17. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 653-738

Chapter 73 through Chapter the Last

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The riots are over, and Dickens sums up the death and destruction: "Upwards of two hundred had been shot dead in the streets. Two hundred and fifty more were lying, badly wounded, in the hospitals; of whom seventy or eighty died within a short time afterwards.... How many perished in the conflagrations, or by their own excesses, is unknown.... Seventy-two private houses and four strong jails were destroyed in the four great days of these riots." And so on. (The note points out that Dickens's figures are unreliable, and in the case of financial estimates, his numbers are inconsistent; more recent research also suggests that less than half that number of houses were destroyed.)

Barnaby is visited in his cell by his mother, and Grip is there to keep him company. (Grip's whereabouts at any given time, except when Dickens needs him to make a point, are a mystery. Did Barnaby carry him when he was marched off by the soldiers? A similar mystery attends the whereabouts of Miggs, whose departure from their place of captivity is not accounted for. Did she accompany the Vardens to the Black Lion? Did she stay to plague the gravely wounded Sim? She now disappears until the novel's end.) When Barnaby asks, "who cares for Grip?" the raven's reply is "Nobody," an exchange repeated twice, and a reminder that Grip was the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's "Nevermore"-croaking raven.

"Will they take his life as well as mine?" said Barnaby. "I wish they would. If you and I and he could die together, there would be none to feel sorry, or to grieve for us. But do what they will, I don't fear them, mother!" 

He also asks why his mother shushed him when he mentioned his father, and she tells him, "the endeavour of my life has been to keep you two asunder.... The time has come when you must know it. He has shed the blood of one who loved him well, and trusted him, and never did him wrong in word or deed." Barnaby, whose fear of blood has been established, shudders and hides his bloodstain birthmark. She goes on to caution him, "Do not seem to know him, except as one who fled with you from the jail, and if they question you about him, do not answer them."

She leaves Barnaby because visitors are being told to go, but she decides to pay a last visit to her husband. She tells him that Barnaby is also in the prison, but he is indifferent to the fact: "He can no more aid me than I can aid him." She retorts that Barnaby was "brought here by your guilt; ... for he has been led astray in the darkness of his intellect, and that is the terrible consequence of your crime." (She seems to blame Barnaby's mental retardation -- if that's what it is -- on Rudge's crime, which he confessed to her during her pregnancy.) She urges him to pray for God's forgiveness, but instead he curses her and Barnaby.

Elsewhere, justice is being meted out, though unequally: "the timorous Lord Mayor, who was summoned that night before the Privy Council to answer for his conduct, came back contented; observing to all his friends that he had got off very well with a reprimand." Lord George Gordon has been sent to the Tower, charged with High Treason.

Dennis is in jail, but he remains sure that his previous work as hangman will be taken into consideration and "relieve him from the consequences of his late proceedings, and would certainly restore him to his old place in the happy social system." But when he is moved to Newgate, "where some of the ruined cells had been hastily fitted up for the safe keeping of rioters," he finds to his terror that he is forced to share a cell with the man he betrayed: Hugh.

 

Hugh is asleep when Dennis enters, and the frightened hangman cowers behind a chair until he awakes. When Hugh recognizes him, he grabs Dennis by the collar and shakes him as Dennis tries to claim that he was forced to betray him, or he would be shot, "and what a sight that would have been -- a fine young man like you!" He tries to persuade Hugh that they won't be convicted, and even if they are, hanging isn't so bad: "when it's well done, it's so neat, so skilful, so captiwating, if that don't seem too strong a word, that you'd hardly believe it could be brought to sich perfection." 

Hugh calms down, and accepts his fate: "I'd as soon die as live, or live as die. Why should I trouble myself to have revenge on you? To eat, and drink, and go to sleep, as long as I stay here, is all I care for.... That's all the care I have for myself. Why should I care for you?" Dennis suggests that Hugh should call on his friends and relations, but Hugh scoffs at that: "He talks of friends to me -- talks of relations to a man whose mother died the death in store for her son." Dennis is startled to hear this, and says, "you don't mean to say --." Hugh replies, "I mean to say ... that they hung her up at Tyburn." Dennis wants to hear more about this, but Hugh wants to go back to sleep. 

A month later, Sir John Chester is having his breakfast in bed and savoring the news that Hugh, Dennis and Barnaby have been sentenced to death. He notes that Barnaby would have been pardoned except for the testimony of the Lord Mayor's brother, who affirmed that Barnaby "was sane, and had, to his knowledge, wandered about the country with a vagabond parent, avowing revolutionary and rebellious sentiments." The Lord Mayor's brother is, of course, the "genuine John Bull" who had wanted to buy Grip after being entertained by him when Barnaby and Mrs. Rudge were on the road to London. "Grip little thought how much he had to answer for." Sir John is also entertained by the thought that Hugh "would make a very handsome preparation in Surgeons' Hall." (Executed criminals were turned over to the surgeons for dissection.) 

Sir John's breakfast is interrupted by a visit from Gabriel Varden, who tells him that he has just come from Newgate. This sends Sir John into a brief fit because Newgate is full of "jail-fevers, and ragged people, and bare-footed men and women, and a thousand horrors!" He orders Peak, his servant, to disinfect Gabriel and his surroundings with camphor. But once this is done, Sir John resumes his pleasant attitude. 

Gabriel informs Sir John that he was sent there by Dennis, who has some information for him. Upon learning that Hugh's mother was hanged, Dennis realized that he had been the executioner, and that the woman, a gipsy, had talked with him before her death, vowing, "If I had a dagger within these fingers and he was within my each, I would strike him dead before me, even now." Dennis asked who, and she said she meant the father of her boy. 

He asked her where it was, its name, and whether she had any wish respecting it. She had but one, she said. It was that the boy might live and grow, in utter ignorance of his father, so that no arts might teach him to be gentle and forgiving. When he became a man, she trusted to the God of their tribe to bring the father and son together, and revenge her through her child.

He learned no more from the woman, but years later a gipsy man was sentenced to death, and while he was in prison carved the likeness of Dennis on a stick, which he gave to the hangman. The gipsy told Dennis that he had know the woman who was hanged, and that she had been seduced and abandoned by "a fine gentleman," and was outcast from her tribe. He "told him, too, her real name, which only her own people and the gentleman for whose sake she had left them, knew. -- That name he will tell again, Sir John, to none but you." 

Gabriel now confronts Sir John with the assertion "that you believe this doomed man, Hugh, to be your son." Sir John lightly scoffs at the idea, but Gabriel tells him, "in a fantastic pattern on the stick, he had carved some letters, and when the hangman asked it, he bade him, especially if he should ever meet with her son in after life, remember that place well." The place is Chester. Sir John maintains his composure as Gabriel tells him that if he wants confirmation of the gipsy's revelation to Dennis, he must visit the hangman in his prison cell. And he notes that whereas Sir John remains estranged from his legitimate son, Edward, he still has years left in which to reconcile with him, whereas he has only a few hours left to make his peace with Hugh. 

Sir John dismisses Gabriel's revelations and recommendations with his usual airiness, but after Gabriel leaves, "the smile gave place to a haggard and anxious expression, like that of a weary actor jaded by the performance of a difficult part." (The simile comes naturally to the theater-loving Dickens.) But the anxious mood passes quickly. He consoles himself that he gave Hugh "very good advice. I told him he would certainly be hanged. I could have done no more if I had known of our relationship; and there are a great many fathers who have never done as much for their natural children." 

As Gabriel walks away, the clock strikes twelve, which he knows is the time when Rudge's execution was scheduled. Haredale was there to witness, and Gabriel now goes to meet him. His thoughts turn to tomorrow's executions, and his hope that he can still save Barnaby. "Barnaby was to die," Dickens now writes, and over the next two paragraphs repeats the phrase three more times, as a death-knell. (And as a sign to the sophisticated reader that Barnaby will do no such thing.)  

Mrs. Rudge is at the prison with her son. Dennis and Hugh are on the other side of the courtyard from them, Hugh taking the events as they come, Dennis gibbering in terror. "Hugh's was the dogged desperation of a savage at the stake; the hangman was reduced to a condition little better, if any, than that of a hound with the halter round his neck." When Mrs. Rudge has to leave, she sends Barnaby for her bible, but the guards take her away before he returns. 

Dickens then describes the preparations for the executions, including the building of the gallows and the gathering of the crowds who are eager to witness. "A fairer morning never shone" on the day for the executions. Hugh and Dennis are to be hanged at Newgate, but Barnaby's execution is to take place in Bloomsbury Square. The clergyman who tries to pray with Hugh pronounces him "incorrigible," which Hugh admits he is: "Be no hypocrite, master! You make a merry-making of this, every month; let me be merry, too. If you want a frightened fellow there's one that'll suit you. Try your hand upon him." He means Dennis, of course, "who trembled so, that all his joints and limbs seemed racked by spasms." Barnaby is cheerfully resigned to his death. "The law had declared it so, and so it must be. The good minister had been greatly shocked, not a quarter of an hour before, at his parting with Grip. For one in his condition, to fondle a bird!" 

When called to have his shackles struck off, Hugh "passed out with the gait of a lion." Dennis, of course, has to be dragged out. He begs the prison attendants to check to see if his pardon is on the way, and he reminds them of his "service" as hangman -- maybe they've forgotten about it. But someone says, "since it may possibly produce in this unhappy man a better frame of mind, ... let me assure him that he was well known to have been the hangman, when his sentence was considered." He even pleads to be sent to Bloomsbury Square instead of Barnaby, just to buy a little more time. 

As the bell begins to toll twelve o'clock, Hugh is asked if he has any last words. At first he says no, and then he sees Barnaby. 

There was, for the moment, something kind, and even tender, struggling in his fierce aspect, as he wrong his poor companion by the hand. 

"I'll say this," he cried, looking firmly round, "that if I had ten lives to lose, and the loss of each would give me ten times the agony of the hardest death, I'd lay them all down -- ay, I would, though you gentlemen may not believe it -- to save this one. This one," he added, wringing [Barnaby's] hand again, "that will be lost through me."

....

"You see what I am -- more brute than man, as I have been often told -- but I had faith enough to believe, and did believe as strongly as any of you gentlemen can believe anything, that this one life would be spared. See what he is! -- Look at him!"

....

"What else should teach me -- me, born as I was born, and reared as I have been reared -- to hope for any mercy in this hardened, cruel, unrelenting place! Upon these human shambles, I, who never raised this hand in prayer till now, call down the wrath of God! On that black tree, of which I am the ripened fruit, I do invoke the curse of all its victims, past, and present, and to come. On the head of that man, who, in his conscience, owns me for his son, I leave the wish that he may never sicken on his bed of down, but die a violent death as I do now, and have the night-wind for his only mourner. To this I say, Amen, amen!"

His last gesture is to say that if anyone wants a dog, they'll find his "at the house I came from, and it wouldn't be easy to find a better. He'll whine at first, but he'll soon get over that. -- You wonder that I think about a dog just now.... If any man deserved it of me half as well, I'd think of him." He goes out to his execution, and Dennis is carried out after him, "and the crowd beheld the rest." 

Barnaby is taken out to the cart that will transport him to Bloomsbury Square, and he avoids looking at where Hugh and Dennis are hanging. Dickens then notes that two crippled boys were hanged at Bloomsbury Square, opposite the ruins of Lord Mansfield's house, and enumerates hangings of other boys and women that day. "In a word, those who suffered as rioters were, for the most part, the weakest, meanest, and most miserable among them. It was an exquisite satire upon the false religious cry which had led to so much misery, that some of these people owned themselves to be Catholics, and begged to be attended by their own priests." 

Meanwhile, John Willet and his son are at the Black Lion, where Joe tells his father that Edward Chester has made his fortune in the West Indies and plans to return there. He has assured Joe that he can provide employment for him, so Joe plans to take him up on the offer. But before his father can say anything, "Dolly Varden came running into the room, in tears, threw herself on Joe's breast without a word of explanation, and clasped her white arms round his neck." 

She more or less proposes to Joe, assuring him that it's all right with her father and mother, and he accepts. Joe asks his father, who is still not quite all there, if he knows who Dolly is, and urges him to say something "if it's only 'how d'ye do.'" All John Willet can muster is "Certainly, Joseph.... Oh yes! Why not?" And he sits there motionless for half an hour until he startles them with "a very loud and very short laugh," says "Certainly, Joseph. Oh yes! Why not?" again, and goes out for a walk. 

The damage to the Vardens' house has been repaired in the month since the riots, but "the house had a look of sadness and an air of mourning; which the neighbours, who in old days had often seen poor Barnaby go in and out, were at no loss to understand." Mrs. Rudge is there today, and Haredale and Edward Chester now arrive. Gabriel is out, and has been so all night, trying to get a reprieve for Barnaby. Haredale now confronts the issue that stands between him and Edward: "Sir, you still love my niece, and she is still attached to you." He leaves the room and comes back with Emma, giving them his blessing. He also tells them that when they leave England for the West Indies, he is going to the continent. "There are cloisters abroad; and now that the two great objects of my life are set at rest, I know no better home." 

He prepares to leave them together, but there is a great noise in the streets outside, and he and Edward go out to see what it is. Gabriel and Barnaby are being swept along by a great crowd of people, and when they finally make it to the house, Barnaby rushes upstairs to see his mother. Gabriel and Haredale had spent the night working on a reprieve for Barnaby, and had succeeded in obtaining a full pardon between eleven and twelve o'clock that morning. Haredale had gone straight to the Varden house to inform Mrs. Varden and Mrs. Rudge, and Gabriel had stayed behind to accompany Barnaby. 

That night Edward takes Hugh's body to a churchyard for burial. 

That evening, the Vardens, including son-in-law-to-be Joe Willet, are sitting down to tea when there's a knock on the door of the workshop, which had been closed that day. Joe goes to open it, and returns laughing. He is followed shortly by Miggs, accompanied by "a small boy and a very large box." Gabriel bursts out, "Damme, if it an't Miggs come back!" 

"Here's forgivenesses of injuries, here's amicablenesses!" she chortles. She has arrived under the mistaken impression that she will be welcomed back by the Vardens, and orders the boy, her nephew, to take her trunk upstairs. Gabriel asks his wife if she really wants this, and Mrs. Varden proclaims, "I am astonished -- I am amazed -- at her audacity. Let her leave the house this moment." 

Miggs, hearing this, let her end of the box fall heavily to the floor, gave a very loud sniff, crossed her arms, screwed down the corners of her mouth, and cried, in an ascending scale, "Ho, good gracious!" three distinct times. 

She then delivers herself of her usual Miggsish observations, such as, "It must be great vexations, 'specially considering how ill you always spoke of Mr Joe -- to have him for a son-in-law at last; and I wonder Miss Dolly can put up with him either, after being off and on for so many years with a coachmaker.... It an't so much of a catch, after looking out so sharp ever since she was a little chit, and costing such a deal in dress and show, to get a poor, common soldier, with one arm, is it, mim?" She bursts out in tears and pulls the hair of her nephew as she orders him to carry her box out again. So he runs off and leaves her with it in the street, where she "sat down upon her property to rest and grieve, until she could ensnare some other youth to help her home."

Another month passes, and it's the end of August. Haredale is getting ready to leave for the continent, but he decides to make one last visit to the ruins of the Warren. The sun is setting, and he walks around the building, then "uttered a half-suppressed exclamation, started, and stood still. Reclining, in an easy attitude, with his back against a tree, and contemplating the ruin with an expression of pleasure" was Sir John Chester, "the man whose presence, of all mankind, in any place, and least of all in that, he could least endure." Sir John comments on the ruins of Haredale's house, "How very picturesque this is!" Haredale replies, "You praise your own work very freely." Sir John protests that it isn't his work, but Haredale says, "you set on Gashford to this work -- this work before us now." And he puts his hand to his sword. "In all, you have been the same cold-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain. For the second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in your teeth, and spurn you from me as I would a faithless dog!" 

He strikes Sir John on the breast, and Sir John draws his sword and lunges at his heart. Haredale evades the blow and lowers his sword, then cries out, "In God's name, not to-night!" Sir John also lowers his weapon, but he continues to taunt Haredale, calling Edward a fool for being "trapped into marriage by such an uncle and such a niece." Haredale once again urges him not to provoke a duel that night, but when Sir John calls him a coward, the fight is on. Both men sustain wounds, but Haredale finally "plunged his sword through his opponent's body to the hilt." Even in dying, Sir John keeps up appearances, first regarding Haredale "with scorn and hatred in his look; but, seeming to remember, even then, that this expression would distort his features after death, he tried to smile, and, faintly moving his right hand, as if to hide his bloody linen in his vest, fell back dead." 

"Chapter the Last" rounds up everybody in the novel. 

• Haredale flees to the continent, enters a monastery known "for the rigour and severity of its discipline" and dies there. 
• Sir John's body is found two days later. His valet runs off with all the household cash and valuables, poses as a gentleman, almost marries an heiress, but dies of what is "vulgarly termed the jail fever."
• Lord George Gordon is found not guilty of High Treason, is excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, writes a libelous pamphlet about the Queen of France, converts to Judaism, is imprisoned for libel in Newgate, and dies there at the age of forty-three, faithfully served till his death by John Grueby. 
• Gashford becomes a spy for the government and dies in poverty, a suicide. 
• Sim Tappertit does time in prison after a hospital stay. Now with two wooden legs, he appeals to Gabriel Varden for assistance and is set up as a shoeblack, earning enough to take on two apprentices and marry "the widow of an eminent bone and rag collector." 
• Miggs becomes the turnkey of a women's prison. "It was observed of this lady that while she was inflexible and grim to all her female flock, she was particularly so to those who could establish any claim to beauty." 
• Joe Willet and Dolly Varden marry, but instead of going to the West Indies, they reopen the Maypole and make it a great success. They also have a farm, and numerous children. 
• John Willet is set up by his son with a cottage at Chigwell, where he entertains Tom Cobb, Phil Parkes and Solomon Daisy every night. "He never recovered the surprise the Rioters had given him, and remained in the same mental condition down to the last moment of his life. On his deathbed, his last words are "I'm a-going, Joseph, ... to the Salwanners" -- i.e., Savannah. Joe inherits a great deal of money on his death. 
• Barnaby and his mother live on Joe Willet's farm, tending the animals. He also seeks out Hugh's dog and takes care of him. 
• Edward and Emma return to England "with a family almost as numerous as Dolly's." 
• Grip is silent for a year after the experience in Newgate, but he regained his speech "and, as he was a mere infant for a raven when Barnaby was grey, he has very probably gone on talking to the present time."

16. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 613-652

Chapters 68-72

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Barnaby and his father make their way to the edge of the crowd and free themselves from the shackles. They move on to less inhabited parts of the city and find a shed where they spend the rest of the night and the following day. The following night, Rudge sends Barnaby in search of Stagg, but the blind man's house is empty.

After his release and his reunion with his father, Barnaby's view of the riots has changed: The town now seems "peopled by a legion of devils," and since he is no longer playing a leading role in the rioting, he sees it from a different perspective. He comes upon the mob besieging Langdale's house, and "there, in the midst, towering above them all, close before the house they were attacking now, was Hugh on horseback, calling to the rest!" He forces his way through the mob "and in time was nearly up with Hugh, who was savagely threatening some one, but whom or what he said, he could not, in the great confusion, understand. At that moment the crowd forced their way into the house, and Hugh -- it was impossible to see by what means, in such a concourse -- fell headlong down."

Hugh gets to his feet, but the blow (delivered, as we know, by Edward Chester) has left him confused, and the horse has kicked him in the head while he was down. After a moment he recognizes Barnaby and asks him where Dennis is, then collapses, "already frantic with drinking and with the wound in his head." The casks in the vintner's house have been breached and the street is running with their contents, some of it on fire. Hugh "crawled to a stream of the burning spirit which was pouring down the kennel, and began to drink as if it were a brook of water." Barnaby gets him to his feet, but he is unable to stand or walk, and he climbs up on the back of the horse. Barnaby leads the horse, which is still festooned with chains, away from the scene.

Dickens's descriptions of the riots have become increasingly more lurid, and they reach a peak here, with an account of people literally drinking themselves to death:

The gutters of the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, women with children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and drank until they died. While some stooped with their lips to the brink and never raised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught, and danced, half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of their suffocation, until they fell, and steeped their corpses in the spirit that had killed them.... From the burning cellars, where they drank out of hats, pails, buckets, tubs, and shoes, some men were drawn, alive, but all alight from head to foot; who, in their unendurable anguish and suffering, making for anything that had the look of water, rolled, hissing, in this hideous lake, and splashed up liquid fire which lapped in all it met with as it ran along the surface, and neither spared the living nor the dead.

 

Barnaby leads the horse toward the shed where his father is, but stops about half a mile from it and removes the chains from the horse and sets it loose in the fields. Then he helps Hugh to the shed where his father, in a paranoid fit, accuses Barnaby of meeting with Mrs. Rudge and betraying him. Barnaby assures him that nothing of the sort has happened, and tells him that he was unable to find Stagg. Finally Barnaby is able to bring Rudge to his senses -- almost. He explains that Hugh "would have been killed if I had left him over yonder. They were firing guns and shedding blood. Does the sight of blood turn you sick, father? I see it does, by your face. That's like me -- What are you looking at?" Rudge is looking over Barnaby's head, where presumably he sees the ghost of the man he murdered.

They settle the unconscious Hugh in the shed and fall asleep, but Barnaby awakes early and is reminded by the pleasantness of the morning of better times, though "He had no consciousness, God help him, of having done wrong, nor had he any new perception of the merits of the cause in which he had been engaged, or those of the men who advocated it." His father also awakes, and sends him back into the city to look for the blind man, insisting that he must stay until he finds him, no matter how long it takes.

At sundown, Barnaby returns with Stagg. Rudge sends Barnaby to talk to Hugh, who is finally emerging from his stupor, and takes Stagg aside to hear that Mrs. Rudge has been hospitalized since her separation from Barnaby, but that she refuses to come to terms with Rudge, saying "that Heaven would help her and her innocent son; and that to Heaven she appealed against us." He advises Rudge to take Barnaby and get as far away from London as possible. He assures him that Mrs. Rudge will eventually give in. When Rudge asks how they will support themselves, Stagg slaps his pocket and says "the streets are running money," then calls out for Hugh to share the flask he has brought.

Hugh appears, "Exhausted, unwashed, unshorn, begrimed with smoke and dust, his hair clotted with blood, his voice quite gone, so that he spoke in whispers; his skin parched up by fever, his whole body bruised and cut, and beaten about." As Hugh is drinking from Stagg's flask, Dennis darkens the door of the hut and greets Barnaby by name, though he doesn't seem to know Stagg or Rudge. He explains that he knew from the sound of the chains on the horse which direction Hugh had taken. This is the first they've seen of each other since their encounter at the prison when Dennis was trying to keep the condemned men from being freed. Hugh asks, "Where did you go when you left me in the jail? Why did you leave me? And what did you mean by rolling your eyes and shaking your fist at me, eh?" Hugh has suspected that Dennis deserted the rioters, but Dennis denies it.

But not for long: Barnaby sights the soldiers hiding behind a hedgerow. Dennis gives the signal and "the shed was filled with armed men; and a body of horse, galloping into the field, drew up before it." Dennis identifies Barnaby and Hugh as "them two young ones, gentlemen, that the proclamation puts a price on." And now he fingers Rudge, too, as "an escaped felon." Stagg, however, had heard the soldiers before Barnaby sighted them, and made his escape. He "was now seen running across the open meadow," and the soldiers fire and kill him. Dennis is disconsolate because here's someone he can't hang: "What's to become of the country if the military power's to go a superseding the ciwilians in this way?"

Barnaby and his father are marched off on foot, while Hugh is bound to a horse and guarded by cavalry. Hugh is certain that he'll be freed by the mob, but when they reach Fleet Market he sees that the military is in full control "and felt that he was riding to his death."

"Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great main object of preserving the Old Baily in all its purity, and the gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur," Dennis now goes to the house where Emma and Dolly -- and Miggs -- are being kept. Their abduction, he realizes, could still get him in trouble, and he needs to resolve that problem immediately. When he enters the room where the three women are confined, Miggs immediately makes a scene, while Dolly and Emma shrink into a corner. Dennis pays court to Miggs.

He asks when she saw Sim Tappertit last, and tells her that Sim had "meant all along to carry off" Dolly -- "And to hand you over to somebody else." So he hints that he will get Dolly "out of the way" if "you'll only be quiet and slip away at the right time." Then it occurs to him that he also has to deal with Emma, and that Gashford has designs on her. Miggs informs him that she had heard Hugh and Sim say that Emma "was to be removed alone (not by them, but by somebody else), to-morrow night." So he tells Miggs that he would find "some daring young fellow" among the rioters to carry off Dolly. "With regard to Dolly, the gentleman would exercise his own discretion. He would be bound to do nothing but to take her away, and keep her away. All other arrangements and dispositions would rest entirely with himself." Miggs is more than happy with this plan -- though she pretends not to have heard him at all -- and Dennis sets off to make his arrangements.

The next day, Emma, Dolly, and Miggs remain locked in the room, but they can hear coming and going in the outer room where the men guarding them had been stationed. The sounds are unusually subdued, however, in contrast to the boisterous noise that had been made while the riots were at their height. Then they hear moans, as if a sick man had been brought into the outer room. Dolly is particularly upset because she knows that both Hugh and Sim have their eyes on her, and the idea of having to yield to either of them is repugnant. Miggs becomes more annoying than ever when she decides that it is her duty to convert Emma to Protestantism.

When night comes, they are left in darkness -- before this, "their jailers had been regular in bringing food and candles"-- and they hear "now and then a moan which seemed to be wrung from a person in great pain, who made an effort to subdue it, but could not." Miggs's carrying-on provokes Dolly to tell her to hold her tongue, which instead unleashes from Miggs a wonderful Dickensian monologue:

"Ho yes! I am a abject slave, and a toiling, moiling, constant-working, always-being-found-fault-with, never-giving-satisfactions, nor-having-no-time-to-clean-oneself, potter's wessel -- an't I, miss! Ho yes! My situations is lowly, and my capacities is limited, and my duties is to humble myself afore the base degenerating daughters of their blessed mothers as is fit to keep companies with holy saints but is born to persecutions from wicked relations -- and to demean myself before them as is no better than Infidels -- an't it, miss! Ho yes! My only becoming occupations is to help young flaunting pagins to brush and comb and titiwate theirselves into whitening and seppulchres, and leave the young men to think that there an't a bit of padding in it nor no pinching ins nor fillings out nor pomatums nor deceits nor earthly wanities -- an't it, miss! Yes, to be sure it is -- ho yes!"

This diatribe is finally stilled by the sound of knocking at the house door, then a struggle in the outside room. Believing that someone has come to rescue them, Emma and Dolly cry out for help, and a man carrying a sword and a candle rushes into their room. He assures Dolly that her friends will be there soon, and tells Emma that her uncle "has succeeded where many of our creed have failed, and is safe -- has crossed the sea, and is out of Britain." But, he tells her, the soldiers have joined league with the rioters and the people are united against the Catholics, so that she will be unable to follow her uncle without his help. "I have the means of saving you; and in redemption of my sacred promise, made to him, I am here; pledged not to leave you until I have placed you in his arms."

Emma quite sensibly wants to make sure she can trust him and asks for "some note or token from my uncle." And Dolly is even more suspicious: "I am sure he doesn't. Don't go with him for the world!" The man calls her a "pretty fool" and says that he didn't bring anything in writing with him for fear it might lead to his capture, and that he never thought of some "other token, nor did Mr Haredale think of entrusting me with one -- possibly because he had good experience of my faith and honesty, and owed his life to me."

Dolly still isn't buying this, and begs Emma not to trust him. Emma suggests that Dolly go with them, and the man says transporting two women through the streets is impossible, and anyway, Dolly will be rescued shortly. Emma tells her, "I will trust to this gentleman," but Dolly clings to her in tears. The man then separates them and pulls Emma toward the door, calling out to someone outside, "are you ready?"

But the voice that answers his call isn't one that he expects to hear. "And in an instant he was felled like an ox in the butcher's shambles." Haredale and Mr. and Mrs. Varden rush into the room, and the women fall into their arms.

 

Behind them are Edward Chester and Joe Willet. Edward had knocked down the man (who is Gashford, of course) and Joe has his foot planted on his chest. Gashford tries to bargain with Haredale: He has incriminating information of all sorts about Lord George Gordon, but if he's ill-treated he won't reveal it. But Joe tells him to get up and leave: "you're waited for, outside." Gashford exits with "a baffled malevolence, yet with an air of despicable humility." 

As they leave through the outer room, they discover "Mr Dennis in safe keeping" and Sim Tappertit "burnt and bruised, and with a gun-shot wound in his body; and his legs -- his perfect legs, the pride and glory of his life, the comfort of his existence -- crushed into shapeless ugliness." 

They travel to the Black Lion tavern, where they are joined by John Willet, who is still not quite right in the head. Among other things, he is puzzled by his son's missing arm, "which he had never yet got himself thoroughly to believe, or comprehend." He stares at the empty sleeve and keeps finding ways of feeling it, until he concludes, "It's been took off!" The landlord of the Black Lion prompts Joe to tell his father where it happened: "At the defence of the Savannah, father," Joe says. (The siege of Savannah, Georgia, an attempt by American forces to take control of the city from the British, took place in September and October, 1779.)  Joe also explains that Savannah is "In America, where the war is." (We learn that "the same information had been conveyed to him in the same terms, at least fifty times before.") 

Finally, Dolly is left by herself and Joe comes to talk to her. After the night he came to see her, he tells her, "I have been abroad, fighting all the summer and frozen up all the winter, ever since. I have come back as poor in purse as I went, and crippled for life besides.... I did hope once ... that I might come back a rich man, and marry you. But I was a boy then, and have long known better than that.... It's a comfort to me to know that you'll talk to your husband about me; and I hope the time will come when I may be able to like him, and to shake hands with him, and to come and see you as a poor friend who knew you when you were a girl." And he leaves.  

15. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 576-613

Chapters 64-67

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The keeper of Newgate Prison, Richard Akerman, comes out on the roof of his residence to confront the mob led by Hugh, who orders him to release the imprisoned rioters. Akerman refuses, of course, but he is then surprised to hear Gabriel Varden call out to him. Gabriel, however, doesn't plead for him to release the prisoners but instead says that he was brought there by the crowd "to pick the lock of the great door" and asks him, "Bear witness for me, Mr Akerman, that I refuse to do it; and that I will not do it, come what may of my refusal. If any violence is done to me, please to remember this." Akerman then calls on Hugh and begs him to release Gabriel, which Hugh says he'll do if the keeper releases the rioters. The keeper retreats under a hail of stones, and the mob shoves Gabriel up against the door, where he continues to refuse to work on the lock.

Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the ground. He sprung up again like a man in the prime of life, and with blood upon his forehead, caught him by the throat.

"You cowardly dog!" he said: "Give me my daughter. Give me my daughter." 

The mob surges around Gabriel, and he is about to be felled with a pole-ax by a worker from a slaughterhouse when the one-armed man and another man knock the assailant down and rescue Gabriel. They shout, "Remember the prisoners! remember Barnaby!" as they drag Gabriel away. The mob redirects its efforts to battering down the gate.

The keeper's house is ransacked and the furniture piled up against the prison gate to burn it down. The heat from the blaze grows "so intense that the paint on the houses over against the prison, parched and crackled up, and swelling into boils, as it were from excess of torture, broke and crumbled away." The fire grows so large that the prisoners inside begin to fear that they'll be burned alive, especially the ones on the side of the jail nearest Newgate Street. This section was death row, and an outcry comes from not only the prisoners there, who were set to be executed on Thursday, but also from members of their families outside the prison.

The flames also feed the madness of the crowd when the great gate burns enough to be pushed down. "Hugh leapt upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of sparks into the air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those that hung upon his dress, dashed into the jail." Dennis follows him, and the mob entering the prison grows so thick that they stamp out the fire on the gate, though the rest of the prison is now in flames.

In his cell, Rudge hears the noise of the mob, but mistakenly thinks that it is coming for him: "His guilty conscience instantly arrayed these men against himself, and brought the fear upon him that he would be singled out, and torn to pieces." The fire only increases his panic and frenzy.

The mob surges through the prison, trying to get the inmates out of their locked cells by hacking at the bolts and locks and making openings in the walls and bars to pull them out. "By their legs, their arms, the hair upon their heads, they dragged the prisoners out. The freed prisoners get lost in the intricacies of the prison corridors "and were so bewildered with the noise and glare that they knew not where to turn or what to do, and still cried out for help, as loudly as before."

They reach Rudge's cell, where he cowers in a corner, still thinking that the riot is focused on him. He is hauled through a window and carried down a ladder and told he is free. "He staggered to his feet, incredulous of what had happened, when the yard was filled again, and a crowd rushed in, hurrying Barnaby among them. In another minute ... he and his son were being passed from hand to hand, through the dense crowd in the street, and were glancing backward at a burning pile which some one said was Newgate."

Dennis, meanwhile, takes advantage of his knowledge of the prison layout, and after directing the crowd which way to go, he makes his way to the gallery adjoining the condemned cells. He takes the keys from a cupboard and double-locks a gate, sealing himself off with the condemned prisoners. Then he sits down on a bench outside their cells "and sucked the head of his stick with the utmost complacency, tranquillity, and contentment." The men in the cells sense his presence and begin to plead with him for release. Dickens now comments on the death penalty:

The terrible energy with which they spoke, would have moved any person, no matter how good or just ..., to have set them at liberty; and, while he would have left any other punishment to its free course, to have saved them from this last dreadful and repulsive penalty; which never turned a man inclined to evil, and has hardened thousands who were half inclined to good.

But Dennis's livelihood has always depended on a steady supply of people to hang, so he's hardly the one to be moved by their pleas. When they reach their hands out through the bars, he raps their knuckles. He chides them for complaining: "'Worse manners,' said the hangman, rapping at the door with his stick, 'I never see in this place afore. I'm ashamed of you. You're a disgrace to the Bailey.'" He assures them that he has "come here to take care of you, and see that you an't burnt, instead of the other thing."

Finally, Hugh arrives in the passage and urges him to release the prisoners. To his astonishment, Dennis refuses: "Don't you know they're left for death on Thursday? Don't you respect the law -- the constitootion -- nothing? Let the four men be." But Hugh persists, and the prisoners are released, though they spook the crowd when they appear outside: "many were seen to shudder, as though they had been actually dead men, when they chanced to touch or brush against their garments."

Haredale has spent the day searching for Emma, and is exhausted. He has been assured "that a proclamation would probably be out upon the morrow, giving to the military, discretionary and unlimited power in the suppression of the riots," and although he's glad to hear this, it doesn't affect his main concern, his niece. As evening comes one he realizes he needs to rest, but he is turned away by a hotel at Charing Cross because the landlord has been ordered by the rioters not to shelter anyone whose house had been destroyed. Then he hears that Newgate is under attack, and he goes there because that's where Rudge has been locked up. In the crowd he is accosted by two men, and he puts up a struggle, only to discover that one of them is the vintner, Langdale, whom he had seen at the Lord Mayor's, and the other one is Gordon's former servant, John Grueby.

The vintner tells him that Grueby is now his servant, providing him intelligence about the plans of the rioters. Grueby insists, however, that he will give no evidence against Gordon, whom he describes as "a misled men -- a kind-hearted man, sir. My lord never intended this." They take Haredale to the vintner's house on Holborn Hill, where he collapses. Grueby goes for a surgeon, who bleeds Haredale, who recovers and is given "cordial and some toast, and presently a pretty strong composing-draught, under the influence of which  he soon fell into a lethargy, and, for a time, forgot his troubles."

During the night, Grueby and others bring Langdale news of what has been happening, and they begin to hear the rattling of the chains of the freed prisoners in the streets, and the flames from the burning prison "shone so brightly through the vintner's skylights, that the rooms and staircases below were nearly as light as in broad day." They hear that the mob has attacked Lord Mansfield's house, destroying "a beautiful gallery of pictures, the rarest collection of manuscripts ever possessed by any one private person in the world, and worse than all, because nothing could replace this loss, the great Law Library, on almost every page of which were notes in the Judge's own hand, of inestimable value." The mob is dispersed by the arrival of soldiers, who fire on the crowd and kill six men and a woman and wound many others, but when the soldiers depart the crowd returns for the bodies and parades through the streets with them.

A dozen other houses, including Sir John Fielding's, are put to the torch, and the fire hoses are cut by the mob. At one house, caged canaries are found and tossed into the flames, and a child's doll is shown to to mob "as the image of some unholy saint which the late occupants had worshipped." One man "harangued the crowd from a pamphlet circulated by the Association, relative to the true principles of Christianity! Meanwhile the Lord Mayor, with his hands in his pockets, looked on as an idle man might look at any other show, and seemed mightily satisfied to have got a good place."

The next day, word goes out that the rioters plan to attack the debtors' prisons next, and the wardens allow the inmates to leave with their belongings. "There were some broken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long, and were so miserable and destitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterly forgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to set them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place of custody." Some of the prisoners who had been liberated from Newgate return to the ruins of the prison and are recaptured there. Rumors fly: "It was said that they meant to throw the gates of Bedlam open, and let all the madmen loose.

That evening, the Privy Council announces that the military now has full authority to use "their utmost force, to repress the disturbances," and warns that citizens are to stay indoors that night. But the rioters are undeterred, and soon thirty-six new fires are burning throughout the city. Some streets have been blocked off with heavy chains, and "there the fighting and the loss of life were greatest; but there was hot work and bloodshed in almost every leading thoroughfare."

Hugh is still leading the rioters, riding "a brewer's horse of great size and strength, caparisoned with fetters taken out of Newgate, which clanked and jingled as he went." He carries an ax in his right hand, and seems to have no fear of the soldiers, "dashing on as though he bore a charmed life, and was proof against ball and powder." In fact, the soldiers are trying to take him alive.

Now he leads a mob in an attack on the vintner's house. The vintner and Haredale go to the roof to look down on the crowd, and realizing that the attack is imminent and can't be prevented, they decide to try to escape. They first try going along the rooftops of the adjoining houses, hoping to find an attic window they can enter and escape to the street, but they are spotted. The vintner persuades Haredale to return to his house and go to the cellar where there's a passage through which casks are rolled in and out. Langdale's house is a particularly appealing target for the mob because of the wines and spirits that are stored in it.

They make their way back to the house, which is already being broken into when they reach the entrance to the cellar. They hurry through the dark vaults, but soon see light behind them as the crowd breaks in with torches.

They hurried on, not the less quickly for this; and had reached the only vault which lay between them and the passage out, when suddenly, from the direction in which they were going, a strong light gleamed upon their faces; and before they could slip aside, or turn back, or hide themselves, two men (one bearing a torch) came upon them and cried in an astonished whisper, "Here they are!"

At the same instant they pulled off what they wore upon their heads. Mr Haredale saw before him Edward Chester, and then saw, when the vintner gasped his name, Joe Willet. 

Well, you knew it already, didn't you?  

Langdale, of course, is the vintner whose bill Joe used to be sent to London every quarter to pay. He immediately assures him that he's there to help. Haredale, of course, is a little more wary of Edward, for good reason. But Joe steps in to assure him that "time have come when we ought to know friends from enemies, and make no confusion of names," and that Edward has helped slow the rioters down by striking Hugh off his horse. "Once in the house, he would have found you, here or anywhere. The rest owe you no particular grudge, and, unless they see you, will only think of drinking themselves dead."


They lead Haredale and the vintner, explaining that they had been let in the back door by John Grueby. They crawl through the passage that the vintner had indicated as a way of escape, and reach the street.

14. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 534-576

Chapters 59-63

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We now discover what has happened to Emma and Dolly: Hugh abducted them, and they are being kept in "an old post-chaise or chariot," guarded by Sim and Dennis. Ascertaining that the coast is clear, they now set off toward London, avoiding the main road.

"Miss Haredale, whose feelings were usually of a quieter kind than Dolly's, and no so much on the surface, was dreadfully alarmed, and indeed had only just recovered from a swoon." She is especially worried about her uncle, and "the idea that he had fallen in a general massacre of the Catholics that night -- no very wild or improbably supposition after what they had seen and undergone -- struck her dumb." Dolly is anything but dumb, but her thoughts now turn to Joe Willet.

When they reach London after midnight and stop in a lonely place, "Hugh suddenly opened the door, jumped in, and took his seat between them." They struggle as he tries to kiss them, and Emma faints, which pleases Dennis: "I always like 'em to faint, unless they're very tender and composed." They're taken into "a miserable cottage," where Dolly emits "a scream of joy" when Sim Tappertit enters, thinking that he has arrived with her father to rescue them. But when she realizes that Sim is one of their abductors, she "hid her face in her hands; and sobbed more bitterly than ever," and when he proclaims himself her husband, "Dolly, goaded to desperation, wound her hands in his hair, and crying out amidst her tears that he was a dreadful little wretch, and always had been, shook, and pulled, and beat him, until he was fain to call for help, most lustily. Hugh had never admired her half so much as at that moment."

They leave the two women there, warning them that the place is well-guarded, and that if they make any attempt to escape, passers-by and neighbors will be told that they're Catholics "and all the exertions our men can make, may not be able to save your lives." As they leave, Sim tells Hugh, "you shall have Miggs (her that I promised you, you know) within three days." The statement leaves Hugh helpless with laughter.

Hugh, Sim, and Dennis proceed to The Boot, but they are met by one of their company who has been warning everyone away from the inn because it has been occupied by soldiers. "He had not heard a word of Barnaby -- didn't even know his name -- but it had been said in his hearing that some man had been taken and carried off to Newgate." So they hurry to Fleet Market where they find some of their fellow rioters in a pub. While they are asking for information there, a man arrives asking for Hugh. It is "A one-armed man, with his head and face tied up with a bloody cloth, as though he had been severely beaten." He tells Hugh that Barnaby is in Newgate, and that he "was one of the few who tried to rescue him, and he called to me and told me to tell Hugh where he was." In the uproar that follows this news, the one-armed man, whose "face was nearly hidden by the bandage," is forgotten and disappears. There is a rush for the door by those who want to go lay siege to Newgate immediately, but Hugh and Dennis calm them down: It's broad daylight, they point out, and it would be best to wait for night and plan their attack. Then, Hugh says, they will burn "every jail in London."

In the meantime, Haredale and Solomon Daisy have taken their prisoner, Rudge, to Chigwell, hoping to find support in their efforts to take him to London and jail. But the townsfolk are too terrified of the rioters to help, saying that the rioters had told them that anyone who helped Haredale would be punished. Finally he locates a chaise and a pair of horses, and "the post-boy of the village -- a soft-hearted, good-for-nothing, vagabond kind of fellow -- was moved by his earnestness and passion, and, throwing down a pitchfork with which he was armed, swore that the rioters might cut him into mincemeat if they liked, but he would not stand by and see an honest gentleman who had done no wrong, reduced to such extremity." He accompanies them with their prisoner to London.

Along the way they encounter even more terrified people who refuse to assist them, and they are told that the magistrates are so intimidated that they probably won't "have the hardihood to commit a prisoner to jail, on his complaint." By dawn they reach the Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of London, where "a portly old man, with a very red, or rather purple face" is pleading for protection from the rioters, who have threatened to burn his house down. The Lord Mayor is refusing to help, arguing that "There are great people at the bottom of these riots" -- which the note tells us is a direct quote from the actual Lord Mayor of the time, Brackley Kennett, in response to an appeal from a Catholic for aid.

Haredale explains that he is not there because his house was burned down but because he had captured a murderer, and "The least delay may involve his being rescued by the rioters." This only produces more sputtering reluctance, and a reassertion of the "great people" excuse, from the Lord Mayor. Haredale persists, "Every second's delay on your part loosens this man's bloody hands again, and leads to his escape." When the Lord Mayor asks Haredale if he's a Catholic, and he says yes, "'God bless my soul, I believe people turn Catholics a'purpose to vex and worrit me,' cried the Lord Mayor. 'I wish you wouldn't come here; they'll be setting the Mansion House afire next, and we shall have you to thank for it." And he retreats to his bedroom and bolts the door. Before Haredale departs, the other man introduces himself as Langdale, a vintner and distiller, and invites him to stay at his house in Holborn Hill, if it's still standing.

Haredale then goes to Sir John Fielding's house, where he finally succeeds in having Rudge committed to Newgate. Three armed men then escort Rudge in the carriage to the prison, where Haredale sees him chained and locked in his cell. But now he is "tortured by anxiety for those he had left at home; and that home itself was but another bead in the long rosary of his regrets."

In his cell, Rudge is visited by Stagg, to whom he tells the story of how he was caught. He had gone to Chigwell because when he discovered that Haredale was staying on watch at Mrs. Rudge's house he knew he could never escape from him as long as Haredale was alive. So he decided to join the mob that planned to destroy the Warren. But the alarm bell had unnerved him, and he didn't reach the house until after the mob had dispersed and the damage had been done. When he heard Haredale arrive there too, he decided to hide in the ruins of the turret. But as Haerdale followed him into the ruins, Rudge had a vision of the gardener, who had witnessed his murder of Reuben Haredale. Rudge had murdered the gardener, dressed him in his own clothes, and thrown the body into the pond, all to cover up the first murder. In his vision, the gardener "raised above his head a bloody hand ... and fixed his eyes on me. I knew the chase would end there."

After the murders, Rudge told his wife, who called "on Heaven to witness that she and her unborn child renounced me from that hour." Stagg informs Rudge that his wife is in London, and that his son has joined the rioters. He proposes to visit Mrs. Rudge and tell her that he will persuade Barnaby to leave the rioters and return to her, if she will testify under oath that Rudge is dead and that the man imprisoned in Newgate is not him. Rudge finds a glimmer of hope in this plot, and Stagg takes his leave.

Rudge now goes out into the courtyard "and paced it to and fro; startling the echoes, as he went, with the harsh jangling of his fetters." Another cell near his has an open door, and Barnaby appears in it. He recognizes his son, and after a little reflection, Barnaby recognizes him as the man who robbed Edward Chester and attacks him. They struggle for a moment until Rudge says, "I am your father." Barnaby hesitates for a moment and hugs him. "Grip croaked loudly, and hopped about them, round and round, as if enclosing them in a magic circle, and invoking all the powers of mischief."

 

The military is still trying to persuade the magistrates, "and in particular the Lord Mayor, who was the faintest-hearted and most timid of them all," to give them the authority to crack down on the rioters. And the mob used their reluctance for propaganda, "boasting that even the civil authorities were opposed to the Papists, and could not find it in their hearts to molest those who were guilty of no other offence." The crowd has so intimidated the city that "If any man among them wanted money, he had but to knock at the door of a dwelling-house, or walk into a shop, and demand it in the rioters' name; and his demand was instantly complied with." 

Preparing for their assault on Newgate, Hugh, Dennis, and Sim lead a crowd to Varden's house, where they want his aid in opening the locks to the prison. The shop is closed and the door and shutters are closed and sturdy, and they are threatening to set fire to the house when Gabriel appears at an upstairs window and tells them, "Begone! and rob an undertaker's while you can! You'll want some coffins before long." Hugh orders someone to set fire to the door, but Gabriel shows them that he has a gun and points it at the man who is attempting to start the fire; he moves back. 

Hugh takes a torch and is about to set the fire himself, "when he was arrested by a shrill and piercing shriek." It's Miggs, in the attic. She calls for Sim, who reluctantly responds, and she tells them that Gabriel's gun is useless: "I poured a mug of table-beer right down the barrel." She goes on to proclaim that "my endeavours has always been, and always will be, to be on the right side -- the blessed side -- and to prenounce the Pope of Babylon, and all her inward and her outward workings, which is Pagin." Meanwhile, the crowd has raised a ladder to the window where Gabriel has been standing and they break their way into the room. 

Dennis is, as usual, all for hanging Gabriel, but Hugh tells the locksmith to do what they want him to do. "Gabriel was in imminent peril, and he knew it; but he preserved a steady silence; and would have done so, if they had been debating whether they should roast him at a slow fire." Someone calls out, "He has a grey head. He is an old man: Don't hurt him!" It's almost as if (hint, hint) Gabriel recognizes the voice: "The locksmith turned, with a start, towards the place from which the words had come, and looked hurriedly at the people who were hanging on the ladder and clinging to each other." But he responds by defying them, which angers them more, so that Hugh has to remind them that they need the locksmith's services. Sim tells Varden that they know he made the lock to the great door of the prison and now they need his help in opening it. Gabriel refuses, and Hugh tells Sim to gather the tools they'll need and he'll take charge of Gabriel. 

The mob roams through the house, "plundering and breaking, according to their custom, and carrying off such articles of value as happened to please their fancy." Meanwhile, Miggs has been screaming constantly, and a man asks if she should be released. Sim reluctantly says yes, and the man goes to the attic and comes back "with Miss Miggs, limp and doubled up, and very damp from much weeping." She comes back to life suddenly and hurls herself at Sim, who finally persuades one of the bystanders to carry her off. Gabriel is marched off by the crowd to Newgate.

 

12. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 441-482

Chapters 48-52

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As Mrs. Rudge and Barnaby decide what to do now, they find a recessed area on the bridge and sit down to rest. They notice that "a vast throng of persons were crossing the river from the Middlesex to the Surrey short, in unusual haste and evident excitement." Most of the men are wearing blue ribbon cockades in their hats of the kind John Grueby complained about wearing much earlier: an insignia of the Protestant Association. Although the people crossing seem to be in groups of two or three, the crowd finally grows so large that for two hours the bridge is jammed.

Finally, a man stops and sits beside them, and informs them that the crowd is made up of "Lord George Gordon's great association. This is the day that he presents the petition against the Catholics, God bless him!" Moreover, he says, "his lordship has declared he won't present it to the house at all, unless it is attended to the door by forty thousand good and true men at least." Barnaby grows excited, telling his mother, "You remember what the blind man said, about the gold. Here's a brave crowd!" Mrs. Rudge tries to calm him, but a hackney-coach stops and offers him a blue cockade. She tries to discourage the man from giving it to him, but he tosses it to Barnaby and says, "Make haste to St George's Fields."

As she pleads with Barnaby not to go, two men appear, walking along the other side of the road. They are Gashford and Lord George Gordon, and they persuade Barnaby to join them. Mrs. Rudge protests, "He is not in his right senses, he is not, indeed!" Gordon scolds her as an "unnatural mother" for speaking that way of her son, and Gashford calls her "a very sad picture of female depravity," and they succeed in getting Barnaby to follow them, with Mrs. Rudge, consumed with "fear and grief," trailing after them.

When they reach St. George's Fields, the crowd has gathered in regiments, marching with a variety of blue flags and singing hymns. Gordon suggests that they find one for Barnaby to join. Suddenly a man appears out of the crowd "and smote Barnaby on the shoulders with his heavy hand." It's Hugh, delighted to see him again, and he tells Gordon, "'He shall march, my lord, between me and Dennis; and she shall carry,' he added, taking a flag of a tired man who tendered it, 'the gayest silken streamer in this valiant army.'" As Mrs. Rudge cries out for Barnaby, Sim Tappertit also appears and protests, "Ladies are carrying off our gallant soldiers from their duty." Mrs. Rudge is "thrown to the ground; the whole field was in motion; Barnaby was whirled away into the heart of a dense mass of men, and she saw him no more."

 

Hugh plays on Barnaby's gullibility, assuring him that "His flag's the largest of the lot, the brightest too" and when he worries about his mother, he tells him, "I've provided for her, and sent half-a-dozen gentlemen, every one of 'em with a blue flag (but not half as fine as yours), to take her, in state, to a grand house all hung round with gold and silver banners." And he adds, "Money, cocked hats and feathers, red coats and gold lace; all the fine things there are, ever were, or will be; will belong to us if we are true to that noble gentleman." He whispers to Dennis, "the lad's a natural, and can be got to do anything, if you take him the right way."

The groups then proceed to Westminster, forming a "vast throng, sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse of London." Members of Parliament were forced to work their way through the mob:

Lords, commoners, and reverend bishops, with little distinction of person or party, were kicked and pinched and hustled; passed from hand to hand through various stages of ill-usage; and sent to their fellow-senators at last with their clothes hanging in ribands about them, their bagwigs torn off, themselves speechless and breathless, and their persons covered with the powder which had been cuffed and beaten out of their hair.... The mob raged and roared, like a mad monster as it was, unceasingly, and each new outrage served to swell its fury.... when the door of the House, partially and cautiously opened by those within for [Gordon's] admission, gave them a momentary glimpse of the interior, they grew more wild and savage, like beasts at the sight of prey, and made a rush against the portal which strained its locks and bolts in their staples, and shook the very beams.

There are two short flights of stairs on either side of "a kind of well, or unglazed skylight, for the admission of light and air into the lobby, which might be some eighteen or twenty feet below." (Dickens is better at giving the atmosphere and color of a setting than he is at describing it so one can visualize it.) Gordon appears at the head of one of the stairs from time to time to report on what is happening in the House. Barnaby, Hugh and Dennis are on the stairs, too, along with Gashford. The roar of the crowd is so loud that Hugh has to bellow for quiet so Gordon can be heard.

Then two men come from inside and push past Gordon to address the crowd. One is General Conway, and the other is Colonel Gordon -- who says he is Lord George's "near relation" -- and they both warn the mob that they are prepared to defend the House from anyone who dares to enter it. The crowd is at first intimidated -- they "faltered and stared at each other with irresolute and timid looks" -- but at a signal from Gashford, Hugh urges them on, and then "threw himself headlong over the bannisters into the lobby below. He had hardly touched the ground when Barnaby was at his side." Then the mob "threw themselves against the doors pell-mell and besieged the House in earnest."

But then a rumor that troops are approaching spreads through the crowd, and it begins to retreat in panic, carrying Hugh and Barnaby along with it, as "a large detachment of the Guards, both horse and foot, came hurrying up; clearing the ground before them so rapidly that the people seemed to melt away as they advanced." They "made straight towards Barnaby and Hugh, who had no doubt been pointed out as the two men who dropped into the lobby." Barnaby is sickened at the sight of blood, which the Guards had shed, but Hugh makes him stand his ground and he knocks a soldier from his charging horse with his flagpole, then the two of them run for the river, where they jump into a boat and make their escape. They learn that a magistrate had offered to withdraw the troops if the mob would disperse, and thereby put an end to the riot. Back on land, they narrowly miss an encounter with soldiers escorting the prisoners they had taken to Newgate, and make their way to The Boot.

They are joined at the tavern by Sim Tappertit and Dennis. The latter is disgusted at the ease with which the mob was persuaded to disperse, but he praises Hugh and Barnaby for their conduct. The group in The Boot grows smaller until only Dennis, Hugh and Barnaby are there when Gashford arrives. He tells them that Gordon's petition has been rejected by a vote of 192 to 6, and he starts ripping the blue cockade out of his hat. He also tells them that a reward may be offered for the apprehension of Barnaby and Hugh. The latter is still fired up, and he has persuaded Barnaby "that he was among the most virtuous and disinterested heroes in the world," so Gashford says, "I hear -- but I cannot say whether it be true or false -- that the men who are loitering in the streets to-night are half disposed to pull down a Romish chapel or two, and that they only want leaders." So Hugh, Dennis and Barnaby take the hint and rush out to where the action is.

Gashford then strolls about and listens to the rumors that are flying about. After a while, "a great many women and children came flying along the street -- often panting and looking back." He takes shelter in a house where he watches from an upstairs window as the torch-bearing mob passes, carrying the spoils they have taken from a Catholic church: "the vestments of priests, and rich fragments of altar furniture." Barnaby, Hugh and Dennis are at the head of the crowd, "their hands and faces jagged and bleeding with the wounds of rusty nails." The mob is filled with people who have been hurt by "falling bricks, and stones, and beams." It is "a dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and sticks and iron bars uplifted in the air, and whirled about."

Gashford goes back outside after the mob has passed, and hears a scream. Someone tells him "that a widow woman had descried her son among the rioters. 'Is that all?' said the secretary, turning his face homewards. 'Well! I think this looks a little more like business.'"

At the Vardens, Gabriel, his wife, and Miggs are waiting up for the arrival of Sim. Miggs has "arrived at that restless state and sensitive condition of the nervous system which are the result of long watching," and is annoying Gabriel with her twitches and sighs. Some time after two a.m. "there was a sound at the street door, as if somebody had fallen against the knocker by accident." Gabriel goes and admits the tattered and filthy Sim, who is drunk. When Sim says that he wasn't at the scene of the destruction of the Catholic churches, Gabriel says he's glad to hear it, "for if he had been, and it could be proved against him, Martha, your Great Association would have been to him the cart that draws men to the gallows and leaves them hanging in the air."

Sim reiterates that he wasn't at those places but that he was at Westminster and that he roughed up some of the members of Parliament: "'Who knows? This,' he added, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket and taking out a large tooth, at the sight of which both Miggs and Mrs Varden screamed, 'this was a bishop's. Beware, G. Varden!'" Gabriel says, "Be sorry for what you have done, and we will try to save you." He offers to clean him up and get him out of London, and says that Mrs. Varden's cousin in Canterbury can "give him work till this storm has blown over." But Sim defies his aid, and produces a letter signed by Gordon proclaiming that "the proprietor of this house is a staunch and worth friend to the cause." If Gabriel will keep the letter safe and write "No Popery" in chalk on his door for the next week, no harm will come to them. Then he bids them farewell. Mrs. Varden and Miggs try to prevent his leaving, and he threatens to pinch Miggs if she doesn't get out of the way.

"Release me," said Simon, struggling to free himself from her chaste, but spider-like embrace. "Let me go! I have made arrangements for you in an altered state of society, and mean to provide for you comfortably in life -- there! Will that satisfy you?"

"Oh Simmun!" cried Miss Miggs. "Oh my blessed Simmon! Oh mim! what are my feelings at this conflicting moment?" 

Gabriel continues to try to put some sense in Sim's head, but he resists the effort: "This night, sir, I have been in the country, planning an expedition which shall fill your bell-hanging soul with wonder and dismay. The plot demands my utmost energy." Finally, he manages to get to the door, and though Gabriel chases him down the street he can't catch up with him. He makes his way to The Boot where he knows he is awaited.

Gabriel returns to the house where he demands the little cash box which Mrs. Varden used for contributions to the Protestant Association, and which she has already decided to hide from him. She gives it up and he smashes it. "'That,' said the locksmith, 'is easily disposed of, and I would to Heaven that everything growing out of the same society could be settled as easily.'" Then he tears the letter from Gordon into pieces, sends Mrs. Varden and Miggs to bed, and goes to work in his shop.

At The Boot, Hugh and Dennis awake. Hugh is covered with scratches, and Dennis observes, "You hurt yourself a hundred times more than you need, because you will be foremost in everything, and will do more than the rest." But Hugh singles out Barnaby for praise: "What did I tell you about him? Did I say he was worth a dozen, when you doubted him?" But the only thing that bothers Dennis about Barnaby is that he washes himself so much. Barnaby is now standing sentry outside the tavern with his flagstaff. Sim is asleep still.

Hugh tells Dennis that he and Sim "have planned for to-morrow a roaring expedition, with good profit in it. Moreover Sim "has thoughts of carrying off a woman in the bustle, and -- ha ha ha! -- and so have I!" Dennis, who "as a general principle ... objected to women altogether," is not so enthusiastic about that part of it. The only thing is that Barnaby can't be part of it because "the people we mean to visit, were friends of his, once upon a time," so Hugh has persuaded him "that Lord George has picked him out to guard this place to-morrow while we're away."

Sim awakens, and Hugh suggests he have a drink -- "Another hair of the dog that bit you, captain!" He has enough money to pay for it because he has a stash "of gold and silver cups and candlesticks buried" under his bed. Sim, who is hung over, is not so enthusiastic about the drink, but he settles down with the other two to plan their escapade, and "their loud and frequent roars of laughter ... startled Barnaby on his post, and made him wonder at their levity."

At twilight, joined by others, they go out again "towards Moorfields, where there was a rich chapel, and in which neighbourhood several Catholic families were known to reside." They loot and vandalize the houses and the church.

Fifty resolute men might have turned them at any moment; a single company of soldiers could have scattered them like dust; but no man interposed, no authority restrained them, and, except by the terrified persons who fled from their approach, they were as little heeded as if they were pursuing their lawful occupations with the utmost sobriety and good conduct.

They build bonfires of the less valuable part of their looting, and dance around them till they are tired. As Hugh and the others are walking away from the scene, they encounter Gashford, who is disgusted with their antics. Hugh insists, "Fevers are never at their height at once. They must get on by degrees." Gashford wants something more than bonfires: "Can you burn nothing whole?"

Hugh counsels patience: "Wait but a few hours, and you shall see. Look for a redness in the sky, to-morrow night."