A Disappointement: Miss Manette Testifies

Miss Manette tells the court of her encounter with the prisoner. "He told me he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name". She tells of the jest made by the prisoner, namely that "perhaps George Washington would gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third". Her father, Dr Manette, is then called to testfiy.

Jerry Cruncher, meanwhile, has taken "quite a lunch of rust off his fingers" during the trial, which sparks the question, where does all this rust come from?

BBC World Book Club

Thoughts on literature from around the world.

Five Years Later: Start of the Golden Thread (Book 2)

In the opening of Book 2 we witness Dickens both as storyteller and social commentator. He paints an unflattering portrait of Tellson's Bank in terms of its "ugliness" and "incommodiousness". His reference to the "Barmecide room" with a great dining table that is never used, comes from the term "Barmecide" used in the Arabian nights and refers to "something illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing" (source: worldwidewords). We are introduced to Jerry, the odd-job man employed at Tellson's Bank. "They hanged at Tyburn in those days" writes Dickens; the spectre of capital punishment always lurking in the background of the novel. He refers to the punishment device known as a pillory (the Charing Cross pillory being a famous one, where onlookers would throw rotten food, cats and other objects at the victim), sardonically as a "wise old institution" and the whipping post as another "dear old institution". He attacks the custom of profiteering from people's problems as follows: "people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam" (refers to Bethlem Royal Hospital). The trial we are party to is a trial for Treason committed by Charles Darnay, and the crowd's interest in it is described as "ogreish". Charles' demeanour is very composed, even in the knowledge he is being "mentally hanged, beheaded and quartered by everybody there".

New and Exciting Words!

As a change, we will have a post on words and phrases.

DEMUR (noun) - the act of making an objection, the objection raised e.g. "after some delay and demur"
EDIFYING - enlightening or uplifting so as to encourage intellectual or moral improvement
(often used in the negative e.g. the unedifying involvement with insider trading)
FELICITY - happiness. With "the felicity of hindsight"
RAPACITY - extreme gluttony. "the evident rapacity of the investment banking environment"
RATIONALISM - a branch of philosophy where truth is determined by REASON
LUGUBRIOUS - excessively mournful

The Shoemaker

Monsieur Defarge visits the shoemaker in his cell. The shoemaker's actions are mechanistic - "the haggard eyes...looked up again...with a dull mechanical perception"

"What is your name, my gentle angel" asks the shoemaker.

A Scene of Hunger in Saint Antoine

Chapter five is called "The Wine-shop" and begins with a cask of wine which has been dropped and "shattered like a walnut-shell" in the street. Local people are running to the spot to drink the wine. Once the jollities are complete, a symbolic cloud settles over Saint Antoine, it symbolises "cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance and want". The mill of life is grinding down the citizens of Saint Antoine, as Dickens narrates: "The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger".

Arrival at the Royal George Hotel

Mr Lorry finally arrives at the Royal George Hotel in Dover in Chapter 4. After leaving the coach which is likened to a "dog-kennel" in its "disagreeable smell" and "obscurity", My Lorry is brought to the Concord bed-chamber together with his luggage and hot water. We learn he is waiting for the arrival of Miss Manette, who duly arrives and is anxious to see Mr Lorry. Mr Lorry will accompany Miss Manette to France to take over a property there.

"I know this messenger, guard"

In this atmospheric chapter, we are introduced to Mr Jarvis Lorry, travelling to Dover from London. Mr Lorry tells us he is from Tellson's Bank in London, en route to Paris on business. Tellson's Bank is based on Child & Co of Fleet Street, now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland and one of the oldest banks in Britain, having been bankers to William and Mary who ruled from 1689. He is greeted by a messenger on a cold Friday night in November close to Shooter's Hill and gives him the message "Recalled to Life" - the eponymous theme of book one.

The Age, Epoch and Season

In Chapter 1, The Period, Dickens sets the historical context for the story, but he does it in a very general way. He succeeds in conveying the sense that this is an age of extremes. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...so begins the novel. Dickens continues the periodization by introducing the respective monarchs of England and France; the kings are both described as having a large jaw and Charlotte Sophia is descibed as the queen with the "plain face", Marie-Antoinette the queen with the "fair face". The year, we are told, is 1775, eighty-four years before the ToTC is published. Dickens makes mention of the Cock Lane Ghost, popular with writers of the Victorian era, including Herman Melville and featured in engravings by Hogarth. In describing the situation in France Dickens makes use of the word tumbrils (also spelled tumbrels), two-wheeled dungcarts used to carry prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution. The situation Dickens paints of England is only marginally better than that of pre-revolutionary France. He attacks the state of order and protection, echoing the "seasons" of light and dark in the opening sentences of the book, declaring "the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light". The extent of the problem is manifested in "that magnificent potentate", the Lord Mayor of London, who "was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green" (originally a village on the main road between London and the West). In the backdrop of this portrait, stand the Woodman and the Farmer, allegorical representations of Fate and Death respectively.

Introduction

A Tale of Two Cities was first published in 1859, one year before Great Expectations. It is divided into three books; the first "Recalled to Life", the second "The Golden Thread" and the third is "The Track of a Storm". The author, Charles Dickens, was born in Portsmouth in 1812.