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

Chapters 59-63

_____

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.

 

13. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 483-534

Chapters 53-58

_____

Macbeth put it this way:  

I am in blood 
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Dickens puts it this way: "the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid together no less than the bold." So the rioters continue to do their mischief:  "They all hoped and believed, in greater or less degree, that the government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their own conditions." 


Gashford goes to The Boot in search of Hugh, but finds only Barnaby and Dennis. The latter claims he doesn't know where Hugh has gone, but he arrives shortly, with Barnaby welcoming him eagerly. Gashford gives them the news that the King in Council has offered a reward of five hundred pounds "to any one who will discover the person or persons most active in demolishing those chapels." He also announces that the rioters who were arrested have been arraigned, and that there are witnesses against them, "Among others, a gentleman who saw the work going on in Warwick Street; a Catholic gentleman; one Haredale." Hugh tries to shush Gashford, but Barnaby has overheard the name and turns around in surprise. Hugh is able to distract him, however, by urging him to get on guard, and especially to make sure that nobody finds what's under his bed. The name fades "from his memory, like breath from a polished mirror." 


Gashford is most concerned that the witnesses should be intimidated, and particularly Haredale, but Hugh needs no persuading, especially as he has been in communication with Sir John Chester about doing harm to Haredale -- as Gashford knows and alludes to in several references to "your friend." He reiterates: "No mercy, no quarter, no two beams of his house to be left standing where the builder placed them!" Hugh and Dennis hurry out, and Gashford goes to Gordon's house to watch as the rioters make their way to their various targets: Catholic chapels and homes. The group including Sim Tappertit, Dennis, and Hugh is the last to pass by. As Hugh goes by, he acknowledges a spectator on the other side of the street: Sir John. "Gashford had seen him recognise Hugh with the air of a patron." Then a carriage with a woman in it drives up, she and Sir John talk for a minute "in which it was apparent that he was vastly entertaining on the subject of the mob, he stepped lightly in, and was driven away." 


Gashford has his dinner and paces impatiently, and finally climbs upstairs and goes out on the roof, where he sits looking toward the east. 

"'Nothing but gloom in that direction, still!' he muttered restlessly. 'Dog! where is the redness in the sky, you promised me!'" 


At the Maypole, John Willet and his friends Cobb, Parkes, and Daisy are arguing about the riots. Willet maintains, "Don't I tell you that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a rioting and rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand being crowed over by his own Parliament!" The others insists that there have been riots and destruction of churches and houses, but Willet is adamant: "'Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would be constantly away from home, as he is?' said John, after another silence. 'Do you think he wouldn't be afraid to leave his house with them two young women in it, and only a couple of men, or so?'" Solomon Daisy admits that the Warren is "a goodish way out of London" and that "some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets and suchlike down here for safety -- at least so the story goes." Willet pooh-poohs even this: "The story goes that you saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it."


And so the three friends decide to set out for London to see for themselves. Willet refuses even to shake their hands when they leave. After they have gone, he falls asleep, and when he wakes it is nighttime. Then he hears a sound "very faint and distant" that comes and goes and then gets louder and louder until "it burst into a distinct sound -- the voices, and the tramping feet of many men." His cook and housemaid are terrified and run "screaming upstairs" where they lock "themselves into one of the old garrets, -- shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of rendering their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure." Willet shouts angrily at them but he uses only "one word, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distinct times." The word is "a monosyllable, which, however inoffensive when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when used in connection with females of unimpeachable character." (The only word that comes to my mind that both applies to a quadruped and is "reprehensible" is "bitch." Even a veiled allusion to that word seems awfully daring in Dickens's day. And since there are two women in question, wouldn't the word have to be "bitches," which is not a monosyllable? Little help here?) 


Left alone in the Maypole, "John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent of dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himself in the porch, and waited for their coming up." He doesn't wait long before the mob attacks and manhandles him, but Hugh intervenes and tells them not to hurt him. And the surprise of the mob and of Hugh's presence in it seems to undo Willet completely: "Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing and thought nothing." From here on he seems to be stunned.

He sits "in an arm-chair, ... watching the destruction of his property, as if it were some queer play or entertainment." The Maypole is laid waste by the mob, "swarming on like insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin!" Through it all, even though Hugh is among the most destructive of the rioters, he nevertheless protects Willet from bodily harm, "even when Mr Tappertit, excited by liquor, came up, and in assertion of his prerogative politely kicked John Willet on the shins, Hugh bade him return the compliment; and if old John had had sufficient presence of mind to understand this whispered direction, and to profit by it, he might no doubt, under Hugh's protection, have done so with impunity." 


Finally, the mob starts to move on toward their main goal, the Warren, and there is a debate about what to do with Willet, including burning down the inn with him in it. Hugh overrules all the ideas except tying him to his chair and leaving him there, and Dennis is sent for some rope. Dennis, however, is under the impression that they want the rope for his usual professional duty "and raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it, and round the walls and cornice, with a curious eye." Hugh is surprised when he realizes what Dennis has in mind -- we are reminded that Hugh "was ignorant of his calling" -- and simply binds Willet to the chair, to Dennis's disappointment. 

Traumatized into a waking stupor, Willet sits in the middle of his ruined inn.

John saw this desolation, and yet saw it not. He was perfectly contented to sit there, staring at it, and felt no more indignation or discomfort in his bonds than if they had been robes of honour. So far as he was personally concerned, old Time lay snoring, and the world stood still.

Finally he hears a footstep and a man in "a large, dark, faded cloak, and a slouched hat" appears. It's the mysterious stranger, of course, though his identity won't be mysterious much longer. He asks which way the mob went, and when Willet nods in the opposite direction, the man says he's lying. Then he realizes that Willet is not in his right mind and refrains from striking him. He empties the remaining liquor in a cask into his mouth and voraciously eats some bread and meat that has been left behind. Finally, he asks again where the mob went, and Willet points him in the right direction. But just as he rushes out, an alarm bell begins to ring and "a bright and vivid glare streamed up, which illumined, not only the whole chamber, but all the county." But it's the bell rather than the brightness of the fire that terrifies the man. "He clutched his hair, and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round and round.... There was murder in its every note -- cruel, relentless, savage murder -- the murder of a confiding man, by one who held his every trust."

The rioters, meanwhile, have breached the iron fence around the Warren and surrounded the house, "knocking violently at the doors, and calling to those within, to come down and open them on peril of their lives." No one answers, and they begin to break in, having raided the garden tool-shed for axes, hoes and other implements to use as weapons, and spreading fire from torch to torch so that "at least two-thirds of the whole roaring mass bore, each man in his hand, a blazing brand." Hugh and those closest to him concentrate on the turret where he had met Haredale in the company of John Willet. 

There are a few servants with arms in the hall, but they are so outnumbered that they pretend to be among the rioters and make their escape, "with the exception of one old man who was never heard of again, and was said to have had his brains beaten out with an iron bar ... and to have been afterwards burnt in the flames." The rampaging mob begins to destroy and set fire to everything, including one another, "kindling the building in so many parts that some had no time for escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and blackened faces, hanging senseless on the window-sills to which they had crawled, until they were sucked and drawn into the burning gulf." 

Although the alarm bell rang for a long time, no one came to fight the fire. "Some of the insurgents said that when it ceased, they heard the shrieks of women, and saw some garments fluttering in the air, as a party of men bore away no unresisting burdens." Finally, Hugh gives the signal to disperse, but not everyone is ready to leave.

There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it with their hands as if in water; and others who where retrained by force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the skull of one drunken lad -- not twenty, by his looks -- who lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his head like wax.

John Willet's friends from the Maypole have continued their journey toward London, hearing reports of continued destruction along the way, and being warned that they should wear blue cockades in their hats if they want to escape harm. As they get nearer to the city, they see "No Popery" chalked on almost every door. 

At a tollbooth a horseman rides up from the city and calls for the gate to be opened. The gatekeeper comes out and notices that the sky is lighted up by another fire. "At this, the three turned their heads, and saw in the distance -- straight in the direction whence they had come -- a broad sheet of flame, casting a threatening light upon the clouds." The horseman, who is Haredale, realizes what is on fire and urges the gatekeeper to open the gate. The gatekeeper recognizes and urges him not to go -- "You will be murdered" -- or at least to wear a blue cockade to protect himself, handing him the one from his own hat. When the three friends join in urging him to do so, Haredale recognizes Solomon Daisy, and asks him to come with him. Daisy gets on the horse behind him and they ride on till they reach the Maypole. 

They find the destruction at the inn and the demented Willet still bound to the chair. Daisy is distraught "That the Maypole bar should come to this, and we should live to see it!" But Willet stares "at him with an unearthly glare, and display[s], by every possible symptom, entire and complete unconsciousness." Daisy asks if they beat him, and finally Willet seems to come to his senses: "If they'd only had the goodness to murder me, I'd have thanked 'em kindly." As Haredale is untying the ropes, Willet says, "let's go and pitch ourselves in the nighest pool of water as is deep enough to hold us; for our day is over!" 

Haredale asks if he had seen Emma, but Willet says no. "'They rode away, I trust in Heaven, before these dreadful scenes began,' said Mr Haredale, who, between his agitation, his eagerness to mount his horse again, and the dexterity with which the cords were tied, had scarcely yet undone one knot." Then Willet asks them, "either of you gentlemen -- see a -- a coffin anywheres, did you?" He tells them, "a dead man called a little time ago, on his way yonder. I could have told you what name was on the plate, if he had brought his coffin with him, and left it behind." 

Haredale realizes the significance of what Willet is saying, and hurries off with Solomon Daisy in tow. When they reach the house, Haredale draws his sword and they search all around the house for signs of life. He calls the names of his servants but gets no response. They stop at the foot of the turret where "a part of the staircase still remained, winding upward from a great mound of dust and cinders." Then they hear a faint noise, and Haredale covers Daisy's mouth and signals for him to stay there and be silent. Then he enters the turret with his sword drawn. Daisy stays below and watches, "And now a figure was dimply visible; climbing very softly; and often stopping to look down." Daisy looks at a place illuminated by the moonlight where if the figure continues to ascend it will appear. When it finally does, and looks around, "The horror-stricken clerk uttered a scream that pierced the air, and cried, 'The ghost! The ghost!'" Then Haredale appears and grabs the figure by the throat. 

"Villain!" cried Mr Haredale, in a terrible voice.... "Dead and buried, as all men supposed through your infernal arts, but reserved by Heaven for this -- at last -- at last -- I have you. You, whose hands are red with my brother's blood, and that of his faithful servant, shed to conceal your own atrocious guilt -- You, Rudge, double murderer and monster, I arrest you in the name of God, who has delivered you into my hands. No. Though you had the strength of twenty men," he added, as the murderer writhed and struggled, "you could not escape me or loosen my grip tonight!" 

 Barnaby has stood guard at The Boot, with Grip as his companion. (Has anyone else wondered about Grip all this time? Where was he when Barnaby was in the middle of the mob, or ransacking a church?) Now Grip is busying himself with "scattering the straw, hiding under it such small articles as had been casually left about, and haunting Hugh's bed, to which he seemed to have taken a particular attachment." He has also learned to say "No Popery!" 


Lord George Gordon and John Grueby ride up. Gordon talks with Barnaby a while, and listens as he explains that Grip is "my brother, Grip is -- always with me -- always talking -- always merry -- eh, Grip?" Unfortunately, Gordon doesn't know what to make of Barnaby, and when he asks Grueby, the servant says Barnaby is mad. This bothers Gordon, perhaps because he himself is mad, and he gets angry at Grueby, who says, "look at his dress, look at his eyes, look at his restless way, hear him cry 'No Popery!' Mad, my lord.... Stark, staring, raving, roaring mad." Gordon turns on him: "You are an ill-conditioned, most ungrateful fellow, ... a spy, for anything I know.... You will leave me to-night -- nay, as soon as we reach home. The sooner the better." 


Grueby accepts this verdict, knowing that Gashford is in part behind it, but he is concerned about Barnaby, too. "He had better get to a place of safety if he can, poor creature." He tells Barnaby, "I think, young man, ... that the soldiers may turn out and take you; and that if they do, you will certainly be hung by the neck till you're dead -- dead -- dead. And I think you had better go from here, as fast as you can. That's what I think." But Barnaby retorts with, "Let them come! Gordon for ever!" Which pleases Gordon, of course: "This a madman!" he says to Grueby. And to Barnaby, "I am proud to be the leader of such men as you." It's a case of the mad leading the mad. Gordon rides off, "glancing angrily round to see that his servant followed." Grueby does follow, "but not before he had again warned Barnaby to retreat." 


Barnaby continues his patrol. Late in the afternoon, some men arrive to warn the inmates of The Boot that soldiers are on their way, and everybody but Barnaby and an old woman clears out. Five minutes later the soldiers arrive. One of them is the man whom Barnaby knocked off his horse with his flagstaff at Westminster. There are two civilians as well. Barnaby is ordered to surrender, but he stands in the doorway holding his flagpole crosswise. The soldiers move in, and Barnaby fends them off with his pole until finally he is struck with the butt of a gun and taken prisoner. 


Then an officer expresses surprise: Grip "had plucked away the straw from Hugh's bed, and turned up the loose ground with his iron bill.... Golden cups, spoons, candlesticks, coined guineas -- all the riches were revealed." Barnaby is marched away by four soldiers with fixed bayonets: "those cold, bright, sharp, shining points turned towards him: the mere looking down at which, now that he was bound and helpless, made the warm current of his life run cold." 


He is taken to a barracks where a double guard is set for him. He dozes for a while and then hears two men talking about him. One is a sergeant and the other is a civilian called Tom Green. The sergeant is protesting that the magistrates have not given the military the authority to quell the riots: "Here's a proclamation. Here's a man referred to in that proclamation. Here's proof against him, and a witness on the spot. Damme! Take him out and shoot him, sir. Who wants a magistrate?" Tom Green asks when Barnaby goes before Sir John Fielding, the presiding magistrate. The sergeant says eight p.m., but he expects that when Barnaby is committed to Newgate Prison, the soldiers will be attacked by the mob and forced to retreat because the magistrates haven't given them order to fire on the rioters. 


Barnaby peeks out at the men, and sees that Tom Green "was a gallant, manly, handsome fellow, but he had lost his left arm." His bearing suggests that he had once been a soldier. And he says, "it makes a man sorrowful to come back to old England, and see her in this condition." Then when the sergeant says that they have a bird in the guard-house that "bawls 'No Popery,' like a man -- or like a devil, as he says he is," Tom Green starts to go take a look at the bird when Barnaby calls out that it's his friend Grip: "He's the only friend I have left now." And he begs them not to hurt him. The sergeant taunts him with a threat to kill the bird and him as well, and Barnaby angrily replies, "Kill anything you can, and so revenge yourself on those who with their bare hands untied could do as much to you!" Barnaby rarely sounds "idiotic," but here he breaks character entirely, at least until he begins to cry, and mutter, "Good bye, Grip -- good bye, dear old Grip!" He has noticed that the one-armed man seemed sympathetic, but he does nothing to help him at this point. 


Barnaby is taken to Bow Street, where "a blind gentleman" -- i.e., Fielding, who was Henry Fielding's half-brother -- sends him to Newgate. As the sergeant had predicted, the mob attacks the soldiers taking him to the prison, but they succeed in getting him there. A "set of heavy irons" are riveted on him and he is taken to a cell. There he is joined by "Grip, who, with his head drooping and his deep black plumes rough and rumpled, appeared to comprehend and to partake, his master's fallen fortunes." 

8. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 297-342

Chapters 31-35

_____

Barricaded in his room, Joe waits to be confronted by his father for his assault on Cobb, but when morning comes, he climbs out of his window and leaves, looking "up at the old Maypole, it might be for the last time." He reaches the Black Lion pub in London, where he learns that a recruiting sergeant is signing men up. The recruiter is eager to have him, but Joe wants to wait until that evening, so that he has time to talk to Dolly. The recruiter promises that if he does sign, he'll leave London the next day: "You'll go abroad -- a country where it's all sunshine and plunder -- the finest climate in the world." That sounds to Joe exactly like what he wants. "Needs must when the devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an unhappy home."

By evening, he has spent all his money on food, while waiting for a time when Mrs. Varden usually goes out to a lecture. He finds Dolly alone (or so he thinks).

Dolly welcomes him in her father's workshop, but when he tells her he is there "to say good-bye -- to say good-bye for I don't know how many years; perhaps for ever. I am going abroad," she reacts coldly. "Dolly released her hand and said, 'Indeed!' She remarked in the same breath that it was a fine night, and in short, betrayed no more emotion than the forge itself." Unfortunately for Joe, "that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains." She is expecting to be wooed, not to be forced to confront reality.

Joe had small experience in love affairs, and had no notion how different young ladies are at different times; he had expected to take Dolly up again at the very point where he had left her after that delicious evening ride, and was no more prepared for such an alteration than to see the sun and moon change places.

So even though he now declares, "I love you dearly, with all my heart and soul; with as much truth and earnestness as ever man loved woman in this world, I do believe," Dolly is expecting more. She "was a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child," convinced that "The coachmaker would have been dissolved in tears, and ... done all kinds of poetry." The truth of what she has done by not begging him to stay is slow to hit her. After he has left, she waits for him to come back, looks out into the street, waits some more and then "went upstairs humming a tune, bolted herself in, laid her head down on her bed, and cried as if her heart would break."

After she has gone, Sim comes out from his hiding place in triumph, admires his legs in the mirror, and proclaims, "Tremble, Willet, and despair. She's mine! She's mine!"

Joe goes to the recruiting sergeant and signs up, and the next morning, "The party embarked in a passage-boat bound for Gravesend, whence they were to proceed on foot to Chatham; the wind was in their favour, and they soon left London behind them; a mere dark mist -- a giant phantom in the air."

Dickens announces the parallel father-son story, that of Edward and John Chester, with "Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come singly."

Phiz underscores a point: Notice the picture of Abraham sacrificing Isaac above John Chester.

John and Edward Chester are dining together, the father trying to cheer up the son. But when Edward calls him "father," John protests, "for Heaven's sake don't call me by that obsolete and ancient name. Have some regard for delicacy. Am I grey, or wrinkled, do I go on crutches, have I lost my teeth, that you adopt such a mode of address? Good God, how very coarse!" And Edward only makes it worse when he protests, "I was about to speak to you from my heart, sir." For John, the heart is only "the centre of the blood-vessels and all that sort of thing.... How can you be so very vulgar and absurd? These anatomical allusions should be left to gentlemen of the medical profession. They are really not agreeable in society.... Men are sometimes stabbed to the heart, shot to the heart; but as to speaking from the heart, or to the heart, or being warm-hearted, or cold-hearted, or broken-hearted, or being all heart, or having no heart -- pah! these things are nonsense, Ned."

Edward, perhaps to put an end to his father's lecture, says, "No doubt." But John continues, narrowing his focus to Emma: "No doubt in your mind she was all heart once. Now she has none at all." Edward protests that though she appears to have changed, it was "by vile means, I believe." John insists, "She supposed you to be rich, or at least rich enough; and found you poor. Marriage is a civil contract; people marry to better their worldly condition and improve appearances; it is an affair of house and furniture, of liveries, servants, equipage, and so forth. The lady being poor and you poor also, there is an end of the matter." Dickens certainly wants us to believe that this is John Chester's heartless materialism, and therefore to be dismissed, but modern readers may find some uncomfortable truths in it. And then he goes on to a revelation:

"Edward, my father had a son, who being a fool like you, and, like you, entertaining low and disobedient sentiments, he disinherited and cursed one morning after breakfast. The circumstance occurs to me with a singular clearness of recollection this evening. I remember eating muffins at the time, with marmalade. He led a miserable life (the son, I mean) and died early; it was a happy release on all accounts; he degraded the family very much." 

This would seem to be a significant revelation to Edward: that he had an uncle who went astray. Perhaps his father is only making it up as a warning, but in a novel filled with hints and secrets, such as the identity of the mysterious stranger who robbed Edward and threatens Mrs. Rudge, or the parentage of Hugh and John Chester's motive for his intense scrutiny of Hugh's face, it also give the reader a license to speculate. But only for a moment, for John now responds to his son's plea for an audience to his concerns with a bitter dismissal: "if, in short, you are resolved to take your own course, you must take it, and my curse with it."

Now it's Edward's turn to surprise us: "'The curse may pass your lips,' said Edward, 'but it will be but empty breath. I do not believe that any man on earth has greater power to call one down upon his fellow -- least of all, upon his own child -- than he has to make one drop of rain or flake of snow fall from the clouds above us at his impious bidding." This is the kind of skepticism about melodramatic devises such as paternal curses that we would normally expect from John Chester, not from Edward. But John Chester naturally knows how to turn it back on his son: "You are so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly profane.... Return to this roof no more, I beg you. Go, sir, since you have no moral sense remaining; and go to the Devil, at my express desire. Good day."

Edward leaves, "and turned his back upon the house for ever." So with both Joe and Edward cast adrift upon the world, Dickens now jumps ahead five years, from 1775 to 1780. 

It's a night of terrible weather, and Joe Willet, Tom Cobb, and Phil Parkes are waiting for their companion, Solomon Daisy, in the coziness of the Maypole kitchen. Dickens makes much of the contrast between the warm, quiet interior and the cold, windy night outside, so much so that it's almost an inversion of the disjunction between nature and humanity that we saw earlier when John Chester was making his way inattentively through a beautiful spring day. It is half past ten at night, and Willet is snoring -- although he is awake: "his breathing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep, saving that in the latter case he sometimes experienced a slight difficulty in respiration" (which we would call apnea).

Over the chimney there is a poster of "a youth of tender years running away very fast." After Joe's disappearance, Willet had distributed these, offering a reward of five pounds, but he "obstinately peristed, despite the advice and entreaties of his friends, in describing his son as a 'young boy;' and furthermore as being from eighteen inches to a couple of feet shorter than he really was," with the result that he has had delivered to him "at various times and at a vast expense, ... some five-and-forty runaways varying from six years old to twelve."

Finally a cry is heard outside and Solomon Daisy enters, terror-stricken and for a moment unable to speak. Willet decides the way to get him to tell them what has happened is to bully him: "Tell us what's the matter, sir, ... or I'll kill you.... How dare you look like that?" Finally Daisy is able to tell them "to lock the house-door and close and bar the shutters of the room, without a moment's loss of time." They follow his advice, and he begins to moan, "Why did I leave this house to-night! On the nineteenth of March -- of all nights in the year, on the nineteenth of March!" This is the anniversary of the murder of Reuben Haredale, twenty-seven years ago. He tells them that he realized that he had forgotten to wind the clock in the church, and he went to do it, even though the storm was raging outside, and no one else was about. When he got there, he realized it was the nineteenth of March, and "at the very same moment, I heard a voice outside the tower -- rising from among the graves." It was the kind of cry one might give "if something dreadful followed us in a dream, and came upon us unawares; and then it died off: seeming to pass quite round the church."

When he opened the church door to leave, "there crossed me -- so close, that by stretching out my finger I could have touched it -- something in the likeness of a man. It was bare-headed to the storm. It turned its face without stopping, and it fixed its eyes on mine. It was a ghost -- a spirit." He falls back weakly as the others demand "Whose?" but only Willet hears the answer: "'Gentlemen,' said Mr Willet after a long pause, 'you needn't ask. The likeness of a murdered man. This is the nineteenth of March.'"

Receiving this news, they all vow to keep it to themselves. But after they leave, Willet decides that he has to share this information with Geoffrey Haredale as soon as possible. So he summons Hugh, who complains about going out at midnight in a storm, but whom Willet needs to lead him through the darkness to the Warren. When they reach it, the place is dark except for a light in one of the towers, which Willet realizes is "Mr Reuben's own apartment, God be with us! I wonder his brother likes to sit there, so late at night -- on this night too." Hugh scoffs at this: "Is it less warm or dry, because a man was killed there?" Willet begins "to think it just barely possible that he was something of a dangerous character, and that it might be advisable to get rid of him one of these days."

Haredale lets them in, and they climb the stairs to the room, though Haredale asks Hugh to wait outside. "He has an evil eye," he tells Willet. After Willet tells him what Solomon Daisy saw, Haredale says it was a good idea to keep it secret, though he regards the story as "a foolish fancy on he part of this weak-brained man, bred in his fears and superstition. But Miss Haredale, though she would know it to be so, would be disturbed by it if it reached her ears."

When Willet prepares to leave, Haredale offers Hugh a drink, and when he gives it to him, Hugh "threw part of it upon the floor." Willet scolds him, but Hugh says, "'I'm drinking a toast... to this house and its master.' With that he muttered something to himself, and drank the rest, and setting down the glass, preceded them without another word." Willet is "scandalised" by this. And when they leave, Willet notices that Haredale's "face had changed so much and grown so haggard since their entrance, that he almost seemed another man."

Willet and Hugh take to the road again, but are suddenly almost run down by three men on horseback. They stop and ask if this is the road to London. "'If you follow it right, it is,' replied Hugh roughly." The man who asked calls Hugh's manner "churlish," but Willet assures them it is, and then scolds Hugh for provoking "three great neck-or-nothing chaps, that could keep on running over use, back'ards and for'ards, till we was dead, and then take our bodies up behind 'em, and drown us ten miles off." When he informs the men that London is thirteen miles away, they decide it's too far to ride that night, and ask for an inn, which Willet is happy to answer.

One of the men then asks if Willet has "one excellent bed, landlord? Hem! A bed that you can recommend -- a bed that you are sure is well aired -- a bed that has been slept in by some perfectly respectable and unexceptionable person?" And he launches into a long speech about how "forty thousand men of this our island in the wave (exclusive of women and children) rivet their eyes and thoughts on Lord George Gordon; and every day, from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same, pray for his health and vigour." And so on. He insists that only Gordon needs the bed: "Let me sleep on a chair -- the carpet -- anywhere. No one will repine if I take cold or fever." And as for the third man, "Let John Grueby pass the night beneath the open sky -- no one will repine for him."

Willet, "who had never heard so many words spoken together at one time, or delivered with such volubility and emphasis as by the long-winded gentleman," assures them that he has accommodations for all three of them. And we learn that the three men are Gordon, his secretary Gashford ("the long-winded gentleman"), and his servant, John Grueby. Gordon says they will follow Willet and Hugh to the Maypole, but Grueby doesn't like Hugh's looks and insists on riding ahead with him. As they proceed, Hugh sizes Grueby up:

He was a square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh, regarding him meanwhile with a look of bluff disdain. He was much older than the Maypole man, being to all appearance five-and-forty; but was one of those self-possessed, hard-headed, imperturbable fellows, who, if they are ever beaten at fisticuffs, or other kind of warfare, never know it, and go on coolly till they win.

Which is pretty much what happens now, as Hugh decides to challenge Grueby on his skill with a cudgel, waving his about and receiving a blow on the head from the butt end of Grueby's whip. Grueby comments, "You wear your hear too long; I should have cracked your crown if it had been a little shorter." Hugh meditates on escalating the combat, but backs down, recognizing that he was dealing with "a customer of almost supernatural toughness."

 Willet shows them to the Maypole, where he observes that Gordon is "about the middle height, of a slender make, and sallow complexion, with an aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish brown, combed perfectly straight and smooth about his ears, and slightly powdered, but without the faintest vestige of a curl." He is "not yet thirty," and "his face ... was thin and mild, and wore an air of melancholy; but it was suggestive of an indefinable uneasiness." Gashford "was taller, angularly made, high-shouldered, bony, and ungraceful.... His manner was smooth and humble, but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect of a man who was always lying in wait for something that wouldn't come to pass; but he looked patient -- very patient -- and fawned like a spaniel dog." (Dickens will do this better when he creates Uriah Heep, though "lying in wait for something that wouldn't come to pass" is quite wonderful.)

When they are settled in, Gordon and Gashford look back on what Gashford calls "the blessed work of a most blessed day," and Gordon prompts the secretary to tell him how he moved the Protestants of Suffolk: "They cried to be led against the Papists, they vowed a dreadful vengeance on their heads, they roared like men possessed." He goes on to say, "when you cried 'Perish the Pope and all his base adherents; the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen have hearts and hands' -- and waved your own an touched your sword; and when they cried, 'No Popery!' and you cried 'No; not even if we wade in blood,' and they threw up their hats and cried 'Hurrah! not even if we wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists -- Vengeance on their heads.'"

Gordon seems to be under Gashford's spell. He even asks, "But -- dear Gashford -- did I really say all that?" Gashford assures him he did, and he reminds him that he, Gashford, had been "stricken by the magic of his eloquence in Scotland but a year ago, [and] abjured the errors of the Romish church." Gordon continues to be in something of a daze, and to need Gashford's reassurance. He has "a heightened colour" and puts a "fevered hand" on Gashford's shoulder; "struggling through his Puritan's demeanour, was something wild and ungovernable which broke through all restraint." Meanwhile, Gashford is taking more than his share of the mulled wine.

Willet and Grueby arrive to show "the deluded lord into his chamber." Gashford falls asleep by the fire, only to be awakened by Grueby, who is concerned about his master's state of mind: "'Between Bloody Marys, and blue cockades, and glorious Queen Besses, and no Popery, and Protestant associations, and making of speeches,' pursued John Grueby, ... 'my lord's half off his head.... One of these evenings, when the weather gets warmer and Protestants are thirsty, they'll be pulling London down, -- and I never heard that Bloody Mary went as far as that.'"  

4. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 119-167

Chapters 9-14

_____

Miggs helps Mrs. Varden get ready for bed, and then seats herself at the window of her room. But hearing a noise downstairs, she discovers Sim Tappertit's secret: that he has a copy of the house-key. So she takes some fine ash and fills the lock with it.

"There!" cried Miggs, rubbing her hands, "now let's see whether you won't be glad to take some notice of me, mister. He, he, he! You'll have eyes for somebody besides Miss Dolly now, I think. A fat-faced puss she is, as ever I come across!" 

So she sits up all night waiting for Sim's return.

He returns at dawn, and bends his key when it jams in the lock, so that Miggs, pretending to be frightened, has to go down and let him in. She also feigns reluctance, so that Sim is forced to pay court to her: "'My darling Miggs -- ' Miggs screamed slightly. ' -- That I love so much, and can never help thinking of,' and it is impossible to describe the use he made of his eyes when he said this -- 'do, -- for my sake, do.'" She does, after making him promise not to kiss her, which he swears he won't, "with remarkable earnestness."

She faints when she lets him in, and "Mr Tappertit leant her against the wall as one might dispose of a walking-stick or umbrella, until he had secured the window, when he took her in his arms again, and, in short stages and with great difficulty -- arising from her being tall and his being short ... carried her upstairs, and planting her, in the same umbrella and walking-stick fashion, just inside her door, left her to her repose."

At the Maypole that morning, Willet receives a guest, "a staid, grave, placid gentleman, something past the prime of life, yet upright in his carriage, for all that, and slim as a greyhound." The man wants his horse stabled, an early dinner, and a room. Joe Willet has been sent to London on business, so Willet is forced to call on his servant, Hugh, for help. He gives the man the best apartment in the Maypole, which "had the melancholy aspect of grandeur in decay, and was much too vast for comfort.

The guest asks for a message to be sent to the Warren, and Willet calls on Barnaby to deliver it, which surprises the man, who says, "I saw him in London last night." Willet explains that Barnaby goes back and forth between there and the city all the time. The man observes that Barnaby's mother has said that he often goes to the Warren, and Willet confides that Barnaby's father was murdered there, and that "Mrs Rudge lives on a little pension from the family, and that Barnaby's as free of the house as any cat or dog about it." So the man agrees to have Barnaby run the errand, and tells Willet to tell Barnaby "it's Mr Chester. He will remember my name, I dare say."

Dickens has typically withheld the identification of the man as John Chester, Edward's father. Willet is very surprised that Chester should be holding any kind of communication with Geoffrey Haredale, but he keeps his surprise to himself as he summons Barnaby. Chester tells Barnaby to wait for a reply from Haredale and bring it back, or else to tell Haredale that he is at the inn and will receive him there at his convenience. But before Barnaby leaves, he takes Chester to the window and shows him the clothes hanging on the line to dry, revealing that he sees them not as clothes but as ghosts: "You don't see shadowy people there, like those that live in sleep -- not you. Nor eyes in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts when it blows hard, nor do you hear voices in the air, nor see men stalking in the sky -- not you!  I lead a merrier life than you, with all your cleverness." Then he departs on his errand.

Willet goes about his work, astonished "That Mr Chester, between whom and Mr Haredale, it was notorious to all the neighbourhood, a deep and bitter animosity existed, should come down there for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of seeing him, and should choose the Maypole for their place of meeting, and should send to him express."

Barnaby is late in returning, and decides to spend the night at the Maypole, so Willet offers him the bed that "Your noble son -- a fine young gentleman -- slept in ... last, sir, half a year ago." (Edward Chester apparently didn't sleep there on the night before he was attacked on the way to London.) John Chester doesn't take this as much of a recommendation, however.

Barnaby returns with word that Haredale would be there in an hour. Meanwhile, the regular customers gather, having heard of the pending encounter between Chester and Haredale: "Here was a good, dark-looking mystery progressing under that very roof." Barnaby pretends to be asleep in the chimney corner, while Hugh is asleep on the other side of the hearth. Hugh is "a young man, of a hale athletic figure, and a giant's strength, whose sunburnt face and swarthy throat, overgrown with jet black hair, might have served a painter for a model." (It serves Phiz as a model for the illustration, anyway.) "The negligence and disorder of the whole man, with something fierce and sullen in his features, gave him a picturesque appearance, that attracted the regards even of the Maypole customers who knew him well." Willet comments, "He's more at his ease among horses than men. I look upon him as a animal himself."

Willet informs them that Hugh's mother was hanged when he was a little boy, for passing counterfeit money, and that he can't read or write.

The talk turns to the coming meeting between Chester and Haredale, and Solomon Daisy is convinced that they are going to fight a duel. They then speculate on whether it will be swords or pistols, and Willet worries for a moment about breakage until he remembers that one of the two men will be alive afterward to pay for it. Then they talk about the potential bloodstains on the floor, and Solomon claims that there is a spot in the Warren where Haredale's brother was killed, and that "Mr Geoffrey made that room his study, and sits there, always, with his foot (as I have heard) upon it; and he believes, through thinking of it long and very much, that it will never fade until he finds the man who did the deed." Just then Haredale arrives and Willet offers to show him to the room where Chester awaits: "old John, in his agitation, ingeniously lighting everything but the way, and making a stumble on every second step."

In the room, the two men confront each other.

The one was soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech. The one preserved a calm and placid smile; the other, a distrustful frown. The new-comer, indeed, appeared bent on showing by his every tone and gesture his determined opposition and hostility to the man he had come to meet. 

Haredale skips the pleasantries Chester offers and wants to get right to business. That business is the attraction between Chester's son and Haredale's niece. Chester proposes that they approach "each other sensibly" and "prevent it, and part them." Haredale says he loves his niece, and Chester says, "I like Ned too -- or, as you say, love him -- that's the word among such near relations. I'm very fond of Ned." But "independently of the religious differences between us -- and damn it, that's important -- I couldn't afford a match of this description." (Dickens is, of course, not ready to tell us what those religious differences are.) Haredale is angry at the very fact that there might be any love between his niece and "any one who was akin to you." He demands to know who are "their go-betweens, and agents," and Chester reveals that Barnaby is the chief one.

Haredale vows, "Trust me, Mr Chester, my niece shall change from this time. I will appeal ... to her woman's heart, her dignity, her pride, her duty --" Chester concurs as far as his son goes, but in a rather different tone:

"I shall represent to him that we cannot possibly afford it -- that I have always looked forward to his marrying well, for a genteel provision for myself in the autumn of life -- that there are a great many clamorous dogs to pay, whose claims are perfectly just and right, and who must be paid out of his wife's fortune. In short, that the very highest and most honourable feelings of our nature, with every consideration of filial duty and affection, and all that sort of thing, imperatively demand that he should run away with an heiress." 

Haredale responds to Chester's caddishness by saying, "you have the head and heart of an evil spirit in all matters of deception." Chester takes it as a compliment and assures Haredale that he will "exert those powers on which you flatter me so highly" and "resort to a few little trivial subterfuges" to separate them. Haredale says he means "treachery" and "lying." But Chester brushes this off as "Only a little management, a little diplomacy, a little -- intriguing, that's the word." Though he's uneasy about the business, Haredale agrees to "second your endeavours to the utmost of my power" and that they weill "act in concert, but apart."

Downstairs, the group is "very much astonished to see Mr Haredale come down without a scratch, call for his horse, and ride away thoughtfully at a footpace." While they are debating whether to go up and see if Chester is dead, he rings the guest's bell, and Willet goes up to find him whole and asking for his bed.

Joe Willet has gone to London because it is the twenty-fifth of March, the end of a quarter when his father's accounts with the vintner and distiller in the city has to be settled. Joe has argued with his father because he won't give him any money of his own when he goes to the city, except for a shilling for use in case the horse throws a shoe, and sixpence "to spend in the diversions of London; and the diversion I recommend is going to the top of the Monument, and sitting there. There's no temptation there, sir -- no drink -- no young women -- no bad characters of any sort -- nothing but imagination. That's the way I enjoyed myself when I was your age, sir."

But before he took the road to London, he stopped at the Warren, where he looked up at a window until "a small white hand was waved to him for an instant from this casement, and the young man, with a respectful bow, departed." Dickens is coy about it, of course, but we can assume that this signifies there is no message from Emma Haredale for Joe to deliver to Edward Chester.

After settling his father's business in London, Joe goes to the Vardens, "attracted by the eyes of blooming Dolly Varden, for whom he has plucked a nosegay of snowdrops and crocuses (and been scolded by his father for it). But Gabriel Varden prevents him from giving them to Dolly and tells him to give them to Mrs. Varden instead. Mrs. Varden, however, associates Joe with the Maypole, which she views "as a sort of human mantrap, or decoy for husbands," and she pretends that the flowers make her ill and has him put them outside the window.

Finally, after Mrs. Varden carries on about the evils of drink and she and Miggs join in a pious litany of contemptus mundi, with Miggs contributing, "I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should," Dolly enters and strikes Joe "quite dumb with her beauty." Unfortunately, she is on her way to a party, and he is forced to sit "tamely there, when she was at a dance with more lovers than man could calculate fluttering about her -- with the whole party doting on and adoring her." So he heads for home, convinced that "the only congenial prospect left him, was to go for a soldier or a sailor, and get some obliging enemy to knock his brains out as soon as possible."

On the road home, he meets up with Edward Chester, and offers to go with him to the Warren to spare him the walk from the Maypole and back again. As they pass the Maypole, they notice that there are lights in the large room and in the best bedchamber, and wonder who is there. At the Warren, Edward is met at the gate by a female servant, who takes him to where Emma is waiting. "Almost at the same instant a heavy hand was laid upon her arm, Edward felt himself thrust away, and Mr Haredale stood between them."

Haredale orders him to leave "and return no more." They exchange words, and Edward asserts, "Your niece has plighted her faith to me, and I have plighted mine to her." But he is outmatched by her uncle and leaves. "A few words to Joe as he mounted his horse sufficiently explained what had passed, and renewed all that young gentleman's despondency with tenfold aggravation."

At the Maypole, Edward learns from John Willet that his father is staying there and that "Mr Haredale has been having a long talk with him, and hasn't been gone an hour." Edward decides to get on his horse and go back to London.

1. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 1-58

Charles Dickens: A Note by Angus Calder; Introduction, by G.W. Spence; Preface; Chapter 1

_____

Dickens originally committed to bringing out Barnaby Rudge in a three-volume edition, but "He needed a close relation with his reading public as a stimulus to his creative power, and this was not provided by the method of publishing a novel complete in three volumes.... [E]ventually it was decided that Barnaby Rudge should follow The Old Curiosity Shop in weekly serialization in Master Humphrey's Clock." The first installment appeared in February 1841 and ran through November. But Dickens found weekly serialization difficult in a historical novel with such complexity and decided that his next novel would be published monthly.

The novel sets up two opposing views of the past in its opening pages:

In the dreamy gables of the Maypole and its snug bar, the past is seen as a solace, a charm, and a burden. In contrast, in the neighbouring great house, the Warren, where a double murder has been committed, the past is a nightmare.

For the character of Barnaby, Dickens drew on Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian and the madwoman Madge Wildfire, but also on Wordsworth: "Like Wordsworth's Idiot Boy, he has a devoted mother, distressed by cares that he is free from, and, like him too, he feels a 'glee' in the presence of Nature that the careworn cannot experience.... It would be a mistake to see Barnaby simply as another variant of the outraged innocent, like Nell and Smike. He is not only a victim of evil, but also a participator in it, though innocent because of his idiocy."

Although the focus of the novel is on the Gordon Riots of 1780, Dickens found parallels in the labor movement known as Chartism in his own day.

Chartism developed as a result of the disillusionment that befell the working classes after the Reform Act [of 1832], and it sought a political means for the remedy of social ills. The people's Charter was a demand for further constitutional reform, its principal point being universal manhood suffrage.... Above all, it was combined with agitation, with which Dickens must have had some sympathy, against the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. But he must have been alarmed by the extremist faction of Chartists, who advocated the use of "physical force" and imitated the gestures of the French Revolution.

Although the historical distance sets Barnaby Rudge apart from the novels set in his own time, just as it does his other historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, the novel nevertheless coheres with Dickens's view of social ills: "The fundamentally wrong condition of society, Dickens suggests, has created the wrong disposition of the people, which the cry of 'No Popery' resolves into savagery with an ease that is surprising only to the imperceptive.... [A]s a study of the human condition it is more complex and ambiguous than Bleak House though to some readers this complexity may seem to betray a confusion of ideas." For that matter, Dickens sometimes gets the history wrong: The Catholic Relief Act "was passed in 1778, though Dickens supposes that in 1780 the Protestant Association was petitioning Parliament, not to repeal it, but to refrain from passing it."

In his Preface, Dickens singles out two major themes of the novel: religious bigotry and capital punishment. The Gorden Riots, though "shameful," "teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful." And who are we in an age beset by fundamentalisms of all denominations to argue with that? As for the death penalty, Dickens has in mind particularly the expansion of it in the later eighteenth century to cover all sorts of petty crime, citing in particular that of a woman whose husband had been impressed into the navy, leaving her the sole support of two small children. She was hanged for stealing some cloth from a draper's shop.

The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of shopkeepers in Ludgate Street.

The novel begins in March 1775 at an inn called the Maypole on "the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London." As Spence suggests in his introduction, this is the England of nostalgia, "an old building with more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it seems as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress." The age of the Maypole is unknown, and is said to date to the reign of Henry VIII and that Queen Elizabeth had slept there. The exact age is unimportant, however: it was "perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older." The point is that it has roots.

The landlord is John Willet, "a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very strong reliance upon his own merits ... one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence -- always sure that what he thought or said or did was right, and ... that anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of necessity wrong."

One of the guests in the room is a stranger "who sat apart from the regular frequenters of the house, and wearing a hat flipped over his face, which was still further shaded by the hand on which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough." Another is "a young man of about eight-and-twenty" who seems preoccupied with something. Also there are a small man, whose name we find out later is Solomon Daisy, who is "the parish-clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by," Tom Cobb, "the general chandler and post-office keeper," and Phil Parkes, a ranger.

Of course, it's the stranger who attracts the most interest. He takes off his hat, revealing "the hard features of a man of sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time." He also has a deep scar in his face.

The group is waited on by Joe Willet, the landlord's son, "a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty, whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat accordingly." When the stranger finally speaks to ask about a house "a mile or so from here," it is Joe who identifies it as the Warren. When the stranger asks who owns it, Joe glances at the preoccupied young man before identifying the owner as Geoffrey Haredale, "and a worthy gentleman too -- hem!" The cough is an attempt to warn the stranger not to pursue the subject, and when the stranger persists in asking about the young woman he saw getting into a carriage as he passed across the grounds of the Warren, Joe tries to distract him and change the subject, a sensitive one to the young man also seated in the room. But the stranger continues, and asks if the young woman is Haredale's daughter. Informed that Haredale is single, the stranger remarks, "Single men have had daughters before. Perhaps she may be his daughter, though he is not married." Joe warns the stranger again, but the man addresses himself directly to the young man who is obviously upset by his questions; the stranger  asks why.

The young man doesn't answer but pays his bill and leaves, accompanied by Joe, who goes along to light his way. When Joe returns he says the young man is in love with Miss Haredale, who "has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart upon seeing her!" But his father chides him for talking too much, and the others support him. Joe indignantly protests, "'if you mean to tell me that I'm never to open my lips --' 'Silence, sir!' roared his father. 'No, you never are. When your opinion's wanted, you give it.'" He turns to the stranger and tells him that Miss Haredale is Geoffrey Haredale's niece. The stranger asks if her father is alive, and Willet tells him, "he is not alive, and his is not dead -- ... Not dead in a common sort of way." The stranger demands to know what he means, and he turns to Solomon Daisy to tell the story.

Daisy begins to tell it but interrupts to ask what day it is. It's the nineteenth of March, and everyone agrees "that's very strange." Daisy goes on to say that Geoffrey Haredale's elder brother, Reuben, was the owner of the Warren twenty-two years ago. His wife had recently died and their daughter was "scarcely a year old." Reuben Haredale left the Warren for a while and went to London, but returned a few months later with his daughter, "two women servants, and his steward, and a gardener." The rest of the servants were expected the next day.

That night, Daisy says, he was supposed to go toll the bell at 12:30 to announce the death of a man. "It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily, and very dark." Daisy had the creeps, and remembered all the ghost stories he had heard. But at the moment he went to ring the bell, he heard another bell ring. He went home in a hurry after ringing his bell, and next day learned that Reuben Haredale had been found murdered, "and in his hand was a piece of the cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it." A large amount of money was missing from a cash box, and both the steward and the gardener had disappeared. A body identified as that of the steward, Mr. Rudge, was found months later, "at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been stabbed with a knife." He was identified by his clothes, a watch, and a ring. It was assumed that he had been killed in his room, where there were traces of blood, by the gardener, who has never been found. The murder took place on March 19, 1753, and Daisy is convinced that "on the nineteenth of March in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered."