A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Penguin) - Charles Dickens [186]
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe – a woman – had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
‘I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
‘I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
‘I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
‘I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man, winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place – then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement – and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.’
THE END
[END OF INSTALMENT 31]
PENGUIN ENRICHED EBOOK FEATURES
Early Reception of A Tale of Two Cities
The first reviews of A Tale of Two Cities began before the novel was finished with its serial run, as often occurred with Dickens’s fiction. Not only literary reviews, such as the Saturday Review, but also newspapers—the Sun, Examiner, Morning Chronicle, and Observer—all weighed in on the achievements and failures of the novel. These reviews, as well as letters to Dickens from individual readers, influenced the novelist as he wrote the later numbers.
Dickens’s penchant for dramatic incident was universally recognized if not unanimously applauded. Critics disagreed about the aesthetic value of his use of pathos. Highbrow critics derided its popular appeal and disparaged Dickens for “working upon the feelings by the coarsest stimulants,” as Sir James Fitzjames Stephen put it in his essay review of the novel. But other more middlebrow critics, such as the anonymous reviewer in the Sun, admired Dickens’s “extraordinary command over our emotions as a pathetic narrator”—pathetic in this instance being complimentary.
The novel’s treatment of the history of the Revolution was another disagreed upon point. Not surprisingly, the Saturday Review essay by Stephen found Dickens’s knowledge of the momentous events to be scanty, apparently, the critic sneered,