• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

We are informed in the Preface to “Barnaby Rudge” that “no account of the Gordon Riots having been introduced into ­any work of fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features,” our author “was led to project this tale.” But for this distinct announcement (for Mr. Dickens can scarcely have deceived himself) we should have looked upon the Riots as altogether an afterthought. It is evident that they have no necessary connection with the story. In our digest, which carefully includes all essentials of the plot, we have dismissed the doings of the mob in a paragraph. The whole event of the drama would have proceeded as well without as with them. They have even the appearance of being forcibly introduced. In our compendium above, it will be seen that we emphasised several allusions to an interval of five years. The action is brought up to a certain point. The train of events is, so far, uninterrupted — nor is there any apparent need of interruption — yet all the characters are now thrown forward for a period of five years. And why? We ask in vain. It is not to bestow upon the lovers a more decorous maturity of age — for this is the only possible idea which suggests itself — Edward Chester is already eight-and-twenty, and Emma Haredale would, in America at least, be upon the list of old maids. No — there is no such reason; nor does there appear to be any one more plausible than that, as it is now the year of our Lord 1775, an advance of five years will bring the dramatis personae up to a very remarkable period, affording an admirable opportunity for their display — the period, in short, of the “No Popery” riots. This was the idea with which we were forcibly impressed in perusal, and which nothing less than Mr. Dickens’ positive assurance to the contrary would have been sufficient to eradicate.

It is, perhaps, but one of a thousand instances of the disadvantages, both to the author and the public, of the present absurd fashion of periodical novel-writing, that our author had not sufficiently considered or determined upon any particular plot when he began the story now under review. In fact, we see, or fancy that we see, numerous traces of indecision — traces which a dexterous supervision of the complete work might have enabled him to erase. We have already spoken of the intermission of a lustrum. The opening speeches of old Chester are by far too truly gentlemanly for his subsequent character. The wife of ­Varden, also, is too wholesale a shrew to be converted into the quiet wife — the original design was to punish her. At page 16, we read thus — Solomon Daisy is telling his story:

“I put as good a face upon it as I could, and, muffling myself up, started out with a lighted lantern in one hand and the key of the church in the other” — at this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as if he had turned to hear more distinctly.

Here the design is to call the reader’s attention to a point in the tale; but no subsequent explanation is made. Again, a few lines below —

The houses were all shut up, and the folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one man in the world who knows how dark it really was.

Here the intention is still more evident, but there is no result. Again, at page 54, the idiot draws Mr. Chester to the window, and directs his attention to the clothes hanging upon the lines in the yard —

“Look down,” he said softly; “do you mark how they whisper in each other’s ears, then dance and leap to make believe they are in sport? Do you see how they stop for a moment, when they think there is no one looking, and mutter among themselves again; and then how they roll and gambol, delighted with the mischief they’ve been plotting? Look at ‘em now! See how they whirl and plunge. And now they stop again, and whisper cautiously together — little thinking, mind, how often I have lain upon the ground and watched them. I say — what is it that they plot and hatch? Do you know?”

Upon perusal of these ravings we,