The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Hello friends,

I can't believe it, but I forgot again! Forgot to open the thread that is. The last of the members of our small group just left and I finally got to sit down and that's when it dawned on me I hadn't yet opened the thread. Oh well, here we go.

In Chapter 45 on receiving the note as he entered the gate, Pip makes his way to the Hummums in Covent Garden where a bed can be found at any time of night. He spends the rest of the night weary and wretched, but unable to sleep and all night long is tormented by those words Don't Go Home.

"What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers’, and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied that I felt light falls on my face,—a disagreeable turn of thought, suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw written, DON’T GO HOME."

"When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let not them go home. Then potentially: I may not and I cannot go home; and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again."

Early in the morning he heads for Wemmick's house. Wemmick asks Pip what gate he had come into the city by, that he left a note for him at each gate and will go and destroy them, it is never good to leave such evidence around. Wemmick tells him of something he had overheard the day before, and since he was in his "official" character at the time, he tells him that an unnamed person is in danger and being watched. He tells Pip that he and Herbert moved that certain person to the house where Herbert's fiancée boards.

“The house with the bow-window,” said Wemmick, “being by the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I’ll give you. That is to say: Firstly. It’s altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is—ready.”

Wemmick also tells Pip that Compeyson is still alive and living in London. I would have thought that Compeyson would be willing to just let Magwitch alone if he is the one watching him. Just to forget all that had happened between them all those years ago. Magwitch isn't going to go draw attention to himself by hunting down Compeyson, at least I don't think he will, so I would think Compeyson would let things stay the way they are. But I don't know yet what Compeyson's thought are on the matter. Wemmick also advises Pip to spend the day there with the Aged and rest, and then he can go visit Magwitch in the evening.

“Time’s up,” said Wemmick, “and I must be off. If you had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that’s what I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,—he’ll be up presently,—and a little bit of—you remember the pig?”

“Of course,” said I.

“Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!” in a cheery shout.

“All right, John; all right, my boy!” piped the old man from within.

I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed one another’s society by falling asleep before it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected."

And in Chapter 46 we find Pip making his way to where Magwitch is now in hiding.

"Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks’s Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks’s Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk."

Arriving at the home of Herbert's fiance, he meets Clara for the first time, but poor Clara spends most of her time with her very demanding father. Whether he has a reason to be the way he is I don't know.

“All is well, Handel,” said Herbert, “and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you’ll wait till she comes down, I’ll make you known to her, and then we’ll go upstairs. That’s her father.”

I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance.

“I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,” said Herbert, smiling, “but I have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is always at it.”

“At rum?” said I.

“Yes,” returned Herbert, “and you may suppose how mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler’s shop.”

While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and then died away.

“What else can be the consequence,” said Herbert, in explanation, “if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand—and everywhere else—can’t expect to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting himself.”

He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious roar.

We find that the name Herbert has for Clara's father is Old Gruffandgrim, but his real name is Bill Barley. He is the only family Clara has for her mother is dead. Pip tells us when he meets Clara he finds that she was a most charming girl who might have passed for a captive fairy, whom the Ogre, Old Barley, had kidnapped and forced into his service. Pip and Herbert now go to the rooms that Magwitch is living in and Pip tells us that he decided not to mention Compeyson for fear that he would refuse to leave in his hatred for the man and try to seek him out, which could only lead to his destruction. I guess I was wrong, maybe Magwitch would risk his life yet to et Compeyson. They talk about what they should do to get Magwitch to safety and Herbert comes up with the idea that instead of traveling by the roads it would be safer to leave London on the water.

"Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick’s suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. “We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season; don’t you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first.”

Pip likes this idea and tells us that Magwitch, then Provis, and now Camphill is elated by the idea. They agreed that Magwitch should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw them go by and all was right. The next day Pip buys the boat and begins to go out on the water. Sometimes he went alone, other times with Herbert. He would be out in any weather, but after the first few times no one took any notice of him, none that he saw anyway. He went further as time went by eventually going past Clara's home. The first time they passed Mill Pond Bank, both he and Herbert together they saw the blind towards the east come down. Also, Herbert is a frequent visitor at the home:

" Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate."

The last paragraph makes me wonder if Pip is beginning to care about our convict:

"In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him."

And now I think I will go look for the illustrations, before I forget those too.

"Look here,' said Herbert"

Chapter 46

John McLenan

1861

Harper's Weekly

Text Illustrated:

"Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser’s stores.

As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.

“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; “here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. Here’s her allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of cheese, and here’s her rum,—which I drink. This is Mr. Barley’s breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It’s stewed up together, and taken hot, and it’s a nice thing for the gout, I should think!”

Mr. Wemmick, Senior, Has Breakfast in Bed

Chapter 45

Harry Furniss

1910

Text Illustrated:

"He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set forth the Aged’s breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to placing it before him, he went into the Aged’s room with a clean white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman’s chin, and propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him quite a rakish air. Then he placed his breakfast before him with great care, and said, “All right, ain’t you, Aged P.?” To which the cheerful Aged replied, “All right, John, my boy, all right!” As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these proceedings."

Sorry, these are the only illustrations I found this week. So far.

I have just returned from my Easter holiday, yesterday I did, in fact, and I still have to do my reading for last week and this week so that I cannot share any insights right now. Seeing Kim's illustrations, however, tempted me into writing a little comment: I just wonder at Harry Furniss's idea of Magwitch because to me the bearded guy in the bed does not look like Magwitch at all but rather like a figure from the television of my childhood - a wizward from a British TV show, called Catweazle.

Tristram wrote: "I have just returned from my Easter holiday, yesterday I did, in fact, and I still have to do my reading for last week and this week so that I cannot share any insights right now. Seeing Kim's illu..."

Aren't you home a day or two early?

Oh, as for Catweazle I couldn't resist:







I never heard of him, but doesn't he look a little bit scary for a kids show?

Kim wrote: "And in Chapter 46 we find Pip making his way to where Magwitch is now in hiding.

"Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings..."

Kim

I was glad to see your comment that Pip might be beginning to care about Magwitch. Being chased from his regular lodgings by Wemmick's warning to not go home, Pip can now start to appreciate the value of a home. He tells us that Hummums was "doleful" place of dust and smells and unwelcome insects. Dickens's repeated use of the phrase "Don't go home" throughout the chapter reinforces the fact that a home is a place to value, and without one, a person is rootless. Magwitch is homeless, Estella, in her own way, has been homeless for years, and Miss Havisham has turned her home into a prison of embittered feelings. Now Pip is homeless as well.

I think this is an important chapter as we now have Pip reduced in many different ways. He has no expectations, he appears to have recently abandoned Joe and the forge, he has lost Estella, and now he cannot go home. We have now reached a point where our protagonist must either begin to resuscitate his attitudes and his life or allow his losses to compound to such a degree that he is totally ruined.

How does one come to understand their own weaknesses and to what degree will a person's early errors and failures in life impact their ability to move forward into the future? it will be interesting to see if Dickens plans to make Pip into a success like the earlier David Copperfield or leave Pip hostage to his own self-created world of woes.

Since I haven't found any other illustrations for this week, here is what the film world thought a few of our characters from this installment looked like. They are from the 1946 film.


Wemmick


The Aged

These two chapters further develop the concept of relationships and love. Chapter 45 ends with us being told that Miss Skiffins is expected at Wemmick's castle and Chapter 46 introduces us to the unusual courting situation of Herbert and Clara. Each of these relationships is heightened in interest through the agency of a parental figure - the Aged P in Wemmick's case and Bill Barley for Clara - which adds interest and humour to each situation. These love interests help the reader understand that Pip's infatuation with Estella was more based on fairy tale than fact. Pip needs to learn that courtship and love is not based on money and dreams but rather the practicalities of two humans wanting to be together.

It is also interesting to note how Dickens indicates change and adaptability through then constant changing of Pip's criminal's name. Throughout the novel we have read of the convict, then Magwitch, then Provis and now, most recently, Mr Campbell.

Pip continues to have the "notion of being watched." Pip also mentions at the end of the chapter a dread that there might well be pursuers coming to take Magwitch. This chapter ending is critical for we see Pip once again concerned for the welfare of someone else. There is an irony in this concern for the question arises as to why Pip would appear to have more concern for a criminal than for Joe.

What does Dickens have up his sleeve?

Kim

As always, thank you for the illustrations. I have fallen off the Furniss bandwagon. This week's illustration borders on the bizarre. And talking about bizarre .... wow! All the other illustrations and film pics are weird as well. Wemmick looks down-right creepy and the Aged looks like he escaped from a pie factory.

Kim wrote: "Oh, as for Catweazle I couldn't resist:



I never heard of him, but doesn't he look a little bit scary for a kids show?"

Now you mention it, I did find Catweazle quite unsettling at the time - and what is more, utterly boring. If I remember correctly, he didn't speak but uttered some sort of unintelligible gibberish, and I did not really like that very much as a child. Being an adult, I still cannot abide those street artists who paint their faces white and do not talk a single word and pretend there are invisible glass panes between you and them. They do not give me the creeps, like clowns do, but they simply annoy me.

Peter wrote: "These two chapters further develop the concept of relationships and love. Chapter 45 ends with us being told that Miss Skiffins is expected at Wemmick's castle and Chapter 46 introduces us to the u..."

I was wondering why Dickens gave so much space to Clara and her invalid and testy father in that chapter, and then it occurred to me that in a way, here we have another instance of the pattern "young boy or girl under the thrall of an overbearing (or invisible) parent figure". There are Estella and Miss Havisham as well as Pip and Magwitch, and in a subplot we are now given Clara and Grimandgruff. I don't know why Dickens put them into the novel, but in a way, Herbert's situation is not so much unlike Pip's in that he, too, is in love with a young woman whose parent apparently has different plans for her.

Tristram wrote: "Peter wrote: "These two chapters further develop the concept of relationships and love. Chapter 45 ends with us being told that Miss Skiffins is expected at Wemmick's castle and Chapter 46 introduc..."

I liked your observation of how Dickens often puts a child "under the thrall of an overbearing (or invisible) parent figure." That list would be long if we were to list them all from PP to MED. Yet another of Dickens's major troupes.

Dickens no doubt saw himself in that situation with his father. I am presently reading Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens which argues rather convincingly that Dickens had a rather large thumb in which he held his children under as well.

Tristram wrote: "There are Estella and Miss Havisham as well as Pip and Magwitch."

Not to mention Pip and Mrs. Joe, or Pip and Pumblechook (especially in Pumblechook's mind, as we learn when it is revealed that he claims to be the one to have made Pip a gentleman).

Tristram wrote: "Now you mention it, I did find Catweazle quite unsettling at t..."

From the pictures and your description, Catweazle sounds just awful.

I hope I'm not being presumptuous, but the English word for the silent street artists you mention is "mime." And I agree - not creepy, like traditional clowns, but definitely annoying.

Peter wrote: "Dickens no doubt saw himself in that situation with his father. I am presently reading Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens which argues rather convincingly that Dickens had a rather large thumb in which he held his children under as well. "

I can imagine him being a rather imperious father. Just remember what somebody posted in the old Club, about Dickens wanting some of his sons to go to Australia, and his rather snide remarks about their achievements so far.

Athenæum, Friday Evening, 20th May, 1870.

My dear Mr. Rusden,

I received your most interesting and clear-sighted letter about Plorn just before the departure of the last mail from here to you. I did not answer then because another incoming mail was nearly due, and I expected (knowing Plorn so well) that some communication from him such as he made to you would come to me. I was not mistaken. The same arguing of the squatter question—vegetables and all—appeared. This gave me an opportunity of touching on those points by this mail, without in the least compromising you. I cannot too completely express my concurrence with your excellent idea that his correspondence with you should be regarded as confidential. Just as I could not possibly suggest a word more neatly to the point, or more thoughtfully addressed, to such a young man than your reply to his letter, I hope you will excuse my saying that it is a perfect model of tact, good sense, and good feeling. I had been struck by his persistently ignoring the possibility of his holding any other position in Australasia than his present position, and had inferred from it a homeward tendency. What is most curious to me is that he is very sensible, and yet does not seem to understand that he has qualified himself for no public examinations in the old country, and could not possibly hold his own against any competition for anything to which I could get him nominated.

But I must not trouble you about my boys as if they were yours. It is enough that I can never thank you for your goodness to them in a generous consideration of me.

I believe the truth as to France to be that a citizen Frenchman never forgives, and that Napoleon will never live down the coup d'état. This makes it enormously difficult for any well-advised English newspaper to support him, and pretend not to know on what a volcano his throne is set. Informed as to his designs on the one hand, and the perpetual uneasiness of his police on the other (to say nothing of a doubtful army), The Times has a difficult game to play. My own impression is that if it were played too boldly for him, the old deplorable national antagonism would revive in his going down. That the wind will pass over his Imperiality on the sands of France I have not the slightest doubt. In no country on the earth, but least of all there, can you seize people in their houses on political warrants, and kill in the streets, on no warrant at all, without raising a gigantic Nemesis—not very reasonable in detail, perhaps, but none the less terrible for that.

The commonest dog or man driven mad is a much more alarming creature than the same individuality in a sober and commonplace condition.

Your friend —— —— is setting the world right generally all round (including the flattened ends, the two poles), and, as a Minister said to me the other day, "has the one little fault of omniscience."

You will probably have read before now that I am going to be everything the Queen can make me. If my authority be worth anything believe on it that I am going to be nothing but what I am, and that that includes my being as long as I live,

Your faithful and heartily obliged.

Athenæum Club, Friday Night, 20th May, 1870.
Alfred Dickens

My dear Alfred,

I have just time to tell you under my own hand that I invited Mr. Bear to a dinner of such guests as he would naturally like to see, and that we took to him very much, and got on with him capitally.

I am doubtful whether Plorn is taking to Australia. Can you find out his real mind? I notice that he always writes as if his present life were the be-all and the end-all of his emigration, and as if I had no idea of you two becoming proprietors, and aspiring to the first positions in the colony, without casting off the old connection.

From Mr. Bear I had the best accounts of you. I told him that they did not surprise me, for I had unbounded faith in you. For which take my love and blessing.

They will have told you all the news here, and that I am hard at work. This is not a letter so much as an assurance that I never think of you without hope and comfort.

Ever, my dear Alfred,
Your affectionate Father.



This Letter did not reach Australia until after these two absent sons of Charles Dickens had heard, by telegraph, the news of their father's death.

It's sad to realize that we will probably never see a collection of letters like this ever again. Email and texting, not to mention clearing up questions instantly by phone, have destroyed this level of letter writing.

I agree, although I have to say that while I have always liked writing down stories or poems or stuff like that, writing letters has always been a torture for me.

I still try to send hand-written correspondence (I have a drawer full of stationery, and hate to see it go to waste!), but future generations will find little interest in the quotidian content or the flat prose. But I hope people still get smiles on their faces when they find actual letters in their mailboxes.

I love getting letters. Like Mary Lou we have lots of notecards and paper lying about. It is impossible for us to go to a museum, art gallery or paper store ( yes, they still exist) and not buy something.

Although we necessarily communicate here by electronic means, don't you long for a letter/note with a stamp and actual handwriting.

I'm not suggesting being pen pals but if anyone longs for a letter from Canada with a stamp that has a hockey player on it, send me a PM. Yes, we do have stamps with hockey players on them.

Me too! Until Goodreads, I was a serious penpaller, and still have a few :) Whenever I mentioned this to anyone in real life though, they always assumed I was writing to children, so I kept it under my hat. I still write the odd long letter, though some of them have now become Facebook friends, or exchanger of general letters. Neither is really the same.

Chapter 45 is just so quintessential Dickens, isn't it? All those night horrors, where events of the day assume gigantic proportions. And who else but Dickens could make pieces of furniture so very funny? I'm thinking of the description of the Hummums in Covent Garden, where:

"a bed was always to be got...at any hour of the night...It was a sort of a vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a fourpost bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace, and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner.""

I love this! And I'm sure I've lived in bedsits like that in the past ... though maybe not with a four poster bed ;)

And Chapter 46 too, could only have been written by Dickens! We see so many adaptations of this particular novel, that I forget all the details which they invariably miss out. Herbert's ladylove Clara's family is a scream; her growling father "Old Barley" or as Herbert terms him "Old Gruffandgrim". I do like Herbert! He seems so determined to see the best in everyone :)

I also like that Dickens incorporates fairytales into the most unlikely scenarios, and has Pip imagining Clara as a captive fairy, and Old Barley as an ogre, who has imprisoned her and kept her captive, to look after him. Thanks for picking this out Kim. I don't know of any other author who does this.

Most of all I am struck with the contrast between the two old curmudgeons. There's Wemmick's dear old nodding father, and this one, behaving like an ogre. As Tristram commented, it seems to be a common theme in Dickens to have an elderly relative with an overbearing manner and a powerless and innocent youngster under their control.

I think all the points made here are valid, thanks especially Peter, and am heartily glad that Pip at last seems to be beginning to care about someone other than himself.

He was running out of time. Hadn't he seen how few pages we have left? ;)

It's probably because Dickens has kept quite a lot of his childhood spirit and imagination alive that his novels are so enjoyable and often so exuberant. This would explain the fairytale motives and also his tendency to give character and life to furniture, rooms or houses. I remember that when I was a child, I would also often see a life of their own in articles of furniture - usually a ghostly one, which deprived me of many an hour of sleep. ;-)

Oh yes! Good observation there :)

Tristram wrote: "Peter wrote: "These two chapters further develop the concept of relationships and love. Chapter 45 ends with us being told that Miss Skiffins is expected at Wemmick's castle and Chapter 46 introduc..."

Oh, this is a great take on Clara and her father. I myself was thinking they were added to create yet another layer to the common theme of children being nurtured by a character outside of the family/parental unit...Pip and Joe, Estella and Miss Havisham, Clara and Miss Whimple.

Jean wrote: "Me too! Until Goodreads, I was a serious penpaller, and still have a few :) Whenever I mentioned this to anyone in real life though, they always assumed I was writing to children, so I kept it unde..."

I love this for you, that you are able to correspond still with these friends by pen and paper. :) I find a handwritten letter so much more meaningful than an email, keeping in mind the sender has taken the time out to sit down and write a letter. It's a lovely sentiment.

Kim wrote: "Hello friends,

I can't believe it, but I forgot again! Forgot to open the thread that is. The last of the members of our small group just left and I finally got to sit down and that's when it dawn..."

I was quite taken by the composure of Wemmick, his ability to speak in code to keep separate Little Britain from Walworth, in such a sensitive moment...Talk about remaining level-headed in desperate times.