Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (71 page)

And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches the conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a little longer space, the thread of these adventures.

I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts. I would paint her the life and joy of the fire-side circle and the lively summer group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her, and her dead sister’s child happy in their love for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the soft blue eyes. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech—I would fain recall them every one.

 

How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him, more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he wished him to become—how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be attained.

Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word: “AGNES.” There is no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before another name is placed above it! But, if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love—the love beyond the grave—of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.

1
(p. 13) “Some of the author’s friends... Fielding: The epigraph is from book 8, chapter 1 of Tom Jones: A Foundling (1749), by Henry Fielding. Dickens is invoking Fielding’s support for his plan to present an honest portrayal of vice.

2
(p. 13) Saint Giles’ ... Saint James’s: Dickens contrasts two very different London districts: Saint Giles’s was a notorious slum area, whereas the Court of Saint James was a center of fashionable life.

3
(p. 14) Hogarth: William Hogarth (1697—1764) was most famous for his series of satirical engravings The Rake’s Progress (1735), which portrayed the seamier side of London life.

4
(p. 14) Johnson’s question: In his Life of John Gay (1779), Samuel Johnson writes that no one is going to ”imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.”

5
(p. 27) workhouse: The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 decreed that all unemployed and destitute people seeking assistance must do so within the workhouse. Victorian workhouses were massive, prison-like structures in which living conditions were intentionally harsh, in order to dissuade all but the most desperate from seeking relief Families were separated, and inmates were required to wear identical uniforms, to sleep in cramped dormitories, and to perform ten hours of hard labor per day. Mortality rates were high.

6
(p. 30) lowest depth a deeper still: Dickens is alluding to Satan’s description of hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667): ”And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep / Still threatening to devour me opens wide, / To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven” (book 4, lines 76-78).

7
(p. 33) half-baptized: Oliver was baptized privately and without the full rites of the Church of England, a measure often taken when it seemed likely that an infant would die before a full baptism could be arranged.

8
(p. 45) indentures were to be conveyed before the magistrate: An apprentice was bound to his master by legal documents, known as indentures, which defined his terms of service. In the case of certain hazardous occupations, such as chimney-sweeping, a magistrate was required to approve the indenture, and to ensure that the contract was voluntarily entered into. Hence Mr. Bumble commands Oliver to say that he ”should like it very much indeed” (p. 46) .

9
(p. 52) millstone: This is an ironic reference to the words of Jesus in the Bible, Matthew 18:6: ”But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (King James Version). Dickens’s heavy irony regarding Mr. Bumble’s hypocrisy and perversion of Christian teachings on compassion continues in the following paragraphs. The beadle wears a large brass button, bearing the “porochial” seal of the Good Samaritan healing the sick and bruised man (Luke 10:30—37). The grimly ironic equation of beadle and Good Samaritan is underscored when we learn that Bumble wore the button for the first time when attending the inquest of a man who ”died from exposure to the cold” (p. 53) in a doorway at midnight, a reference to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16 :19-31 ) .

10
(p. 62) some medicine in a blacking-bottle: The medicine bottle had formerly contained shoe polish. This is an autobiographical reference to an unhappy period in Dickens’s life. When his father was briefly imprisoned for debt, twelve-year-old Charles Dickens was sent to work pasting labels on bottles in a blacking factory. When he fell ill, his friend Bob Fagin tended him with doses of hot water in empty blacking-bottles. Dickens unfairly rewarded his friend’s solicitude by using his name for the villain in Oliver Twist.

11
(p. 85) from the Angel... into Saffron Hill the Great: Oliver and the Artful Dodger entered London from the northeast; the Angel Inn at Islington marked the city boundary. From there they followed a path southeastward to the slums of the East End. Saffron Hill (present-day Holborn) was a notorious haunt of thieves and prostitutes.

12
(p. 103) the renowned Mr. Fang: Fang is based on the notoriously harsh London magistrate Allan Stewart Laing, whom Dickens had observed in action while working on Oliver Twist in 1837. Among Laing’s more outrageous sentences was his committal of three youths to a House of Correction for singing in the street. After much public outcry, he was removed from office in 1838.

13
(p. 141 ) the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry: The Police Gazette or Hue and Cry, was the official London police magazine, providing detailed information of crimes committed and criminals sought and apprehended. No doubt Fagin read this magazine in order to keep one step ahead of the police.

14
(p. 150) what you are?: Although Dickens explicitly identifies Nancy as a prostitute in his preface to the third edition of Oliver Twist (p. 13), her occupation is never more than implied in the pages of the novel.

15
(p. 155) A legal action... about a settlement: According to the 1662 Act of Settlement and Removal, each parish was responsible for its own indigent inhabitants but had no obligations to inhabitants of other parishes. In questionable cases, parishes were eager to prove that paupers were someone else’s responsibility. Bumble is escorting two paupers to the courts at Clerkenwell in the hope that the magistrates will establish their original settlement in a parish other than his own.

16
(p. 188) Bethnal Green Road: Sikes and Oliver travel southwest from the slums of Bethnal Green to the City (an area in the center of London that lies within the boundaries of the ancient city) and then through Smithfield meat market to the fashionable West End. From Kensington they travel on foot and by cart to theThameside village of Chertsey, about 25 miles west of London, in the county of Surrey.

17
(p. 204) out-of-door relief: Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, paupers were given financial assistance in their own homes under a system known as out-of-door relief This system became unpopular because it encouraged employers to keep wages low, counting on the parish to provide supplementary poor relief. After 1834 paupers were required to commit themselves to the workhouse. Bumble, however, chooses to reduce the burden on the workhouse by administering out-of-door relief of such an inappropriate kind (for example, giving uncooked potatoes to a naked and homeless man) that paupers “get tired of coming.”

18
(p. 260) the runners: The forerunners of the London Metropolitan Police were known as the Bow Street Runners. By the early nineteenth century, the runners, a detective force originally set up by the magistrates of Bow Street in 1749, were viewed as poorly trained and inadequate for the task of policing the rapidly growing metropolis. They were replaced in 1839 by a professional police force instituted by Sir Robert Peel.

19
(p. 360) one brief and a motion: A brief is a case as a barrister, and a motion an application for a court ruling; the meaning is that Grimwig was unable to obtain much work as a lawyer.

20
(p. 365) homeopathic doses: Homeopathy, a form of medicine first practiced in the late eighteenth century, is founded on the principle that like cures like. Diseases are treated by the administration of minute doses of a substance that would cause healthy subjects to display symptoms of the disease. However, the tiny amounts of beef and porter given to Charlotte by Noah Claypole signify the latter’s gluttony rather than any concern for his girlfriend’s health.

21
(p. 375) transportation for life: Convicts were transported to Australia and other British colonies to serve out their sentences, or for life; the practice ended in 1863.

22
(p. 408) struck her down: Dickens’s dramatic rendering of this scene became the most celebrated of his public readings, and one in which the author clearly took a ghoulish glee. His son and some of his friends believed that the emotional intensity of Dickens’s frequent performances of “ikes and Nancy” contributed to his early death.

23
(p. 409) such flesh, and so much blood!: This passage recalls Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (act 5, scene 1): “ut, damned spot! Out, I say! ... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”

24
(p. 409) the stone in honour of Whittington: Richard (Dick) Whittington (1358-1423) was a merchant and famous Lord Mayor of London. Whittington came to London as a young boy, determined to seek his fortune. When he discovered that the streets of the capital were not, in fact, paved with gold, young Dick decided to go home. The monument on Highgate Hill marks the spot where, according to the rags-to-riches legend, the boy heard a chorus of London church bells calling him to return and prophesying his bright future: “urn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”

25
(p. 457) Those dreadful walls of Newgate: Dickens was familiar with Newgate, including the condemned cell, having visited the prison in November 1835. He recorded his impressions in “ Visit to Newgate,” published in Sketches by Boz (1836).

Orphan Oliver Twist, it seems, finds no difficulty in being welcomed into the movie theater. In the early twentieth century, the American film industry produced a string of silent cinematic versions. The first was A Modern Oliver Twist (1906); others, all titled Oliver Twist, were released in 1909, 1912, 1916, and 1922. Oliver Twist, Jr. came out in 1921, and Germany released a version in 1920. In 1933 Oliver entered the sound era, though with little initial success.

The first truly acclaimed film was director David Lean’s gloomy 1948 adaptation. Lean, who had directed Dickens’s Great Expectations (1946) and who would direct the epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), depicts a damp and dingy London in all its gruesome vitality; amid thunder and rain, the film opens with a woman on the verge of labor, staggering toward shelter. Oliver is played by the eight-year-old and decidedly waifish John Howard Davies, who embodies the pathos and vulnerability of the street urchin to perfection. (Davies would go on to produce early episodes of the BBC’s classic TV comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.) Twenty-two-year-old Alec Guinness plays the master pickpocket Fagin. Shot in a nightmarish style that enhances Dickens’s bleak story, the film was perhaps too dark and realistic for its time, and Lean’s Oliver Twist was not immediately recognized by critics. Later, however, it attained cult classic status and now is widely considered to be among the greatest British films.