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Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
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Oliver Twist, Chp. 14 - 17
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The chapter starts in a shabby little public-house, which is run by another Jew called Barney, and here we encounter Bill Sikes in a quarrel with his dog Bull’s-eye. Soon, the dispute is interrupted by the arrival of Fagin and Nancy. When Nancy wants to tell Fagin and Sikes what she has found out about Oliver, Fagin gives her a mute but unmistakable sign not to be too communicative in the presence of Sikes. In general, there is little love lost between Fagin and Sikes, if you go by Sikes’s invectives and the furtive signs concerning this gentleman that pass between Fagin and Barney. Sikes also implies that he has some knowledge on Fagin that gives him a certain power. The scene then turns to Oliver, who is on his errand and chances, or rather mischances to take a small alley, where he runs into Nancy and Bill. Nancy immediately falls into the role of a worried sister, who has been looking for her runaway little brother, and thus she manages to win the sympathy of all the bystanders who do not happen to be indifferent to any but their own business. In between the play-acting Nancy and the grimly menacing Sikes, Oliver is borne away.
THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
I could not help feeling a bit dismayed at a passage like this
”The Jew, perfectly understanding the hint, retired to fill it: previously exchanging a remarkable look with Fagin, who raised his eyes for an instant, as if in expectation of it, and shook his head in reply; so slightly that the action would have been almost imperceptible to an observant third person.”
because it implies that Fagin and Barney are able to communicate without words, that they have a secret language in between them which evades Sikes. If one took a very critical view, could one not take this to imply that the narrator wants his readers to understand that the two characters, both of them being Jewish, are in cahoots with each other? Is this not rather stereotypical? Add to this Fagin’s secrecy with regard to Nancy’s giving information on Oliver’s whereabouts and the state of his health. Why would Fagin make such a secret about this? Would Sikes not get to know the particulars, anyway? What is the idea behind this? One way of interpreting this situation might be to take for granted that Fagin has made a habit of not letting Bill in on anything concerning his business if it need not absolutely be the case. It could also reflect that between those criminals, there is no trust whatsoever, and that every single one of them is trying, by force of habit, to get one over on anybody else. To me, the whole situation seemed a bit exaggerated, all the same.
I was quite impressed with the quarrel between Bill and his dog, all the more so as Bill’s brutish and cruel behaviour gave the impression of his being more like a second dog, a particularly wild one at that, rather than like a human master. What was your impression?
I also found interesting the following passage quite interesting:
”He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to feel; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very moment […]”
Why does it say, “how happy and contented he ought to feel”? Does Oliver not feel happy and contented after all? And if so, why doesn’t he? Does the memory of his friend Dick, whose lot Oliver knows to be less than favourable, dampen his spirits? Or does Oliver feel he would like to have a look at Dick in order to all the more feel the contrast between him and his friend? I know I am taking a Grimwiggian perspective in asking this question, but the sentence somehow put me on my guard. Why does it not read, “how much he would give for having poor little Dick at his side”? Indeed, Mr. Grimwig’s pessimism might have infected me here.
I also find interesting Nancy’s words “’The young brat's been ill and confined to the crib […]’”, especially in the light of the chapter that is yet to follow. What do they show about Nancy’s attitude towards Oliver? Can we expect any sympathy from her if she calls the child a “young brat”?
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Oliver tries to escape, but the thieves are too quick for him. However, in this situation Nancy shows that she has some sympathy with the boy because she prevents Bill from setting the dog on him, knowing that Bull’s-eye would probably kill Oliver. Nancy shows so much determination and spirit in this that even Bill and Fagin are eventually cowed, letting her have her own way.
When Oliver is finally caught and taken back into Fagin’s den, he is shown to his uncouth bed and, ironically, given the same clothes he has watched being collected by the pedlar. By an evil chance, Fagin met the pedlar who had the clothes on display, recognized them and thus received a first clue as to his victim’s whereabouts.
THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
This chapter made me think a lot about Nancy and Bill, especially about the former. We have two situations in which she displays genuinely tender feelings. The first time it happens when she and Bill are on their way to trap Oliver. The first sentence – and here I anticipate a close reading – introduces us to the setting:
”The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a large open space; scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other indications of a cattle-market.”
Here we have “narrow streets”, i.e. streets not offering a lot of elbow room for those who walk them, terminating in an open space that shows “pens for beasts” and “indications of a cattle-market”. We have seen Bill fight with his dog in a way that gave rise to doubts about whether Bill himself is not more of a brute than his dog and ought to be kept in one of the above-mentioned pens, and in the course of the chapter we also learn that Nancy was brought up to be a thief, and later to become something else. Like her friend Betsey, and many others, she is regarded as little more than cattle in a market. When she talks about the boys who are going to be hanged (brought like lambs to the slaughter), she tries to appeal to Bill’s gentler feelings – where are they, by the way? – by saying,
”’I wouldn't hurry by, if it was you that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o'clock struck, Bill. I'd walk round and round the place till I dropped, if the snow was on the ground, and I hadn't a shawl to cover me.’”
Only to be rebuffed by Bill, who tells her that it wouldn’t do any good at all, and so be completely meaningless an action. Nancy tries to strike a human chord in Bill’s heart by making him think about the “fine young chaps” but Bill’s heart is already hardened, since he is as mindless as cattle. In a way, the word “cattle” can apply both to Bill (unthinking, hardened) and to Nancy (exploited as a prostitute), and to many others who live lives like they. If readers now ask themselves why people live such dreary lives, they might be referred back to the beginning of the sentence, which talks about “narrow streets”, an image that can be interpreted in many ways – please feel free to do so! In Nancy’s case, we get an interpretation later on, when the infuriated young woman says,
”’I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this!’ pointing to Oliver. ‘I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years since. […] It is my living; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you’re the wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that’ll keep me there, day and night, day and night, till I die!’”
She realizes that Fagin might have looked after her when she was a child, but prepared her for a life of crime and degradation as human cattle, and she also realizes that she has had a hand in preparing that “narrow street” for Oliver, who had still a chance of better future prospects, which makes her exclaim,
”’[…] I wish I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places with them we passed so near to-night, before I had lent a hand in bringing him here. He’s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that’s bad, from this night forth. Isn't that enough for the old wretch, without blows?’”
Understanding the essence of her life, and what she has done to Oliver, may well imbue Nancy at this very moment with a fury that Fagin and Bill think it wise not to oppose and thereby increase. I have a feeling that Nancy will play an important role in the further course of events, and that we might also get some further insight into the relationship between her and Bill.
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THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
One of the main motifs of this chapter seems to be hypocrisy, and with Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble the narrator introduces two veritable authorities on this cultural skill.
”’Drat that beadle!’ said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known shaking at the garden-gate. ‘If it isn't him at this time in the morning! Lauk, Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you! Well, dear me, it IS a pleasure, this is! Come into the parlour, sir, please.’
The first sentence was addressed to Susan; and the exclamations of delight were uttered to Mr. Bumble: as the good lady unlocked the garden-gate: and showed him, with great attention and respect, into the house.”
This is the first example in this chapter we get of Mrs. Mann’s ability to walk through life with two faces and two voices, and together with Mr. Bumble’s pomposity – “He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood” –, it sets a tone of humour and ridicule, which may do the reader a little bit of good after the sad and dramatic events of the preceding chapters. However, the humour does not remain mildly harmless for a long time, because soon Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble’s hypocrisy are applied towards their profession when they talk about “’throwing [the paupers] upon another parish” unless “they die on the road to spite us.’” By the way, it is quite interesting to note that Mr. Bumble makes his way to London relatively comfortably in a coach, whereas Oliver had to walk the same distance on foot, endangering his health and life. Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble’s dishonesty verges even more strongly on the cruel in their treatment of little Dick, whom Mr. Bumble interviews and whom, on account of his illness, Mr. Bumble has marked down as “’ a ill-conditioned, wicious, bad-disposed porochial child’”, thus transferring the viciousness from the parish onto the child. When Dick in their conversation mentions that he would like to leave his love to Oliver Twist, this is the last straw for the two adults, and they come down on the little child like a ton of bricks – locking up the poor boy, who is literally wasting away, in a coal cellar. Here, the gentle reader is definitely no longer inclined to laugh.
Later, we get another instance of Mr. Bumble’s tendency to hypocrisy, and we can’t help thinking that it serves him right, even though it harms Oliver:
”’I fear it is all too true,’ said the old gentleman sorrowfully, after looking over the papers. ‘This is not much for your intelligence; but I would gladly have given you treble the money, if it had been favourable to the boy.’
It is not improbable that if Mr. Bumble had been possessed of this information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have imparted a very different colouring to his little history. It was too late to do it now, however; so he shook his head gravely, and, pocketing the five guineas, withdrew.”
One person, who is not given to hypocrisy but who speaks out her mind about Oliver, claiming greater authority as a mother who has her own children, is Mrs. Bedwin, who openly contradicts her employer in the presence of Mr. Grimwig. What do you think of Mrs. Bedwin? And what do you think about Mr. Brownlow for so readily believing Mr. Bumble’s account? Is it the beadle’s cocked hat, which is definitely more impressing than what it covers, that strikes Mr. Brownlow as an authority not to be doubted?
A last remark I’d like to make is the narrator’s inclination to start this chapter on a meta-fictional note when discussing certain conventions and techniques of writing:
”It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song.”
I do like passages like the one above, but some people don’t and say that they put a distance between the reader and the events described, pointing out their fictitious quality. What is your opinion?
Thank you for highlighting the narrow alley passage. To me, that narrow passage is an indication of how few will be able to use it to escape their hard lives and move on to something better, which can easily be considered a theme in many of Dickens' novels. The irony is that so many who make it through that narrow egress are still haunted by their pasts, e.g. Lady Dedlock, Mr. Dorrit and, I dare say, Dickens himself. One can't escape the prisons in one's mind.
Tristram wrote: "I do like passages like the one above, but some people don’t and say that they put a distance between the reader and the events described, pointing out their fictitious quality. What is your opinion?..."I enjoy Dickens' editorializing, but I think it's a tactic that must be used with some consistency. Dickens does it often enough that it comes across as an aside by a very good storyteller. Another author I'm familiar with inserted this type of observation only once in a long novel, and it was so out of place that it was very jarring -- still bothers me to this day!
It will be interesting to see if Nancy falls into the stereotype of the "hooker with a heart of gold" and, if so, I wonder if that would make her the first sympathetic literary prostitute. I'm sure some would say that Mary Magdalene would have that honor, but that's a more in-depth conversation than I'm ready to have here. :-)
Tristram, good observation about Book of Job. I think Brownlow is God and Grimwig is his adversary, Satan. I like the image of them in deadlock with the watch between them, frozen in time. Dickens uses this image a couple of times to amp up the drama. It makes the reader wonder, who will win?I'm still puzzled about Grimwig's rants about orange peels and his catchphrase, "I'll eat my head!" but find it very humorous.
As to Brownlow's disappointments, he reminded me of Willy Wonka testing the morality of all those kids, all of them disappointing him, except for the poor boy, Charlie, who sacrifices his candy and ends up becoming Wonka's heir. I get the same feeling about Oliver Twist, but what will he have to sacrifice?
Mary Lou wrote: "Thank you for highlighting the narrow alley passage. To me, that narrow passage is an indication of how few will be able to use it to escape their hard lives and move on to something better, which ..."Very true, few could escape the life of poverty and oppression. Maybe there's shades of the "narrow path to heaven" here?
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This week we read how Oliver recovers from his illness at Mr. Brownlow’s, how he is kidnapped by Fagin’s gang and how Mr. Bumble comes to London and blackens Oliver’s name. The s..."
What a chapter! Coincidences? Perhaps. I think it would be wise to watch how Dickens develops the concept of peoples’ faces in the novel.
Grimwig ... I found the figures huddled over the watch to be very meaningful. Consider the suggested portrait. One positive man, represented by Brownlow and one negative person represented by Grimwig. They are poised in the darkness waiting for Oliver. This makes us ponder what will occur. The timepiece is the centrepiece of the set piece. Will time be kind or cruel to Oliver? How and in what form will these two men effect the fate of Oliver? At this point in time we cannot see. We, the readers, are in the dark as much as Brownlow and Grimwig.
Finally, consider the references to books, readers, and writers. How much can we read Dickens own personal voice into this chapter? Books continue to play a part in the novel. As Tristram suggested, Dickens rarely wastesthe opportunity to create or unveil a coincidence. I do not think we are finished with books and their importance yet.
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The chapter starts in a sha..."
To me, Nancy is one of the most interesting characters in the novel so far. For a minor character, Dickens has invested in her many interesting characteristics which seemingly conflict with each other. Is she simply a hard-hearted criminal? Does the way she act around Oliver at any time show true sympathy and care for Oliver? How conflicted is she as she weighs the total anger and hate of Sikes with the total innocence of Oliver? Is she the trope of the hardened woman with the soft heart? Time will tell.
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Really? I never noticed.
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My impression was that Dickens must have had a dog. I'm not sure if that's right, because I knew Dickens had a dog in the first place. But unless you have a dog and know how loyal they are and know that they love you no matter what you do - a very good reason for loving dogs more than people - you would have a hard time believing that the poor dog wouldn't just attack his master, and after hurting him terribly, run away to anywhere else that Bill Sikes isn't. Dogs just don't do that, I sometimes wish they did.
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”It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song.”
I do like passages like the one above,
I also like the passage above, but I found little in the chapter that I thought was humorous. Being brought into contact again with Mrs. Mann and her horrible treatment of those children just made me hate her all over again. And I find Mr. Bumble not much better. Where is Sikes dog when I need him for my dog attack?
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"Look here! do you see this?"
Chapter 14
Frederic W. Pailthorpe
1886
Text Illustrated:
At this moment, there walked into the room: supporting himself by a thick stick: a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with green. A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat; and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end, dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time: which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in a growling, discontented voice.
Look here! do you see this! Isn't it a most wonderful and extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a piece of this poor surgeon's friend on the staircase? I've been lamed with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content to eat my own head, Sir!"
Commentary:
An 1885 collection of colour illustrations from Oliver Twist was produced by the artist Frederick Pailthorpe, who also illustrated Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. Like George Cruikshank, Oliver Twist's original illustrator and a friend of Pailthorpe, Pailthorpe uses satire and caricature in his interpretations of the novel's scenes and characters.
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Waiting for Oliver
Chapter 14
Harry Furniss
1910 Library Edition
Text Illustration:
At this moment, there walked into the room: supporting himself by a thick stick: a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with green. A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat; and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end, dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time: which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in a growling, discontented voice.
Look here! do you see this! Isn't it a most wonderful and extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a piece of this poor surgeon's friend on the staircase? I've been lamed with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content to eat my own head, Sir!"
This was the handsome offer with which Mr. Grimwig backed and confirmed nearly every assertion he made; and it was the more singular in his case, because, even admitting for the sake of argument, the possibility of scientific improvements being brought to that pass which will enable a gentleman to eat his own head in the event of his being so disposed, Mr. Grimwig's head was such a particularly large one, that the most sanguine man alive could hardly entertain a hope of being able to get through it at a sitting — to put entirely out of the question, a very thick coating of powder.
"I'll eat my head, sir," repeated Mr. Grimwig, striking his stick upon the ground. "Hallo! what's that!" looking at Oliver, and retreating a pace or two. [99]
. . . ."Let me see: He'll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest," said Mr. Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table. "It will be dark by that time."
"Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?" inquired Mr. Grimwig.
"Don't you?" asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling.
The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig's breast, at the moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident smile.
"No," he said, smiting the table with his fist, "I do not. The boy has a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket. He'll join his old friends the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this house, sir, I'll eat my head."
With these words he drew his chair closer to the table; and there the two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the watch between them.
Commentary:
In the present picture, Harry Furniss renders the two wealthy bourgeoisie,? seen in earlier editions such as the Diamond Edition (1867) wood-engraving Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Grimwig, as rather different physical types. In the 1837-38 serial edition in Bentley's Miscellany, Dickens's original illustrator George Cruikshank does not represent Mr. Grimwig at all, but does depict Mr. Brownlow in a series of illustrations, notably Oliver recovering from fever (Part Seven, September 1837). In this early illustration, Mr. Brownlow is presented as an antitype to Fagin — an authentic rather than an ersatz Good Samaritan, wearing a clean dressing-gown, and facilitating the boy's recovering from a fever.
The Furniss illustration emphasis the different attitudes that the friends bring towards the putative return of the boy that the humanitarian Brownlow has brought into his own home to nurse back to health. Grimwig is certain that the boy will revert to his criminal associates (with the books and the five-pound note), and Brownlow certain that the boy will return shortly from returning the books to the book-seller at The Green. The cynical Grimwig, at heart a decent man who does not want to see his friend disappointed. Although many illustrators of the novel offer several interpretations of the philanthropic Brownlow, the only other artist to do justice to Grimwig as a student of human nature is Harry Furniss in his rather more animated treatment of this scene in Waiting for Oliver, in which the pair of elderly bourgeoisie are studying Brownlow's gold pocket-watch open on the table between them (and therefore the focal point of the illustration) and awaiting the end of the predicted twenty minutes. Eytinge's illustration conveys are a far subtler sense of the elderly bachelors with contrasting natures — and includes both the pocket-watch and the portrait of Oliver's mother (strategically placed, upper centre). Mahoney's study of the pair fails to distinguish one friend from the other in the scene in chapter seventeen in which the avaricious Bumble turns up at Brownlow's home in Pentonville in response to the advertisement in the London newspaper offering five guineas for information that will "tend to throw any light upon [Oliver's] previous history" [Illustrated Library Edition].
Furniss permits us to study Grimwig's bluff, slightly smiling visage ("I told you so," the smile implies), but leaves Brownlow's undoubtedly more concerned facial expression a matter for the sympathetic reader to construct. He effectively differentiates the two old friends by their hairstyles and fashions, for Grimwig wears breaches but has a full head of hair (Brownlow, in contrast, is balding, bespectacled, and dressed in Regency stovepipe trousers and tailcoat). Ridiculing the notion that the child will remain faithful, Grimwig leans back slightly, quite certain that he is correct about Oliver's thanklessness; however, the apprehensive Brownlow leans forward to study the movement of the minute-hand assiduously. The picture creates suspense as to whether Oliver will return, and the text does nothing to alleviate that suspense. Rather, cliff-hanging chapter ending and illustration combine to heighten suspense and propel reader forward into the next chapter, which was originally the second of two in instalment no. 7. At the end of the September 1837 number the pair are still sitting "perseveringly, in the dark parlour: with the watch between them". Thus, the watch and the passage of time and the exhaustion of trust that it implies, is foregrounded in the reader's consciousness by the illustration, which applies the conclusions of both Chapters 14 and 15 - in the original serial leading to a genuine curtain as the reader wonders what steps Brownlow will take to retrieve the lost prodigal and redeem his faith in the boy upon whom he has bestowed his charity and affection.
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Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends
Chapter 15
George Cruikshank
Text Illustrated:
Meanwhile, Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so very short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to the book-stall. When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidentally turned down a by-street which was not exactly in his way; but not discovering his mistake until he had got half-way down it, and knowing it must lead in the right direction, he did not think it worth while to turn back; and so marched on, as quickly as he could, with the books under his arm.
He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to feel; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very moment; when he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud. "Oh, my dear brother!" And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.
"Don't," cried Oliver, struggling. "Let go of me. Who is it? What are you stopping me for?"
The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations from the young woman who had embraced him; and who had a little basket and a street-door key in her hand.
"Oh my gracious!" said the young woman, "I have found him! Oh! Oliver! O liver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I've found him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I've found him!" With these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical, that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a butcher's boy with a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was also looking on, whether he didn't think he had better run for the doctor. To which, the butcher's boy: who appeared of a lounging, not to say indolent disposition: replied, that he thought not.
"Oh, no, no, never mind," said the young woman, grasping Oliver's hand; "I'm better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy! Come!"
"Oh, ma'am," replied the young woman, "he ran away, near a month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his mother's heart."
"Young wretch!" said one woman.
"Go home, do, you little brute," said the other.
"I am not," replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. "I don't know her. I haven't any sister, or father and mother either. I'm an orphan; I live at Pentonville."
"Only hear him, how he braves it out!" cried the young woman.
"Why, it's Nancy!' exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.
"You see he knows me!" cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. "He can't help himself. Make him come home, there's good people, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!"
"What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels; "young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly."
"I don't belong to them. I don't know them. Help! help!" cried Oliver, struggling in the man's powerful grasp.
Commentary:
Although Dickens's official illustrator for Oliver Twist in the 1837-8 serial, George Cruikshank, depicts the housebreaker Bill Sikes as the sordid, lower-class villain out of contemporary melodrama, the figure whom Felix Octavius Carr Darley describes in his series of Character Sketches from Dickens (1888) is once again much more of an individual (despite his characteristic long face and white top hat) than a type. Darley depicts Bill Sikes in action, rather than as a static figure, whereas in the Diamond Edition of 1867, Sol Eytinge in Nancy and Bill Sikes captures the disreputable couple's desperation and despondency. In the Household Edition, realist James Mahoney focuses on a different aspect of the chapter entirely, depicting Fagin's chagrin at the Dodger and Charley's having lost Oliver on his first expedition out. In the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, Furniss focusses on Sikes's apprehension of Oliver and, in contrast, on the two adults who wait anxiously for Oliver's return to the tranquil house in Pentonville, the optimistic Mr. Brownlow and his dour, pessimistic friend, Grimwig.
The nine distorted, caricatural forms who surround Oliver outside the effectively realized beer-shop (complete with appropriate signage) compel the reader to identify with the only normal figure, who, by his upper-middle class, tailored suit alone, demonstrates the truth of his assertion that he does not belong to the unusually short, slatternly Nancy and the tall, brutish, ill-kempt Bill Sikes. This, then, is a fundamentally "classist" view of dull-witted working-class society, which Cruikshank intimates congregates in the streets, and frequents gin-shops and beer-shops. By virtue of his height, which Cruikshank has accentuated by giving him a white top-hat, Bill Sikes dominates the scene as he grabs the books out of Oliver's hands and Nancy plays to the female street chorus. Cruikshank appears to have been little interest in Sikes's faithful dog Bull's-eye, who peers out from under the fashionably-dressed Oliver, right of centre. Cruikshank clarifies which of the women is Nancy by giving the short woman in the big hat (left of centre) a basket and large key. The butcher's boy mentioned in the text is likely the figure to the right, as the other male (extreme left) is wearing the skull cap of a carpenter. Instead of a figure looking out of a garret window, Cruikshank has supplied the disinterested proprietor of the beer-shop (above centre) . Surprising to modern readers, perhaps, is that just a few streets from the respectable shopping district in Clerkenwell known as The Green one might have encountered a beer-shop and such a cast of characters.
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Sikes, Nancy, and Oliver Twist
Chapter 15
Felix Octavius Carr Darley
1888 Character Sketches from Dickens
Text Illustrated:
The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a large open space; scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other indications of a cattle-market. Sikes slackened his pace when they reached this spot: the girl being quite unable to support any longer, the rapid rate at which they had hitherto walked. Turning to Oliver, he roughly commanded him to take hold of Nancy's hand.
'Do you hear?' growled Sikes, as Oliver hesitated, and looked round.
They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers.
Oliver saw, but too plainly, that resistance would be of no avail. He held out his hand, which Nancy clasped tight in hers.
'Give me the other,' said Sikes, seizing Oliver's unoccupied hand. 'Here, Bull's-Eye!'
The dog looked up, and growled.
'See here, boy!' said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver's throat; 'if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him! D'ye mind!'
The dog growled again; and licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he were anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.
'He's as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn't!' said Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious approval. 'Now, you know what you've got to expect, master, so call away as quick as you like; the dog will soon stop that game. Get on, young'un!'
Bull's-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually endearing form of speech; and, giving vent to another admonitory growl for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.
It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have been Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the contrary. The night was dark and foggy. The lights in the shops could scarecely struggle through the heavy mist, which thickened every moment and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom; rendering the strange place still stranger in Oliver's eyes; and making his uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.
They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell struck the hour. With its first stroke, his two conductors stopped, and turned their heads in the direction whence the sound proceeded.
Commentary:
Darley uses the juxtaposition of these well known characters to recall for readers familiar with Oliver Twist the criminal gang's reapprehension of Oliver and through their poses and expressions to comment upon the nature of the characters themselves: timid Oliver, eager to please; devoted yet terrified Nancy; and the brutal, ruthless bully, Bill Sikes, whom Dickens first describes in Chapter 13, accompanied by Bull's-Eye:
The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which inclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves; — the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days’ growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.
"Come in, d'ye hear?" growled this engaging ruffian.
A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.
Darley uses the juxtaposition of these well known characters to recall for readers familiar with Oliver Twist the criminal gang's reapprehension of Oliver and through their poses and expressions to comment upon the nature of the characters themselves: timid yet indignant Oliver; Nancy, Sikes's devoted confederate in crime; and the brutal, ruthless bully, Bill Sikes. The illustrations by James Mahoney in the Household Edition and by Harry Furniss in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1871 and 1910 respectively) are also realistic responses to Cruikshank's originals, but it may be that Darley's study is as much his reaction to the dual characterization of his countryman, Sol Eytinge, Junior, the sole illustrator of the 1867 Diamond Edition, as it is to Cruikshank's originals. Certainly Darley renders Nancy an active accomplice in the boy's abduction, and therefore unworthy of the kind of sympathy with which the reader of Sol Eytinge's Diamond Edition wood-engraving might have responded.
Although Darley would not have had the benefit of studying Harry Furniss's 1910 economical character portraiture of the East End housebreaker, Bill Sikes, he undoubtedly consulted the earlier Cruikshank drawings (readily available through American piracies), and the more recent wood-engravings by James Mahoney for the Anglo-American Household Edition (1871). Whereas Mahoney's style is equally realistic, his drawings of the criminal couple lack Darley's dynamism and depth. Darley has replaced Cruikshank's seedy and cartoonish crowd of bystanders outside the Regency beer shop with an atmospheric backdrop suggestive of early evening (as suggested by the gas-lamp which illuminates Nancy) in the area of Smithfield. As in the text, Nancy's large street-door key and the confiscated books are prominent — but no one is near to come to Oliver's rescue, whereas in Cruikshank's version, Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends the curious and sympathetic bystanders imply that Oliver may yet escape Sikes's grasp. Whereas Cruikshank's Nancy (identifiable by her basket and key) is short, dumpy, and unattractive, Darley's is youthful, slender, and vigorous as she firmly restrains the frightened boy in the expensive Regency clothing that is such a contrast to the thug's. The books, key, and street-lamp, although not portending anything but what they are, reveal that Darley scrupulously re-read the text, and thought through the poses and juxtapositions of his characters, as well as these theatrical properties. A nice touch is Sikes's vigilant dog — a far cry from the slight, short-coated cur in the Cruikshank plates —, a dingy off-white Bull's-Eye, scanning the deserted street, as if he is standing guard over the malefactors to ensure that they are not apprehended — rendering Sikes's later attempting to murder the dog all the more ironic.
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Oliver Trapped by Nancy and Sikes
Chapter 15
Harry Furniss
1910 Library Edition
Text Illustrated:
"Oh, ma'am," replied the young woman, "he ran away, near a month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his mother's heart."
"Young wretch!" said one woman.
"Go home, do, you little brute," said the other.
"I am not," replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. "I don't know her. I haven't any sister, or father and mother either. I'm an orphan; I live at Pentonville."
"Only hear him, how he braves it out!" cried the young woman.
"Why, it's Nancy!' exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.
"You see he knows me!" cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. "He can't help himself. Make him come home, there's good people, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!"
"What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels; "young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly."
"I don't belong to them. I don't know them. Help! help!" cried Oliver, struggling in the man's powerful grasp.
Commentary:
Although in the 1867 Diamond Edition Sol Eytinge presents a thoroughly disreputable, ill-kempt, and disconsolate couple in his dual character study entitled Bill Sikes and Nancy, in Chapter 39, Felix Octavius Carr Darley in his 1888 Character Sketches from Dickens, revises in a much more realistic manner the original Cruikshank interpretation of the abduction scene in Sikes, Nancy, and Oliver Twist. Harry Furniss realizes the Cruikshank abduction scene in Oliver trapped by Nancy and Sikes, a dynamic and baroque treatment of the original, with Sikes approaching from the right as, left, Nancy grabs Oliver.
The Furniss illustration reflects a fundamental re-thinking of the dramatic scene outside the plebeian beer-house, not so far in distance from the respectable book-seller's at The Green, but socially a very great distance away indeed. Furniss reorganizes the scene so that Oliver's being engulfed by Nancy is foregrounded and Sikes, the enforcer, is caught in the act of entering the scene. Furniss is content not to have so many of the scene's onlookers present (he includes just four), and to focus instead on the three principals, Nancy (centre), Oliver (left of centre) and, looming large, Sikes to the right. Through the hitching post and glass door (on which "Spirits" appears prominently) Furniss implies rather than graphs the beer-shop from which Sikes enters the square. He also gives prominence to Nancy's house-key which she drops in wrestling with Oliver. The pair become the evil antithesis of the kindly Mr. Brownlow and his housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin.
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"Bill Sikes"
Harry Furniss
1910 Library Edition
Text Ilustrated:
"Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!" growled a deep voice. "Who pitched that 'ere at me? It's well it's the beer, and not the pot, as hit me, or I'd have settled somebody. I might have know'd, as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford to throw away any drink but water — and not that, unless he done the River Company every quarter. Wot's it all about, Fagin? D—me, if my neck-handkercher an't lined with beer! Come in, you sneaking warmint; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master! Come in!"
The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which inclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves; — the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days' growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.
"Come in, d'ye hear?" growled this engaging ruffian.
A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.
"Why didn't you come in afore?" said the man. "You're getting too proud to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!"
This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.
[Chapter 13, "Some New Acquaintances are introduced to the Intelligent Reader; Connected with whom, Various Pleasant Matters are Related, Appertaining to this History".]
In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, in the filthiest part of Little Saffron Hill; a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gas-light burnt all day in the winter-time; and where no ray of sun ever shone in the summer: there sat, brooding over a little pewter measure and a small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of liquor, a man in a velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots and stockings, whom even by that dim light no experienced agent of the police would have hesitated to recognise as Mr. William Sikes. At his feet, sat a white-coated, red-eyed dog; who occupied himself, alternately, in winking at his master with both eyes at the same time; and in licking a large, fresh cut on one side of his mouth, which appeared to be the result of some recent conflict.
[Chapter 15, "Showing how very fond of Oliver Twist, the Merry Old Jew and Miss Nancy were,"]
Commentary:
Curiously, editor J. A. Hammerton has not included a descriptive passage that suggests where in the letterpress this character study should be situated; this omission suggests that Hammerton believed there was no one moment that the illustrator of' the Charles Dickens Library Edition had in mind. Sikes is much the same throughout the novel: brutal, determined, and without compassion or imagination. Although he does not include the burglar's constant companion, the "white-coated, red-eyed dog" the ill-treated cur Bull's-eye, Harry Furniss has modelled his full-length portrait of the scowling Sikes on both realisations by Cruikshank and Mahoney, notably the thug in the dingy white beaver and long great coat in "You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?" offered Furniss workable models, both of which, of course, are directly based on Dickens's original descriptions. Part of Dickens's intention for Sikes seems to have been to use him to debunk the romance of the dashing professional thief established by such figures as Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wilde, William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Shepherd, Edward Bulwer Lytton's Paul Clifford, and — ultimately — John Gay's rakish highwayman Macheath in The Beggar's Opera .
In the original serial illustration introducing Sikes, Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends, Cruikshank depicts the tall, unshaven thug as he grabs Oliver in the back streets of Clerkenwell on his way to return Mr. Brownlow's books. There is no comparable scene in the 1871 Household Edition volume; rather, avoiding a scene already competently rendered by Cruikshank, James Mahoney shows Oliver being pursued as a pickpocket by a mob that includes the real thieves, Charley Bates and The Dodger, "Stop thief!", in Chapter 10.
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"You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?"
Chapter 15
James Mahoney
Text Illustrated:
"Is anybody here, Barney?" inquired Fagin; speaking, now that Sikes was looking on, without raising his eyes from the ground.
"Dot a shoul," replied Barney; whose words: whether they came from the heart or not: made their way through the nose.
"Nobody?" inquired Fagin, in a tone of surprise: which perhaps might mean that Barney was at liberty to tell the truth.
"Dobody but Biss Dadsy," replied Barney.
"Nancy!" exclaimed Sikes. "Where? Strike me blind, if I don't honour that 'ere girl, for her native talents."
"She's bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar," replied Barney.
"Send her here," said Sikes, pouring out a glass of liquor. "Send her here."
Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission; the Jew remaining silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired; and presently returned, ushering in Nancy; who was decorated with the bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key, complete.
"You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?" inquired Sikes, proffering the glass.
"Yes, I am, Bill," replied the young Lady, disposing of its contents; "and tired enough of it I am, too. The young brat's been ill and confined to the crib; and —"
"Ah, Nancy, dear!" said Fagin, looking up.
Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew's red eyebrows, and a half-closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance. The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is, that she suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious smiles upon Mr. Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters. In about ten minutes' time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of coughing; upon which Nancy pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and declared it was time to go. Mr. Sikes, finding that he was walking a short part of her way himself, expressed his intention of accompanying her; they went away together, followed, at a little distance, by the dog, who slunk out of a back-yard as soon as his master was out of sight.
Commentary:
In London, having unwittingly joined a gang of pickpockets, a scene strikingly presented in George Cruikshank's sequence of illustrations for the monthly instalments in Bentley's Miscellany, in the April 1837 steel engraving in Fagin's hideout, Oliver introduced to the respectable Old Gentleman, Oliver joins the leading felons, the Artful Dodger and Charley bates on an expedition. Shocked when he realizes the nature of their "trade," Oliver runs, and is mistaken for a pickpocket himself. The affair ends well for Oliver, whom Mr. Brownlow takes into his care at his mansion at Pentonville in Chapter 12, but less satisfactorily for the real thieves.
Whereas Cruikshank, in collaboration with Dickens himself, elected to realize the scene in which Nancy and Bill Sikes abduct Oliver on his way to Mr. Brownlow's book-seller with a package of books, Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends, Mahoney instead introduces the villainous couple prior to their recapturing the boy at Clerkenwell, underscoring the fact that the couple are acting as Fagin's agents. Thus, in the Household Edition James Mahoney reveals that, early on, Oliver seems to be the object of behind-the-scenes machinations orchestrated by the master-thief.
Although Mahoney's treatment of the conspiracy is far more low-key than the energetic abduction scenes by the other illustrators of the novel, it establishes the connection between the confederates — and Fagin's reticence to be completely honest about the matter of Oliver with Sikes, whose powerful form dominates the illustration and marginalizes Fagin's. There is nothing particularly wanton or sharp about Nancy in the Mahoney illustration, as she hardly matches our conception of a London prostitute of the period — although the bonnet, room-key, apron, and basket are exactly as Dickens describes, respectable accoutrements of a woman of questionable integrity. Significantly, Mahoney hides her face from the viewer as she is being duplicitous with Sikes at Fagin's signal. The illustrator intimates that Sikes keeps her supplied with liquor, and that the couple may be addicted to alcohol. It is even possible that Mahoney is implying that the burly Bill is her pimp.
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Oliver's reception by Fagin and the boys
Chapter 16
George Cruikshank
Text Illustrated:
The young gentleman did not stop to bestow any other mark of recognition upon Oliver than a humorous grin; but, turning away, beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs. They crossed an empty kitchen; and, opening the door of a low earthy-smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small back-yard, were received with a shout of laughter.
"Oh, my wig, my wig!" cried Master Charles Bates, from whose lungs the laughter had proceeded; "here he is! oh, cry, here he is! Oh, Fagin, look at him! Fagin, do look at him! I can't bear it; it is such a jolly game, I can't bear it. Hold me, somebody, while I laugh it out."
With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Bates laid himself flat on the floor: and kicked convulsively for five minutes in an ecstasy of facetious joy. Then jumping to his feet, he snatched the cleft stick from the Dodger; and, advancing to Oliver, viewed him round and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a great number of low bows to the bewildered boy. The Artful, meantime, who was of a rather saturnine disposition, and seldom gave way to merriment when it interfered with business, rifled Oliver's pockets with steady assiduity.
"Look at his togs, Fagin!" said Charley, putting the light so close to his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. "Look at his togs! Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut! Oh, my eye, what a game! And his books, too! Nothing but a gentleman, Fagin!"
"Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear," said the Jew, bowing with mock humility. "The Artful shall give you another suit, my dear, for fear you should spoil that Sunday one. Why didn't you write, my dear, and say you were coming? We'd have got something warm for supper."
At this, Master Bates roared again: so loud that Fagin himself relaxed, and even the Dodger smiled; but as the Artful drew forth the five-pound note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally or the discovery awakened his merriment.
"Hallo! what's that?" inquired Sikes, stepping forward as the Jew seized the note. "That's mine, Fagin."
"No, no, my dear," said the Jew. "Mine, Bill, mine. You shall have the books."
"If that ain't mine!" said Bill Sikes, putting on his hat with a determined air; "mine and Nancy's that is; I'll take the boy back again." [Chapter 16, "Relates what became of Oliver Twist after he had been claimed by Nancy,"]
Commentary:
Although Dickens's official illustrator for Oliver Twist in the 1837-8 serial, George Cruikshank, depicts the housebreaker Bill Sikes effectively as the central agent in the scene, the most active figures are the sarcastic Charley (centre), showing Oliver off to the other gang members, and the Dodger, about to ransack Oliver's pockets and discover the five-pound note. Nevertheless, the letterpress opposite establishes the dominance of Fagin (right), cap in hand in a gesture of mock humility.
Indeed, in most illustrated versions of the novel, Fagin is depicted as interacting with and directing the affairs of the other thieves — the exception being the lone figure with the cash-box in Sol Eytinge's Fagin, which conveys captures the master-thief's greed and his general lack of genuine concern for anybody but himself. In the Household Edition, realist James Mahoney focuses on Fagin's chagrin at the Dodger and Charley's having lost Oliver on his first expedition out in "What's become of the boy?", in which Mahoney strips away the pseudo-charming veneer that Cruikshank often conveys. In the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, Furniss in illustrating actually depicts the gang's re-apprehension of Oliver in Clerkenwell, as Sikes (right) burst into the frame while at the far left a grim-faced Nancy grabs the terrified boy in Oliver trapped by Nancy and Sikes, in which the last great nineteenth-century visual interpreter of Dickens inimizes the crowd of bystanders to whom Cruikshank has given such prominence in Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends. The figure of Nancy in the present Cruikshank plate again underscores the ineffectiveness of Cruikshank in depicting women as active participants in a scene. This Nancy is effectively blocked from participating by Fagin's back, whereas in the text she will shortly intervene on Oliver's behalf to preserve Oliver from Sikes's dog, and then from Fagin's assaulting Oliver with a bat. In this Cruikshank illustration there is no forewarning of Nancy's stepping in as Oliver's champion; rather, she smiles at the proceedings as she tucks her arms in her shawl,. a posture indicative of complacency.
The distorted, caricatural forms of Fagin and Sikes complement the laughter of street-wise Charley Bates and the concentration of the Dodger as he checks Oliver's pockets to produce an essentially comic scene in which Oliver does not express fear and loathing, and even Bull's-eye (between Oliver and Charley) seems inert rather than menacing. Cruikshank uses the cartoonist's trick of identifying each character by some salient feature of dress or physiognomy, so that Sikes is identified by white to-hat, Nancy by her large-brimmed hat and shawl, Fagin by his beard, slippers, and bell-shaped dressing-gown, and Oliver by his dark cap and large-collared shirt. The cartoonist enforces the reader's identification with the protagonist by making him once again the underdog and subjecting his form to minimal distortion. Cruiukshank is at his best showing the lively street-boys in action, with Charley taking a dramatic role as a ridiculer of the young swell, a role and posture well-suited to Cruikshank's humorous style.
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"A Beadle! A parish beadle, or I'll eat my head."
Chapter 17
James Mahoney
Household Edition 1871
Text Illustrated:
He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Brownlow and his friend Mr. Grimwig, with decanters and glasses before them. The latter gentleman at once burst into the exclamation:
"A beadle. A parish beadle, or I'll eat my head."
"Pray don't interrupt just now," said Mr. Brownlow. "Take a seat, will you?"
Mr. Bumble sat himself down; quite confounded by the oddity of Mr. Grimwig's manner. Mr. Brownlow moved the lamp, so as to obtain an uninterrupted view of the beadle's countenance; and said, with a little impatience,
"Now, sir, you come in consequence of having seen the advertisement?"
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Bumble.
"And you are a beadle, are you not?" inquired Mr. Grimwig.
"I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen," rejoined Mr. Bumble proudly.
"Of course," observed Mr. Grimwig aside to his friend, "I knew he was. A beadle all over!"
Mr. Brownlow gently shook his head to impose silence on his friend, and resumed:
"Do you know where this poor boy is now?"
"No more than nobody," replied Mr. Bumble.
"Well, what do you know of him?" inquired the old gentleman. "Speak out, my friend, if you have anything to say. What do you know of him?"
"You don't happen to know any good of him, do you?" said Mr. Grimwig, caustically; after an attentive perusal of Mr. Bumble's features.
Mr. Bumble, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head with portentous solemnity.
"You see?" said Mr. Grimwig, looking triumphantly at Mr. Brownlow.
Commentary:
The scene of Mahoney's tenth wood-engraving is Mr. Brownlow's study in the back of his house in Pentonville, and the visitor who stands before him and his friend Mr. Grimwig is none other than the villainous hypocrite, the parish beadle Mr. Bumble, whom Dickens had introduced in the opening chapters. The acquisitive beadle has been attracted to Mr. Brownlow's by a newspaper advertisement offering five guineas reward for information about Oliver. Mahoney, showing the beadle's face in profile, gives the reader little to go on, Bumble's chief feature here being his corpulence. Bumble has not made the journey to north London out of any new-found spirit of altruism; rather, Brownlow's promise of a substantial reward for information about Oliver has prompted his visit:
. . . Mr. Bumble sat himself down in the house at which the coach stopped; and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter. Putting a glass of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the paper.
The very first paragraph upon which Mr. Bumble’s eye rested, was the following advertisement.
"FIVE GUINEAS REWARD.
"Whereas a young boy, named Oliver Twist, absconded, or was enticed, on Thursday evening last, from his home, at Pentonville; and has not since been heard of. The above reward will be paid to any person who will give such information as will lead to the discovery of the said Oliver Twist, or tend to throw any light upon his previous history, in which the advertiser is, for many reasons, warmly interested."
And then followed a full description of Oliver’s dress, person, appearance, and disappearance: with the name and address of Mr. Brownlow at full length.
Mr. Bumble opened his eyes; read the advertisement, slowly and carefully, three several times; and in something more than five minutes was on his way to Pentonville: having actually, in his excitement, left the glass of hot gin-and-water, untasted. [Chapter 17 "Oliver's Destiny Continuing Unpropitious, Brings a Great Man to London to Injure his Reputation,"]
Whereas Cruikshank, in collaboration with Dickens himself, focuses on scene that depicts the return of Oliver to the gang's hideout, Oliver's reception by Fagin and the Boys in Chapter 16, James Mahoney in the Household Edition focuses instead upon the benevolent characters who are trying to locate Oliver after his mysterious disappearance in Chapter 15.
Although four years earlier Sol Eytinge had presented a portrait of the old friends who are trying to effect Oliver's reclamation in his dual character study entitled Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Grimwig, realising them as they appear while Oliver is on his errand to return the books, Mahoney presents the pair as serious Pickwicks: balding, well-dressed, bespectacled, and enjoying a glass of port after dinner in a comfortable, book-lined study.
Although Mahoney's treatment of the incident does not contribute much artistically to the reader's assessment of either of the three characters depicted, the plate — situated in Chapter 16 (when Nancy and Sikes return Oliver to Fagin's custody) but realising a scene six pages later, in Chapter 17 — both contrasts and parallels the malevolent conspiracy of Fagin and Sikes, and pits Mr. Brownlow's intelligence and humanity against the exploitative brutality of Sikes, Nancy, and Fagin.
The fight between Sikes and his dog was weirdly interesting. I got the impression that Sikes was fighting himself, or projecting his self-loathing onto the dog, since the dog didn't do anything to deserve being attacked... Indeed, Dickens makes a comment, "you need two parties to have a fight," which I think is a commentary on the split nature of Sikes's mind. I have read before that the dog is a "mirror character" of Sikes. The dog and him are inseparable and seem to communicate with each other. I'm still wondering the significance of the dog being white and the significance of Sikes's name.
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Many of these commentaries mention the books that Oliver was carrying to the bookseller and the keys that Nancy carries.
We have already touched upon on how books are forming an interesting extended symbol in the novel. When Sikes and Nancy take the books from Oliver I see this as suggesting how Oliver’s chance at improving his lot in life and understanding of himself is being stifled or even stolen from him. If we recall when Oliver is in the hands of Fagin, Mr Bumble, or the undertaker Oliver is constantly being locked up. In this section I would suggest that the key that Nancy carries with her extends the idea of Oliver’s incarceration. Whatever the future holds for Oliver, as long as he is within the clutches of Fagin, Sikes or Nancy he will be a prisoner and someone else will hold the key to his freedom.
I find this whole section of the book difficult to read. I don't even like Oliver hugely, but I still feel horrible for him for precisely the reasons he himself says he feels horrible: it's bad enough that he loses his new and better home, but on top of it, everyone there is going to think the worst of him because he disappears with the books and the cash. And as if that were not bad enough, we get this little inkling of hope when we learn that Brownlow has advertised for him--he hasn't given up on Oliver!--but this is immediately shot down when Bumble turns up to slander him. The poor kid can't catch a break. It's almost a relief to me to entertain Tristram's theory that Brownlow has his own ax to grind in taking Oliver under his wing. It makes me feel a little better about Oliver letting him down. Maybe Brownlow needs to be let down. Maybe he needs to learn to be more constant to those he cares for, even though they are imperfect--to be more like Mrs. Bedwin.
I'm enjoying everyone's reads on the scene with Brownlow and Grimwig staring at the clock. It does seem like some kind of odd (and repeated!) judgment tableau.
Tristram wrote: "After all, he readily takes up Mr. Grimwig’s suggestion of sending little Oliver out with the books and a five-pound-note as though he wanted to prove to his friend that his benevolence is not cast before an unworthy boy...."Prove to his friend or to himself? When you aren't confident about something, especially about the faith you've placed in another person, it's surprising how easy it is for a friend to goad you into doing something you otherwise would not do.
As for Grimwig and that scene of the two old men sitting and waiting, I got the impression that they had sat together many times before, and that Grimwig might be just a little jealous of Oliver. They are old friends, and not just acquaintances or business colleagues. Oliver, while not an adversary, would certainly compete with Grimwig for Brownlow's attention. Actually, there would be no competition; Grimwig would lose.
"They belong to the old gentleman", said Oliver, "to the good, kind, old gentleman who took me into his house, and had me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh,Pray, send them back; send back the books and money."My first reaction was to shout "Come on, Oliver. You lived in a workhouse. When have you ever known anyone to give something back because you asked them too?" Oliver's behavior stretches credulity. Of course, that's stretching 20th-century credulity and not Victorian era credulity. This syrupy innocence may have been just what the audience demanded back then. But then I thought, well, maybe this scene is here to trigger Nancy's performance, which comes next.
After all that's happened to her, would she care about Oliver's plight? How old is Nancy?
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "After all that's happened to her, would she care about Oliver's plight? How old is Nancy?"My footnotes put her at 17, based on her being half Oliver's age when she started working for Fagin, plus 12 years.
It's an amazing scene when Nancy turns like that. She does care for Oliver, I think, but it's a caring based on empathy: she cares about him because of what's happened to her, and because she regrets it so much, and because she sees it now happening to another innocent. Her fury on behalf of Oliver is also fury on behalf of herself.
In the Preface to the Cheap Edition of Oliver Twist, Dickens comments that some readers found Nancy to be unrealistic, and defends her: "It is useless to discuss whether the conduct and character of the girl seems natural or unnatural, probable or improbable, right or wrong. IT IS TRUE. Every man who has watched these melancholy shades of life knows it to be so. "
Hi, Julie!I agree that when Nancy does this for Oliver she does it for herself. That is an important point that should be made. But to the extent she does care for Oliver, I also think it would have been more believable if she hadn't been the one most responsible for returning Oliver to the ruinous person and livelihood she so disdains.
Yes, 17. I wasn't sure if the 12 years was 12 years from the time she began working for Fagin or from some time later.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Hi, Julie!I agree that when Nancy does this for Oliver she does it for herself. That is an important point that should be made. But to the extent she does care for Oliver, I also think it would h..."
You're right! She's really flipped positions. But a catastrophic sense of guilt might do that to someone.
Quite right. We don't know that much about her yet. We actually know more about her history than we do her personality. For example, we don't how much her past has effected her ability to cope with the present. If she's a minor character, we may never know, but I hope we do.
And I don't want to lose sight of the possibility that this may be nothing more than a young author still learning his craft. I believe Dickens is in his mid twenties at this time, a very young age for a published writer. Was it different in Victorian England?
There is so much in these chapters!On the topic of Oliver's clothes:
Yes, I could see them as being vivid symbols. He begins in raggy clothes ("sad rags" as it says in Ch.14), but Brownlow provides him with all new clothing. His old clothes are sold, and Oliver is "quite delighted to think they were safely gone, and that there was now no possible danger of his ever being able to wear them again." I thought the words 'safely' and 'danger' were significant here. That the clothing he's wearing at the time indicates danger versus safety/security.
Also, I rather enjoy pondering the friendship between Brownlow and Grimwig: one a benevolent optimist and the other a stubborn curmudgeon, maintaining long years of friendship nonetheless. It says at the end of that chapter (14) that Grimwig "was not by any means a bad-hearted man" and that he would have been "unfeignedly sorry to see his respected friend duped and deceived..." And I like to think that's how Brownlow could be expected to BE his friend. Like, he's one of the few to see past Grimwig's hard outer shell, to his chewy center. But I may be reading too much there; I hope we learn more about them.
And this is to say nothing of the tableau of the two men sitting in silence with the watch between them (brilliant!) ... which many of you have already commented on so intelligently.
Why is Brownlow named Brownlow? Assuming most (some?) of Dickens characters get a name that at least partially identifies their character or something about them, what could Brownlow mean? I already see the grim in Grimwig showing itself. Perhaps he's more cynical than grim, but there is a closeness between the two words, I think.Twist, in we've already seen one or two twists in Oliver's life.
Bumble the Beadle. A bumbling church official and a tip of the hat to alliteration.
Bill Sikes -- One possibility -- a sike is a gutter or ditch especially in Scotland or Northern England.
Sowerberry has been discussed
Fang the magistrate.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Why is Brownlow named Brownlow? Assuming most (some?) of Dickens characters get a name that at least partially identifies their character or something about them, what could Brownlow mean?..."Yes! I wonder too, what does Brownlow mean? He is brown. And he is low. Brown, low. Brown, low. Roots, perhaps? He is Oliver's roots?
I agree, Sikes might be a ditch or gutter. He and his dog, Bull's-eye, represent a target. Sikes is the ditch, the outer rim, while Bull's-eye is the center. Sikes is always trying to strike the "Bull's-eye," literally chasing the dog with a poker, but his behavior is wrong. Sikes is sinner. To "sin" means to miss the mark, and this is why he's the gutter.
Tristram wrote: "If one took a very critical view, could one not take this to imply that the narrator wants his readers to understand that the two characters, both of them being Jewish, are in cahoots with each other? Is this not rather stereotypical?..."Tangentially related, maybe:
Fagin is a Jew and a fence. Wikipedia says Dickens said Jews were fences at the time, and that's why he portrayed Fagin as one. That can be debated.
In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov kills a fence. She isn't presented to the reader any better than is Fagin, but she is never, as far as I remember, specifically called a Jew. Still, I felt the idea of her being a Jew hanging over the entire novel. Raskolnikov never regrets murdering the fence; even when he repents and regrets his crime, he never regrets murdering the fence.
I believe Dostoevsky was a great admirer of Dickens, and I wonder if there isn't a link between R's fence and D's Fagin, as I feel there is between R's Sonja and D's Little Dorrit.
Dostoevsky grasped the power of the English writer's artistic vision; he called him a "great Christian," admiring especially Dickens's humbler characters. Moreover, the basis for Dostoevsky's assimilation of Dickens's style and vision was Dickens's treatment of the theme about the need for the reconstitution of society, and especially for the wealthy and powerful to display a greater humanitarianism towards that society's less privileged. As David Gervais remarks, "Dostoevsky saw a poetic spirituality beyond Dickens's morality" (52). As Dickens determined to be their voice in Great Britain, so Dostoevsky determined to be their voice in Russia.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/d...
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Really? I never noticed."
It is very hard to notice ;-)
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Personally, I think that Nancy is a very believable character, and this includes her sticking up for Oliver. Yes, in doing so, she belatedly stands up on her own behalf, seeing in the boy what she was like twelve years ago and sensing that Oliver might be given over to a life as a pickpocket and petty criminal and eventually be hanged. Like Julie, I would also say that the fact that she is clearly responsible for getting Oliver back into Fagin's clutches, for tearing him out of a better world, might indeed be the main reason for her siding with Oliver because she suddenly realizes what she has done and feels very bad about it.
Now, why did she help Sikes and Fagin in the first place? She is clearly dependent on the scoundrels. They not only have the power of inflicting physical violence on her but, what's even sadder, they are her only anchor in a world of vice and selfishness. I don't think that Nancy could live on her own; she depends on Fagin and Bill for shelter. Another thing might be that Nancy is in love with Bill, the man who mistreats her. There are people who cannot help loving a person who leads them a dog's life, and maybe Nancy is one of them.
So, all these reasons might have made her lend a hand in kidnapping Oliver but when she eventually realizes the full meaning and significance of her own part in the play, and recognizes herself in Oliver, her better feelings are aroused. By the way, it is still a matter of better feelings: Charley and the Dodger might have shared Nancy's fate as children, and yet their hearts are so hardened that they do not see the parallel between themselves and Oliver.
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I never saw Aljona Iwanowna as a Jewess and don't think it was mentioned she was one. As it happens, I am planning on re-reading the novel this summer, so I will pay particular attention to this detail. I know, however, that Dostoyevsky, however great an author he was, was quite prejudiced against Jews, but also against Poles and Germans and the West of Europe, which becomes clear in basically any of his novels. His Christian believes were extremely mystical, and I doubt that he as a Pan-Slavist would really have got along very well with the rather progressive Dickens. At least not in a political discussion.
Nevertheless, I, too, see certain similarities between those two authors, and it's probably not a coincidence that, along with Melville and Conrad, they are my favourite authors ;-)
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I think Grimwig, in his way, is trying to protect his friend. I quite like the scenes with Grimwig and Brownlow. Compare their friendship to that of Jarndyce and Skimpole in Bleak House, and suddenly Grimwig looks like a prince among men! Remember that Grimwig knows things about Brownlow's past that we readers are not yet privy to.
I thought I knew most of the names in the Dickens' canon, but this is my first encounter with Grimwig. I can't say it was a joyous meeting.
Mary Lou wrote: "I think Grimwig, in his way, is trying to protect his friend. I quite like the scenes with Grimwig and Brownlow. Compare their friendship to that of Jarndyce and Skimpole in Bleak House, and suddde..."Haha.
I was thinking of Skimpole. But then I thought, oh, what a terribly unfair thing to do to someone I just met, compare him to Skimpole.
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And yet there is a glimpse of humanity in her, and this is what makes her so fascinating as a character, and even more so a female character in this early Dickens novel. When Fagin “inflicted a smart blow on Oliver’s shoulders” she wrests the club from Fagin’s hands and tells Fagin “I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin, ... You’ve got the boy, and what more would you have?” Nancy also claims that she would “put a mark on some of you that will bring me to the gallows before my time.” These words and actions of Nancy show her humanity, and I would suggest are also glimpses of a maternal instinct. Nancy is little more than a girl herself, and yet she is willing to defend to the death a child. When Oliver looks into Nancy’s face as she confronts Sikes he sees her face had turned “a deadly white.”
We do not know the complete history of Oliver’s mother, but she was young. What we do know is that Dickens has been constantly developing the importance and the mystery of his mother’s face. Nancy can be seen as a type of mother figure to Oliver. She will protect him to her own death. Is this not the action of Oliver’s natural mother? Nancy is a product of a society that had little compassion or sympathy for its youth, its destitute and its forgotten. Was Oliver’s natural mother not an abandoned person without a home, and was she also not also a victim of a system, represented by Bumble, that had no sympathy for those in need?
I do not suggest that Nancy and Oliver’s mother are in any way related by blood, but I do believe Dickens saw both Nancy and Oliver’s mother as women who were victims of a society that had little or no compassion; they are related by circumstance, and both trapped in their own way.
In my mind, we must wait until D&S and Edith Dombey to find another female who is as intriguing as Nancy.
Tristram wrote: "Our last chapter this week promises us some further complications since it brings Mr. Bumble to London – he has to transfer some paupers –, where an advertisement catches his attention, namely that..."I just finished the last chapter, and am I glad I did. Bumble the Beadle may well have shown a moment or two of kindness to Oliver, but a moment or two of kindness does not make a kind man. After the telling of his inaccurate and damaging story of Oliver to Brownlow, and his cruel laughter at the way he tosses sickly children into carts when it's raining -- the implication being he is killing them -- I now see the Beadle as an ugly troll, a man of no integrity and of even less class.
As to Beadle getting what he deserves by not getting three times as much in payment for telling a better story of Oliver, I think not. I would say Brownlow is getting what he deserves for not stopping Grimwig when he so egregiously leads the witness with
"You don't happen to know any good of him, do you?" said Mr. Grimwig caustically; after an attentive perusal of Mr. Bumble's features.
Any notion that Mr. Grimwig's attitude toward Oliver is of a protective nature for his friend, is now gone from me. At least at this point.
As an aside: I came across this in my Delphi Dickens (C. 17)."I should like --" faltered the child.
Hey-Day! interposed Mr. Mann.
I suppose this is a typo (Mr.). A little too good for Dickens to have done that intentionally?
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I never saw Aljona Iwanowna as a Jewess and don't think it was mentioned she was one. As it happens, I am planning on re-reading the..."
I haven't read Crime and Punishment in a long time, I'm going to have to go dig it up.
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You're forgetting Little Nell. :-) I should put that in bold so Tristram doesn't miss it.
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Fagin and Bumble
Bill Sikes
Simon Bartram artist
This week we read how Oliver recovers from his illness at Mr. Brownlow’s, how he is kidnapped by Fagin’s gang and how Mr. Bumble comes to London and blackens Oliver’s name. The story as yet has not lost any of its pace and momentum.
Let’s have a look at Chapter 14 first and see what happens here: Oliver is slowly but steadily recovering from his fever, looked after by the good Mrs. Bedwin, who clearly learns to love Oliver and tells him of her two adult children and how they are doing in the world. We also learn that the mysterious portrait that has unsettled and fascinated Oliver has been removed. When Oliver has got well enough to leave his bed, he is sent for by Mr. Brownlow, who tells him that he need not be afraid of ever being sent away again unless his behaviour might give his new friend reason to do this. In this context, Mr. Brownlow also lets out that he has quite often been disappointed by other people – without going into particulars – but that as yet he has not made a coffin of his heart. Chapter 14 also sees the arrival of grumpy Mr. Grimwig – how can he be otherwise, having to bear a name like that? – at his friend Brownlow’s house. Mr. Grimwig is highly sceptical about Oliver, whom he considers to be a dishonest, good-for-nothing scamp and needles Mr. Brownlow so much that this worthy gentleman finally sends Oliver off on an errand to bring back some books and some money to the book-seller.
THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
First of all, there is the mysterious portrait. Apparently even Mr. Brownlow does not know (or want to tell?) who is shown in this painting but we know two things for sure: One, that the woman in the painting bears some likeness to our little protagonist. And two, that there are hardly any coincidences in Dickens that will not show to have some deeper meaning eventually. So, are we to assume that the woman in the picture is Oliver’s mother? And if so, how is Mr. Brownlow connected with that lady? Or will we really witness one of the rare meaningless coincidences in Dickens’s writing?
I also asked myself why Mrs. Bedwin proves so anxious to make Oliver appear at his best when his benefactor sends for him? Has she taken Oliver so much to her heart that she wants him to cut the best possible impression, as she would probably like her own son to do in a similar situation?
Another thing I could not help wondering about was what bitter disappointments there were in Mr. Brownlow’s past. I understood him to be a bachelor, but maybe his disappointments are all the same brought about by members of his own family. Apart from that, do you think it wise in him to talk to Oliver the way he does, i.e. to impress on him the feeling that as long as he showed himself worthy of Mr. Brownlow’s trust and favour, he would find a friend in him? Does this not put undue pressure on the friendless and shy boy? This question brings me on to another, and in this I might show more resemblance to Mr. Grimwig than many another Curiosity, but here it is: Is Mr. Brownlow acting out of pure philanthropy, or does he want to prove to himself that he can still trust in other people? Does he really help Oliver or does he more help himself? After all, he readily takes up Mr. Grimwig’s suggestion of sending little Oliver out with the books and a five-pound-note as though he wanted to prove to his friend that his benevolence is not cast before an unworthy boy. Somehow, the whole situation reminded me of the Book of Job, where God is so sure of Job’s loyalty that he does all sorts of unpleasant things to him and his kin just to prove to Satan that He knows Job better than Satan thinks. Of course, the suggestion itself comes from Mr. Grimwig, which is – I think – important for the story but Mr. Brownlow does not beat about the bush for a long time before accepting it, all the less so since Oliver himself is keen on proving his reliability.
Speaking of Mr. Grimwig, why do you think is he so persistent in casting doubt on Oliver’s honesty and dependability? Mr. Grimwig would not really want to see his old friend disappointed but he also has a perverse pleasure in being right, and so we get a very gloomy final picture of this chapter:
One could spend some time interpreting this last sentence, couldn’t one?
I also liked certain witty remarks on the narrator’s part concerning the craft of an author. Here are some quotations that comment on literature and books. Feel free to comment on them, likewise:
A last thing that struck me as meaningful was the fact that Oliver got a set of new clothes, which is good for Oliver if taken literally, but even better if taken figuratively. The new clothes might stand for the chance of a new life offering itself to him, and we see that Oliver takes the removal of his old clothes by a Jewish pedlar as a possible sign for his not having to leave Mr. Brownlow any more.