Americans could not always read the appropriate illustrations against their textual counterparts, this behind-the-date method of publication often forcing an analeptic reading of the Stone illustrations, so that, for example, Darley would have encountered Miss Riderhood at Home in March 1865, the tenth Harper's issue, memorable to an artist because that particular installment was actually accompanied by four installments — those for the ninth number, issued by Chapman and Hall in the previous January, as well as the pair for the tenth number, issued across the Atlantic in February. At this point, in other words, the illustrations caught up with the American text.

Whereas the Marcus Stone illustration contains an amazing amount of detail for a wood-engraving, the parallel Eytinge and Darley illustrations do not. Whereas Eytinge focuses on the abusive father-daughter relationship, showing Riderhood threatening to strike Pleasant, Darley re-interprets the Stone illustration set in the sailors' rooming-house and "leaving shop" run by Pleasant Riderhood, anticipating the 1875 Household Edition wood-engraving by James Mahoney, And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table to take a closer look at the knife, and stared from it to him (Chapter 12, "More Birds of Prey," p. 155). To appreciate fully the situation that Darley and Mahoney have realized, one needs to know something of the plot at this point.

The scene in both instances is the kitchen-parlor-and-pawnbroker's shop of Pleasant Riderhood's lodging house for merchant sailors in the dockyard London district known as Limehouse. The clothing hanging in the background is items of apparel pawned by sailors down on their luck. While Rogue Riderhood, a waterman who scavenges the Thames, has been momentarily out of the shop, John Harmon (that is to say, the supposedly murdered "John Rokesmith," disguised as a sailor) strikes up a conversation with the proprietress and begins to question her as she puts up her hair in preparation for ironing — as in Marcus Stone's illustration, a feature retained by Darley (Pleasant is right rear). The bearded stranger shifts his attention to her father when he returns, offering to share a bottle of liquor with him. During their subsequent conversation which is the subject of the Stone and Darley illustrations, the sailor who has yet to identify himself pulls out a knife which Riderhood immediately recognizes as George Radfoot's, and then realizes that his guest is also wearing Radfoot's peacoat — and yet the stranger will not admit to having murdered Radfoot. The disguised Rokesmith then accuses Riderhood as having fabricated the story that his fellow waterman, Gaffer Hexam, murdered a passenger named John Harmon, implying that Riderhood and Radfoot were the actual killers. The stranger leverages Riderhood into promising to sign an affidavit attesting to Gaffer's innocence.

In contrast to the subtlety of Darley's engraving, the other illustrations, utilizing the bold lines of the composite wood-block engraving, although dramatic, seem crude when one notes the lightness and subtlety of Darley's photogravure. As both J. A. Hammerton and Frederic G. Kitton have noted, the original illustration by Marcus Stone, who worked closely with Dickens, bears the stamp of authorial intention, influencing later illustrators as an adjunct to the original text. Conversations with and detailed notes from the novelist gave young Stone direct access to what he himself termed Dickens's "pictorialism" (Kitton, 197), that is, an innate sense of what in in a text will be most suitable as an illustration, so that Miss Riderhood at Home prepares the reader for the confrontation between the duplicitous waterman and the disguised Rokesmith — a confrontation which thoroughly engaged the "pictorial imaginations" of Felix Darley and James Mahoney, but which Harry Furniss in 1910 rejected as perhaps too obvious (in any event, Stone had already done a masterful realization), so that the later artist decided to depict the disguised Rokesmith's carefully observing the Riderhood rooming-house from across the street in Outside the Seamen's Boarding-House, an impressionistic pen-and-ink that underscores Rokesmith's approaching Rogue Riderhood with extreme caution.

As opposed to the static illustrations of Stone and Furniss, those of Eytinge and Darley capture the characters in the midst of action, a moment of tableau, as the most active figure in the scene, Riderhood, holds aloft a boot and is about to strike in Eytinge, and Riderhood, rising, when accused of lying to the lawyer about the murder, "as though he would fling his glass in the man's face" — curiously, Darley has given both drinkers small wine-glasses rather than shot-glasses. Although technically not a merchant-seaman, Riderhood in the Darley frontispiece wears the striped shirt and neck-cloth of such a sailor; he is, moreover, somewhat younger and physically more attractive than the Riderhoods of Eytinge and Mahoney. In his haste, he has overturned his stool, but Pleasant, immediately behind him, is unperturbed, as if such outbursts are common enough with her father. Rokesmith, sure that he holds all the cards and can command his opponent, remains completely self-possessed as he holds aloft an accusatory finger.

Outside the Seamen's Boarding House.

Book 2 Chapter 12

Harry Furniss

1910

Text Illustrated:

Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop-door, when a certain man standing over against the house on the opposite side of the street took notice of her. That was on a cold shrewd windy evening, after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared with most of the lady inhabitants of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the Hole, the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters universally twisting their back-hair as they came along, and many of them, in the hurry of the moment, carrying their back-combs in their mouths.

It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some horrible sweets these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the Leaving Shop — was displayed the inscription SEAMAN'S BOARDING-HOUSE.

Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close before her.

"Is your father at home?" said he.


Commentary:

The scene in other illustrators' interpretations is not outside the shop, but afterwards, inside the kitchen-parlor-and-pawnbroker's shop of Pleasant Riderhood's lodging house for merchant sailors in the dockyard London district known as Limehouse. The clothing hanging in the background (not evident in the front window of the shop in the Furniss illustration) are items of apparel pawned by sailors down on their luck. While Rogue Riderhood, a waterman who scavenges the Thames, has been momentarily out of the shop, John Harmon (that is to say, the supposedly murdered "John Rokesmith," disguised as a sailor) subsequent to the Furniss illustration strikes up a conversation with the proprietress and begins to question her. As in the original monthly part illustration (January 1865) by Marcus Stone, in the 1866 interpretation by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, she is still endeavoring to put up her hair — evidently in preparation for ironing. The bearded stranger seen lounging across the street in the Furniss illustration in these other illustrations has entered the business and is interrogating either Pleasant (in Miss Riderhood at Home, for instance) or her father, as in Darley's Riderhood Checkmated. In an odd twist on the usual detective story plot, the murdered man is playing detective to uncover the circumstances surrounding the murder; here, he is leveraging what evidence he has against Riderhood to compel the dishonest waterman to exonerate his fellow waterman, Gaffer Hexam, of any implication that he murdered a recently arrived passenger whose body was found in Thames.

In contrast to the subtlety of Darley's engraving, the other illustrations utilize bold lines to establish a sinister mood — in Furniss's illustration, the dark lines establish the atmosphere of the locale. As both J. A. Hammerton and Frederic G. Kitton have noted, the original illustration by Marcus Stone, who worked closely with Dickens, bears the stamp of authorial intention, influencing later illustrators as an adjunct to the original text. Conversations with and detailed notes from the novelist gave young Stone direct access to what he himself termed Dickens's "pictorialism" (Kitton, 197), that is, an innate sense of what in in a text will be most suitable as an illustration. However, Furniss seems to have reacted against Miss Riderhood at Home by showing how carefully Rokesmith laid the groundwork for his visit. Furniss's Outside the Seamen's Boarding-House is a highly energetic, impressionistic pen-and-ink study of the two figures and the neighborhood that underscores Rokesmith's approaching the Riderhoods with extreme caution.

As opposed to the static illustrations of Stone and Furniss, those of Eytinge and Darley capture the characters in the midst of action, a moment of tableau, as the most active figure in the scene, Riderhood, holds aloft a boot and is about to strike in Eytinge, and Riderhood, rising, when accused of lying to the lawyer about the murder, "as though he would fling his glass in the man's face" in Darley. Rokesmith in Furniss's illustration projects an impression of casual idleness, assuming the position of a flaneur in order to conduct a thorough surveillance of the premises before venturing to enter in order to be sure when he confronts Rogue Riderhood that he holds all the cards and can checkmate his opponent.

And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table to look closer at the knife, and stared from it to him.

Book 2 Chapter 12

J. Mahoney

Household Edition 1875

Text Illustrated:

And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table to look closer at the knife and stared from it to him.

"Wat's the matter?" asked the man.

Why, I know that knife!" said Riderhood.

"Yes, I dare say you do."

He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it. Riderhood emptied it to the last drop and began again.

"That there knife —"

"Stop," said the man, composedly. "I was going to drink to your daughter. Your health, Miss Riderhood."

"That knife was the knife of a seaman named George Radfoot."

"It was."

"That seaman was well beknown to me."

"He was."

"What's come to him?"

"Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape. He looked," said the man, "very horrible after it."

"Arter what?' said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.

"After he was killed."

"Killed? Who killed him?"

Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and Riderhood emptied it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his visitor.

Commentary:

James Mahoney's twenty-seventh illustration for Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Household Edition (New York), 1875. The Harper and Brothers woodcut for twelfth chapter, "More Birds of Prey," in the second book, "Birds of a Feather," concerns the visit of the mysterious sailor to the rooming-house and pawn shop run by Pleasant Riderhood and her father, the Thames waterman of scurrilous character, Rogue, at Limehouse Hole, east of the metropolis. Coolly, the bearded stranger who refuses to give his name accuses Rogue of having lied to the authorities about Gaffer Hexam's role in the murder of John Harmon, recently returned from the east. Using intimidation and innuendo, the sailor compels Rogue Riderhood to agree to sign an affidavit attesting to Gaffer's innocence. Who is this sailor who seems to have murdered Rogue's confederate, George Radfoot, and is now threatening Pleasant? Afterwards, in the street, the stranger removes his disguise to reveal himself as none other than the mild-mannered private secretary John Rokesmith. Such disguises and blending of upper-middle-class and low life, of murder and intrigue and deception, are characteristics of the new subgenre of the period, the Sensation Novel, initiated by Wilkie Collins with The Woman in White (1860).

Despite the fact that it was his visual antecedent, Mahoney's 1875 treatment of the trio and setting of the scene does not much resemble that of Marcus Stone, Dickens's original serial and volume illustrator, in Miss Riderhood at Home, the first illustration for the January, 1865, the ninth monthly part in the British serialization. And whereas American illustrator Sol Eytinge, Jr. in the 1867 Diamond Edition sequence chose to depict the stormy relationship between Pleasant and her abusive father in Rogue Riderhood and Miss Pleasant at Home, James Mahoney has elected to avoid mere characterization in favor of capturing the Riderhoods in the midst of their confrontation with the disguised Rokesmith. Although his style and treatment are not as elegant as the photogravure frontispiece by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, Riderhood Checkmated in 1866, the Mahoney illustration of the next decade achieves a certain verisimilitude in the crazed window, battered table, and assorted clothing hanging behind the trio; moreover, Mahoney (unlike Darley) realized that Rogue should not be wearing the clothing of a merchant-seaman. The moment Stone realizes is somewhat earlier, for Rogue has not yet arrived home, whereas Mahoney has chosen the moment when tensions between the two men are about to reached the breaking point that Darley depicted, leaving the reader to wonder how Riderhood will react to seeing his friend's knife in another's hands.

The scene in other illustrators' interpretations except Harry Furniss's is also within the kitchen-parlor-and-pawnbroker's shop of Pleasant Riderhood's lodging house in Limehouse. The clothing hanging in the background (not evident in the front window of the shop in the Furniss illustration) are items of apparel pawned by sailors down on their luck. While Rogue Riderhood, a waterman who scavenges the Thames, has been momentarily out of the shop, John Harmon (that is to say, the supposedly murdered "John Rokesmith," disguised as a sailor) subsequent to the Furniss illustration strikes up a conversation with the proprietress and begins to question her. As in the original monthly part illustration (January 1865) by Marcus Stone, in the 1866 interpretation by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, she is still endeavoring to put up her hair — evidently in preparation for ironing. The bearded stranger seen lounging across the street in the Furniss illustration in these other illustrations has entered the business and is interrogating either Pleasant (in Miss Riderhood at Home, for instance) or her father, as in Darley's Riderhood Checkmated. In an odd twist on the usual detective story plot, the murdered man is playing detective to uncover the circumstances surrounding the murder; here, he is leveraging what evidence he has against Riderhood to compel the dishonest waterman to exonerate his fellow waterman, Gaffer Hexam, of any implication that he murdered a recently arrived passenger whose body was found in Thames.

The meaning of situation in the Mahoney illustration should be apparent to any reader of this volume of The Household Edition since the illustrator has provided an ample caption and reader will have encountered the passage realized on the very same page. Moreover, a simultaneous reading of illustration and text encourages the reader to check details in the illustration against the text. What is happening is reasonably clear: John Rokesmith, disguised with a beard and wearing the peacoat of a merchant-seaman, is casually extending the bottle of spirits (one might assume rum) across the table in order to pour his interlocutor a measure; however, exactly as in the text, Riderhood has suddenly turned his glass "upside down upon the table". Pleasant, little interested, is shown "occupying a stool between the latter [Rokesmith] and the fireside" as suggested by the hearthstone beside her feet, and Riderhood has taken the glass without a foot — all of which details indicate that Mahoney has read the passage with great care. The focus of the illustration, however, is not the disguised Rokesmith, but the cunning Riderhood, who strongly suspects his visitor as harboring less than congenial intentions.

In contrast to the subtlety of Darley's engraving, Mahoney utilizes the bold lines of the composite wood-engraving medium to establish a sinister mood — in Furniss's illustration, the dark lines establish the baleful atmosphere of The Hole, Limehouse. As both J. A. Hammerton and Frederic G. Kitton have noted, the original illustration by Marcus Stone, who worked closely with Dickens, bears the stamp of authorial intention, influencing later illustrators as an adjunct to the original text. Conversations with and detailed notes from the novelist gave young Stone direct access to what he himself termed Dickens's "pictorialism" (Kitton, 197), that is, an innate sense of what in in a text will be most suitable as an illustration. However, Mahoney seems to have reacted against Stone's Miss Riderhood at Home by dramatizing a moment of danger.

As opposed to the static illustrations of Stone and Furniss, those of Eytinge, Darley, and Mahoney capture the characters in the midst of action, a moment of tableau, with the volatile Riderhood as the most active figure in the scene. In the Eytinge engraving, Riderhood holds aloft a boot and is about to strike his daughter; in Mahoney, he is suddenly alerted to the danger that the stranger may pose; and in Darley's photogravure, Riderhood, rises suddenly, when accused of lying to the lawyer about the murder, "as though he would fling his glass in the man's face" when the stranger calls him a liar. Rokesmith in Mahoney's illustration projects an impression of calm self-control, as if he has already calculated what Riderhood's response will be.

"More Dead Than Alive"

Book 2 Chapter 13

Marcus Stone

Commentary:

Dickens and his illustrator now provide a flashback that explains how John Harmon exchanged identities with George Radfoot after being drugged at "a low public-house" immediately adjacent to the Thames. His assailants dumped his almost comatose body down a chute into the murky and chilly waters of the river, in which he returned to consciousness and struggled for his life, and finally caught hold of a causeway attached to a riverside public house. This, then, is the moment upon which Marcus Stone has elaborated, the dramatic moment at which Harmon crawled ashore:

'Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but I don't know how long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in, drunk, when I crept to the public-house it belonged to; for I had no notion where I was, and could not articulate — through the poison that had made me insensible having affected my speech — and I supposed the night to be the previous night, as it was still dark and raining. But I had lost twenty-four hours.

In Stone's illustration he offers the reader his construction of Harmon's crawling, soaking wet, across planking (hardly a "causeway") towards the shore, as the driving rain, reiterated in the text as the dominating feature of the fateful night, largely obscures the backdrop; whereas Dickens specifically mentions a moored boat nearby, Stone gives us only pylons, rendering the whole scene bleak and inhospitable. And yet Harmon has survived this Darwinian experience, and, reborn as it were, will be all the stronger for it. The illustration is strongly impressionist, not realizing the text so much as using it as a point of departure, putting the reader through the protagonist's near-death experience by engulfing the reader in the pelting rain and darkness, Harmon's body almost a wet sack rather than recognizable as a human form.

John Harmon

Book 2 Chapter 13

Sol Eytinge Jr.

1870 Household Edition

Commentary:

Sol Eytinge, Ticknor-Fields' house illustrator, had a distinct advantage of Dickens's original illustrator for the 19-part novel, Marcus Stone: he, unlike Stone, had read the entire text beforehand, and therefore already knew the plot secret surrounding the supposed murder of John Harmon before he received the Boston publisher's commission. Although presumed drowned in the Thames after being thrown overboard from his vessel as it was returning from South Africa, Harmon assumes such identities as Julius Handford and John Rokesmith in order to win Bella Wilfer as a modest bourgeois rather than a millionaire. Thus, Eytinge would have appreciated the fact that Stone very rarely depicts John Harmon (in any one of his identities) until Stone's "Mrs. Boffin discovers an Orphan" (Sept., 1864), in which he appears as the shadowy John Rokesmith behind Mrs. Boffin when she visits Betty Higden's cottage. Eytinge has waited to depict John Harmon until late in the narrative-pictorial sequence; moreover, while Eytinge has typically depicted pairs of characters associated with one another, he has elected to foreground Harmon and show Bella in the background — but then Harmon/ Rokesmith/Handford is a multi-faceted character.

Arriving at the [Boffins'] house, he found that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were out, but that Miss Wilfer was in the drawing-room Miss Wilfer had remained at home, in consequence of not feeling very well, and had inquired in the evening if Mr. Rokesmith were in his room.

Although Eytinge defines by his setting and pose of the character no particular moment, the passage suggested by his picture is conditioned by the presence of a young woman in the next room, apparently sewing, an activity suggested to the American illustrator by the phrase "her book and her work", in Harmon's eyes "a Home Goddess" consistent with the notions about the respectable, middle-class chatelaine that Coventry Patmore would subsequently articulate in the long narrative poem The Angel in the House (first published in 1854, and expanded in 1862).

At this point in chapter 13, "a Solo and a Duett," the secretary accedes to Miss Wilfer's suggestion (presumably delivered by a servant) that he come up to the parlor. Eytinge imagines Harmon in the hall, outside the drawing-room, contemplating how his father had willed that he should marry her, regardless of the feelings of either his son or the young woman:

Oh, she looked very pretty, she looked very, very pretty! If the father of the late John Harmon had but left his money unconditionally to his son, and if his son had but lighted on this loveable girl for himself, and had the happiness to make her loving as well as loveable!

"Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway"

Book 2 Chapter 13

J. Mahoney

Household Edition 1875

Text Illustrated:

"It was only after a downward slide through something like a tube, and then a great noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the consciousness came upon me, 'This is John Harmon drowning! John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on Heaven and save yourself!' I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy horrid unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there alone in the water.

"I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drowsiness, and driving fast with the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw the lights racing past me on the two banks of the river, as if they were eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide was running down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When, guiding myself safely with Heaven's assistance before the fierce set of the water, I at last caught at a boat moored, one of a tier of boats at a causeway, I was sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the other side.

"Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but I don't know how long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in, drunk, when I crept to the public-house it belonged to; for I had no notion where I was, and could not articulate — through the poison that had made me insensible having affected my speech — and I supposed the night to be the previous night, as it was still dark and raining. But I had lost twenty-four hours."

Commentary:

James Mahoney's twenty-eighth illustration for Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Household Edition (New York), 1875. The Harper and Brothers woodcut for thirteenth chapter, "A Solo and a Duet," in the second book, "Birds of a Feather," realizes the moment in John Harmon's interior narrative flashback when, having been drugged or poisoned and dumped into the Thames, he regains consciousness and crawls ashore. Having visited Rogue and Pleasant Riderhood at Limehouse Hole disguised as a merchant sailor, Harmon begins to recognize his surroundings and reconstruct his experiences on that fateful night. The young sailor (who so much resembled him) whom he took into his confidence on the return voyage to England, George Radfoot, had conspired with Riderhood to poison Harmon and steal his belongings. After Harmon emerges from the water, he decides to assume a new identity: "John Rokesmith." Such disguises and blending of upper-middle-class and low life, of murder and intrigue and deception, are characteristics of the new subgenre of the period, the​ ​ Sensation Novel, initiated by Wilkie Collins with The Woman in White (1860). In an odd twist on the usual detective story plot, the murdered man is playing detective to uncover the circumstances surrounding his own murder. Here, the victim of the crime plays detective to determine the relative guilt of the various participants as he has just leveraged what evidence he has against Riderhood to compel the dishonest waterman to exonerate Gaffer Hexam. In this model of the Darwinian struggle for survival, the individual comes up from the water to shed his former identity and adopt a new one​ — and perhaps become a more evolved being spiritually and psychologically.

Despite the fact that it was his visual antecedent, Mahoney's 1875 treatment of the resurrection scene is more realistic and less impressionistic than that by Dickens's original serial and volume illustrator Marcus Stone, in More Dead than Alive, the second illustration for the January, 1865, the ninth monthly part in the British serialization. And, although they had access to the Stone series, American illustrators Sol Eytinge, Jr. (1867) and Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1866) chose to depict earlier scenes at Limehouse Hole and did not focus on John Harmon's interior narrative. Thus, one should examine the 1875 composite wood-engraving by James Mahoney only in terms of the dark plate that served as his model for his own​dark plate with vigorous cross-hatching and fine diagonally ruled lines in imitation of driving rain from upper left to lower right, as if penetrating the struggling victim of conspiracy.

Although Percy Muir contends that dark plates, whether on copper, steel, or boxwood, are never wholly successful because they are striving to attain an effect that only a mezzotint can achieve, both Stone and Mahoney​ use such an illustration to​conveying a sense of the horrible, near-death experience that Harmon​re-lives after exiting the Riderhoods' leaving-shop.

A great deal has been made of the so-called dark plates in these books [i. e., Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities]. The fact is that they were neither entirely new nor entirely successful. What Browne ['Phiz'] tried to do with the dark plates was to produce the effect of mezzo tinting on an etched plate. It is usually a mistake to attempt to imitate one medium in a different technique and this was no exception to the rule. The effect was produced by having a background of fine, closely spaced lines mechanically ruled all over the plates, and then, by elaborate methods of burnishing the high-lights and stopping out the shadows, to increase the contrasts. The result when seen at its best, as in 'On The Dark Road' in Dombey, is not ineffective, but at its worst, as in 'The Mourning' [sic] in Bleak House, is a rather nasty mess.

Although Muir dismisses Stone's series as "totally undistinguished" and does not​ ​ consider the Household Edition illustrations,​ More Dead than Alive is one of Stone's most psychologically penetrating realizations of Dickens's text, as the​ ​ murkiness of the scene, suggestive to modern reader of Film Noir, brilliantly​ ​ reduces the figure of the protagonist to the bare essentials in his struggle to cling to life. Stone offers the reader his construction of the emotional content of Harmon's​ ​ fragmentary recollection of crawling, soaking wet, across planking (hardly a​"causeway") towards the shore, as the driving rain, reiterated in the text as the​dominating feature of the fateful night, largely obscures the backdrop; whereas​Dickens specifically mentions a moored boat nearby, Stone gives us only pylons,​rendering the whole scene bleak and inhospitable. The illustration is strongly impressionistic, not realizing the text so much as using it as a point of departure, putting the reader through the protagonist's near-death experience by engulfing the reader in the pelting rain and darkness, Harmon's body almost a wet sack rather than recognizable as a human form, in contrast to Mahoney's clearly apprehended figure.

Mahoney's re-interpretation of the same ​illustration to realize the same textual moment includes a clearly​seen foreground, with Harmon, the causeway (at best, a ruined boat-ramp), and a derelict anchor that reinforces the victim's gripping the rocks with his right hand​as he blindly gropes for a further hold with his left. In the middle-ground, not​quite as sharp, is the Thames-side public house into which Harmon will eventually​stumble. Then, in imitation of the out-of-focus backgrounds of early photographs,​Mahoney has sketched in an indistinct pair of boat prows, London Bridge, and​warehouses. The eye begins with the pathetic figure, is drawn towards the public-house (right), then moves into the murky distance, across the bridge to the boats, and thence back to the prostrate figure. Whereas Stone achieved his desired effect through indistinctness, underscoring the bone-chilling rain that represents nature's relentless powers of destruction, Mahoney conveys a sure sense of Harmon's determined, Darwinian struggle, intensifying the reader's identification with the protagonist.

Kim wrote: "I have spent an amazing amount of time this evening being told I can't post anything in our club because I'm not a member. When I attempted to just go to my profile page I was told I didn't have th..."

The site problems seem to coincide with the unraveling of a mystery in Chapter 13.

Hmmm.

Kim wrote: ""Miss Riderhood at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Marcus Stone

Commentary:

Stone's illustration for Book 2, Chapter 12, "More Birds of Prey," makes an interesting basis for comparison with the far les..."

Kim

I am glad that Goodreads considers you do exist, if only for a short time. I even gladder that you post all these delightful illustrations and their commentaries. :-)

The hair. The hair! How could I have missed the hair? Both Pleasant Riderhood and Jenny Wren are clearly distinguished by their hair. Pleasant's hair is dark and unruly. She constantly is fussing and fixing it up. On the other hand, Jenny's hair is blond and luxurious. Lizzie spends time combing and grooming it when Jenny lets it down. I've got to put my thinking cap on to figure out possible meanings. ... and then we have the strange attentions Bella has for fixing and combing her father's hair.

What could the meaning be?

Kim wrote: ""Rogue Riderhood and Miss Pleasant at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Sol Eytinge Jr.

1870 Household Edition

Commentary:

This illustration for "More Birds of Prey" continues the narrative-pictorial se..."

Sol Eytinge's illustrations, when compared to the others, seem thin, lack mood and emotion, and the characters are less fully and finely developed and presented. They are not, in my opinion, in the same league as the others.

Kim wrote: ""Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway"

Book 2 Chapter 13

J. Mahoney

Household Edition 1875

Text Ill..."

The Marcus Stone and J Mahoney illustrations of Harmon crawling out of the Thames were my favourites. Both were evocative and moody, both were able to capture the idea that Harmon was virtually crawling out of a watery grave, and both reminded me of the Phiz dark plates.

The mention in the commentary that it was as if Harmon was reborn when he emerged from the water was very effective as well. With the mention of the Thames and Harmon's near death we are again reminded of how important the Thames is to the novel.

Peter wrote: "The hair. The hair!"

Yes! I just picked up on the hair motif, as well, Peter. Don't forget Twemlow's egg treatment. Lots of hair in this book.

Peter wrote: "Sol Eytinge's illustrations... seem thin, lack mood and emotion, and the characters are less fully and finely developed and presented. They are not, in my opinion, in the same league as the others"

He's given us yet another "bad guy" who looks like he should have bolts in his neck. Eytinge's vision seems to be somewhat limited.

Mary Lou wrote: "Peter wrote: "The hair. The hair!"

Yes! I just picked up on the hair motif, as well, Peter. Don't forget Twemlow's egg treatment. Lots of hair in this book."

Mary Lou

Thanks.

How could I forget the "The Tremlow Treatment." I have egg on my face.

Kim wrote: ""Miss Riderhood at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Marcus Stone

Commentary:

Stone's illustration for Book 2, Chapter 12, "More Birds of Prey," makes an interesting basis for comparison with the far les..."

The visit of Harmon/Rokesmith to Pleasant's shop/rooming house has reminded me of the trope of disguises that runs through the novel.

As a reader we must be careful how we interpret each of these personas. We have touched upon it before but consider the number of frames we must look through.

Harmon disguises himself as a sailor. This sailor is robbed and almost dies. He re-emerges from the Thames, thus symbolically baptized and reborn, and becomes for a short time a man named Julius Handford. Handford becomes Rokesmith who then assumes the role of a vagrant sailor who turns out to be John Harmon.

Tristram wrote: "Then, unfortunately, Rokesmith begins to speak, or think aloud, like an actor in some mediocre melodrama, or a singer in an opera, who is stabbed by a sword and then spends the next fifteen minutes singing that he is going to die with his friends around him listening instead of fetching a surgeon. All this usually goes against the grain with me, and it did so this time,..."

I found Dickens' handling of this very heavy-handed, as well, and was disappointed. I am reluctant to criticize Mr. Dickens, but you would think, at this point in his career, that he could have found a stronger, smoother way to introduce this flashback than an extended soliloquy. It is surprising to have this mystery cleared up so soon, but I can only surmise that there are fresh complications awaiting us around the bend.

It is possible that Dickens was responding to 19c readers' complaints about there being no plot. In one chapter, the Harmon inheritance is shown to drive the story.

My guess is he wanted to make the backstory plain, quickly, without adding anything. I was relieved to read an explanation.

Tristram wrote: "Hello Fellow-Curiosities,

Since I won't be near a computer tomorrow, I'm going to post the new threads today. This week’s instalment does a bit more to connect some of the characters and work out ..."

Watching a lot of movies (esp. westerns and films noirs), I am very sensitive to the use of shadows and found this little detail quite disturbing for it presents Bradley almost in the role of a villain.
You've touched on something here. The shadow preceding the being when entering a room does send an ominous message, it also got me thinking about Bradley Headstone's last name...A headstone...A parallel to a tombstone, perhaps? Death is clearly around the corner, who death decides to visit remains to be seen. It could also be another example of everything is not as it appears...A cool countenance he may inhabit, but the blood boils red underneath.

Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him a constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of what was animal, and of what was fiery (though smouldering), still visible in him...(498)

Chapter 13, which is called “A Solo and a Duett”, disappointed me a little because it unravels the mystery of John Harmon – when we are only halfway into the novel. I immediately asked myself why Dickens would have done that and how he is going to maintain the reader’s interest.
I felt the same about this chapter as you did, revealing three different identities for one character with 50% of the novel left to read had me puzzled. The posts in a previous thread about false facades/hiding/disguise came to mind as well because these characteristics have surfaced in various manners, yet, we now have one character who is playing three different characters (I say playing three because I'm not in a place to delineate John Harmon from Rokesmith or Julius H.)...He must be exhausted, don't you think?

Ami wrote: "Tristram wrote: "Hello Fellow-Curiosities,

Since I won't be near a computer tomorrow, I'm going to post the new threads today. This week’s instalment does a bit more to connect some of the charact..."


Ami

Headstone - tombstone. Casting shadows. We are certainly in the world of Western noir movies. Headstone is a strange character to be sure and the word "smouldering" is a perfect word in context.

I liked the way you characterized Harmon as being exhausted. It will be interesting to see how long Dickens has him in multiple roles.

I'm not that puzzled with the early reveal by Dickens of Harmon to the reader. I think it will give Dickens the opportunity to develop the other characters as they rub against, grate, or compliment his presence. In terms of plot we will get to see how Harmon will play the game of chess with the other characters. Will he manipulate many people directly, or let chance, history and perhaps fate dominate the future of others, and, by implication, himself?

I find the structure of the novel now more interesting as we have two hands that are controlling the story. We have the hand of Dickens who is, of course, the ultimate control, but now we also have a secondary character in a position to effect the story going forward. How this situation will unfold is yet to be seen but it will be interesting to track how Dickens incorporates this style.

Peter wrote: "Mary Lou wrote: "Peter wrote: "The hair. The hair!"

Yes! I just picked up on the hair motif, as well, Peter. Don't forget Twemlow's egg treatment. Lots of hair in this book."

Mary Lou

Thanks.

H..."

Peter wrote: "Kim wrote: ""Miss Riderhood at Home"

Book 2 Chapter 12

Marcus Stone

Commentary:

Stone's illustration for Book 2, Chapter 12, "More Birds of Prey," makes an interesting basis for comparison with..."

If you recall in Chapter 2, the role of hair is quite telling in the dinner scene when we meet the Veneering for the first time, observing through the looking glass

The great looking-glass above the sideboard, reflects the table and the company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel of all work. The Heralds’ College found out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield (or might have done it if he had thought of it), and a caravan of camels take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and kneel down be loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy—a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs Veneering; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a corner of her husband’s veil is over herself. Reflects Podsnap; prosperously feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one on either side of his else bald head, looking as like his hairbrushes as his hair, dissolving view of red beads on his forehead, large allowance of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects Mrs Podsnap; fine woman for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress in which Podsnap has hung golden offerings. Reflects Twemlow; grey, dry, polite, susceptible to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn in as if he had made a great effort to retire into himself some years ago, and had got so far and had never got any farther. Reflects mature young lady; raven locks, and complexion that lights up well when well powdered—as it is—carrying on considerably in the captivation of mature young gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering’s right; with an immense obtuse drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patronized.
... (10-11)

. Hair flows as rampant as the dust from the dust piles all over London!

The Twemlow Treatment
LOL! Oh, how funny was this! SMH!

P.S. "Hair," is mentioned 47X in this thread. :P

Melodrama & Chapter 13
while I see areas of opportunity with this chapter as far as timing, I do understand at the near half way mark, that this is a penultimate moment for us as readers. This being said, I thought the drama associated with Dickens's unraveling of Rokesmith/Julius H./John Harmon was fitting. Sensational, yes, but I think we've grown to expect these types of theatrical flares knowing the influence Wilkie Collins and Dickens had on one another...Yes, no?

Ami wrote: "Peter wrote: "Mary Lou wrote: "Peter wrote: "The hair. The hair!"

Yes! I just picked up on the hair motif, as well, Peter. Don't forget Twemlow's egg treatment. Lots of hair in this book."

Mary L..."

Ami

The more we look, the more that is uncovered. Thanks for this additional update on hair.

At times, I think that Dickens's reference to objects such as birds and now hair are little more than haphazard and casual events, but then I think "no, there has to be something else going on, something that Dickens was very methodical and conscious about creating." If nothing else, I think Dickens was an expert on associative terminology. We need look no further than most characters' names to see Dickens obvious skill in that sphere of writing.

It will be interesting to watch how Dickens continues to style his hair references. :-))

Some of the other names Dickens was considering for Bradley Headstone were;

Amos Headstone
Amos Deadstone
and Bradley Deadstone

Mary Lou wrote: "Which brings me to another motif in OMF - that of daughters who parent their fathers. "

Good observation. I hadn't linked those.

Tristram wrote: "Chapter 13, which is called “A Solo and a Duett”, disappointed me a little because it unravels the mystery of John Harmon – when we are only halfway into the novel. I immediately asked myself why D..."

I agree completely with you as to disliking this chapter and Dickens's strange decision to unravel this mystery here. It makes one of the few sort-of interesting sort-of plots go away. The deeper into this book I get the more time I spend putting this aside and reading other books, so that I'm now several weeks behind and not all that excited about catching up. (I'm okay in that I'm also listening to OMF as my in-bed listening books (by bedtime my eyes have given out for the day so I have had to substitute listening for my bedtime reading), and our reading is slow enough that I'm able to keep ahead in my listening, even if I drift off from time to time. But I should be reading also, but somehow am losing my enthusiasm for OMF and finding keeping up more a chore than a pleasure.

And, back to the point, this chapter is one I found very unenjoyable both reading AND listening to.

Everyman wrote: "Tristram wrote: "Chapter 13, which is called “A Solo and a Duett”, disappointed me a little because it unravels the mystery of John Harmon – when we are only halfway into the novel. I immediately a..."

I must admit, and feel compelled to say with my reading up to this point (and never having read one sentence previously from this book), if the name Dickens was not attached to it, we would not be reading it today.

Perhaps my previous enchantment with Great Expectations has in part created my sourness about OMF.

Everyman wrote: "Tristram wrote: "Chapter 13, which is called “A Solo and a Duett”, disappointed me a little because it unravels the mystery of John Harmon – when we are only halfway into the novel. I immediately a..."


This may prove to be difficult in a re-read, which is what I think you may be doing having noticed your 5star rating ... How long ago is it that you rated OMF, Everyman?

Chime in when you are willing and able, we'll see you at the finish line at some point! :)

Kim - "When I attempted to just go to my profile page I was told I didn't have the authority to do so, or something like that, I should "friend" myself first."

I had the same thought as Peter about the "mystery" of this! Clearly Goodreads thinks you are a duplicitous character, with another persona, since the Dickens novels we read are full of them :D

I must admit to quite enjoying the "soliloquy" chapter myself, though it is quite unusual for Dickens, isn't it? I think we still have plenty of plot threads to be going on with, and in a way this clarifies the position, so the sheer weight of characters does not confuse the reader too much. Until now, it wasn't really clear, I don't think, whether or not "John Rokesmith" was up to no good, or whether he might be one of the very few good (ie moral) characters.

Now we see someone fighting with their conscience, and I'll be much more interested to see whether he can stick to his principles, which seem impossibly high-minded, or whether events transpire to make it unnecessary. We seem to have been guided by this sudden change to immediately put this character at the top of our "which is the main plot?" list.

Kim wrote: "Some of the other names Dickens was considering for Bradley Headstone were;

Amos Headstone
Amos Deadstone
and Bradley Deadstone"

Oh dear, "Deadstone" is very heavy-handed and I am glad Dickens abstained from using it because among speaking names, this is a yelling name.

"Headstone" is a great name, meaning both gravestone and stubbornness - I agree with you, Tristram, that "Deadstone" would be a bit much - although, having said that, the rather similar "Murdstone" in David Copperfield is perfect for that character.