The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Hello all, this week we have four chapters in our installment and we begin with Chapter 26, "Nobody's State of Mind". At the beginning of the chapter we are told that it is a good thing Arthur had made the decision not to fall in love with Pet:

"If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr. Henry Gowan, if not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature becomes distressed."

See, it's a good thing Arthur doesn't love Pet, or so we're told. Over and over and over and over. Early in the chapter there is a conversation between Arthur and Daniel Doyce regarding Gowen and Pet's feelings for him. We find that Daniel Doyce likes Gowen no better than Arthur does, I like Doyce in this conversation:

'Miss Meagles is quite attached to—the—dog,' observed Clennam.

'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than I am to the man.'.......

'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain, 'that he will not make her happy.'

'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last another hundred years, but we think it highly probable.'

We're told the two men often visit the Meagle's home and often meet Mr. Gowan there, and if Arthur had allowed himself to love Pet (which he didn't) it would have been a real trial, but of course, as we know he didn't so it was nothing. Gowen is always very friendly when he meets Arthur and invites Arthur to his home, he wants to introduce him to his mother. Arthur can think of no way to avoid this visit and reluctantly agrees to it and they set a date. This reminded me of the time Uriah Heep invited David Copperfield to meet his mother and David, although he had no interest in meeting Uriah's mother couldn't think of a way out of the meeting. This is the narrator's description of Mrs. Gowan:

"Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her a courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently well-favoured to have dispensed with the powder on her nose and a certain impossible bloom under each eye."

Mrs. Gowan asks Arthur aside to speak quietly with her after the dinner. She asks if the girl is pretty and he tells her that yes, she is very beautiful. He also believes her conduct matches her looks. Mrs. Gowan says she is very sorry her son has chosen a girl with a small fortune and is certain that the Meagles are trying to entrap him. Arthur tells her that this is not true and that Mr. Meagles is very unhappy with the relationship. She tells Arthur that of course Mr. Meagles is acting that way, it is the best way to ensnare Henry. Shortly after this Gowen and Arthur leave and as they return home the chapter ends with these thoughts of Arthur's on why Gowen wanted this visit:

"Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have gradually trailed off again into thinking, 'Where are we driving, he and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and with her, in the obscure distance?' Thinking of her, he would have been troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving that it was not even loyal to her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him he was less deserving of her than at first.

'You are evidently out of spirits,' said Gowan; 'I am very much afraid my mother must have bored you dreadfully.'

'Believe me, not at all,' said Clennam. 'It's nothing—nothing!'

I am at a loss to understand the reason Gowan invited him to meet his mother. Gowen wants him to meet his mother so she could talk to him about Minnie I guess, Mrs. Chivery wanted to meet him to talk about Little Dorrit, what is all the fascination of talking to Arthur about what is going on in their lives?

Our next chapter titled "Five-and-Twenty" begins with Arthur wondering if the interest that Pancks showed in Little Dorrit, and whether his attempts to gain information of the Dorrit family would reveal the secret reason of why his mother had taken Little Dorrit into her hand. How Arthur jumps to that conclusion I don't know, it hadn't occurred to me at all. I just thought Pancks was asking him for information about Little Dorrit because he knew that Arthur was a friend of the Dorrit family (sort of), and everybody who wants to know anything seems to go to Arthur. But Arthur thinks it may be the reason for the injustice he seems to think occurred sometime, no one knows when:

"Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to repair a wrong that had been done in his father's time, should a wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act of injustice, which had hung over him since his father's death, was so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and begin the world anew."

After a visit to Mr. Dorrit, one of those visits that I still don't quite understand why he always seems to be making, he finds Mr. Meagles in his room in an excited state pacing up and down the room. Mr. Meagles tells him that Tattycoram had become upset the night before and had left their home for good. After she had attended Pet to her room that evening she came out of the room in a rage saying that she hated all three of them and was bursting with hate for the whole house.

"Then it all burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't, she wouldn't, she wouldn't!"

Mr. Meagles convinces her not to leave at such a late hour and takes her to her own room, but in the morning she is gone. He has been searching for her ever since. He has already searched the entire neighborhood and now wants to go find Miss Wade and see if Tattycoram may have gone to her. Neither man has an exact address, but they know the street and search it until they come to a dingy house that looks empty, with bills in the window announcing it is to let. It is there they find Miss Wade and Tattycoram. Miss Wade shows no surprise at all at them being there and says she knows they are there about Tattycoram. Mr. Meagles tells Miss Wade they would like to have her back especially since she has been with them such a long time.

Miss Wade then calls Tattycoram into the room. She tells her that Mr. Meagles is willing to have her back, but she says it in this way:

"'See here,' she said, in the same level way as before. 'Here is your patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this gentleman's daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking refuge with me—you can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven. What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?'."

Tattycoram gets angrier and angrier as Miss Wade talks and when she is finished refuses to go with Mr. Meagles saying she would rather die first. Mr. Meagles is upset about how Miss Wade has perverted his actions and distrusts her motivations saying she has a dark spirit inside her and a violent temper. He tells Miss Wade that she cannot do any good for Tattycoram and is trying to make her as wretched as Miss Wade herself is.

The chapter ends with this:

"And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to dismiss the visitors.

'As it is the last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as you have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause. What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.'

This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam followed, she said this to him:

'I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the contrast of her extraction to this girl's and mine, and in the high good fortune that awaits her.'

Although why she brings up Mr. Gowan and Minnie in her last sentence I don't know.

Chapter 28 is titled "Nobody's Disappearance" and we are still with the Meagles, Mr. Meagles has been trying to get Tattycoram to return, but has been unsuccessful. He has written letters to both Miss Wade and Tattycoram and Pet has also written to Tattycoram but they were are returned unopened. They also tried to get another interview with Tattycoram but were denied. Finally Arthur goes to the house in hopes of seeing her only to find the house is empty, the old woman in charge of the house having no idea where they went. Mr. Meagle then tries finding her through advertising in the newspaper with this result:

"Unwilling, even under this discomfiture, to resign the ingrate and leave her hopeless, in case of her better dispositions obtaining the mastery over the darker side of her character, Mr Meagles, for six successive days, published a discreetly covert advertisement in the morning papers, to the effect that if a certain young person who had lately left home without reflection, would at any time apply to his address at Twickenham, everything would be as it had been before, and no reproaches need be apprehended. The unexpected consequences of this notification suggested to the dismayed Mr Meagles for the first time that some hundreds of young persons must be leaving their homes without reflection every day; for shoals of wrong young people came down to Twickenham, who, not finding themselves received with enthusiasm, generally demanded compensation by way of damages, in addition to coach-hire there and back. Nor were these the only uninvited clients whom the advertisement produced. The swarm of begging-letter writers, who would seem to be always watching eagerly for any hook, however small, to hang a letter upon, wrote to say that having seen the advertisement, they were induced to apply with confidence for various sums, ranging from ten shillings to fifty pounds: not because they knew anything about the young person, but because they felt that to part with those donations would greatly relieve the advertiser's mind. Several projectors, likewise, availed themselves of the same opportunity to correspond with Mr Meagles; as, for example, to apprise him that their attention having been called to the advertisement by a friend, they begged to state that if they should ever hear anything of the young person, they would not fail to make it known to him immediately, and that in the meantime if he would oblige them with the funds necessary for bringing to perfection a certain entirely novel description of Pump, the happiest results would ensue to mankind."

This reminded me of Nicholas Nickleby and the Cherryble Brothers, remember them? The identical twin brothers, wealthy merchants who are as magnanimous as they are jovial. Remembering their humble beginnings, they spend much of their time doing charity work and helping those in need. They were based on real people and after Dickens mentioned this in his first preface, the second preface he wrote for the novel read like this:

"One other quotation from the same Preface may serve to introduce a fact that my readers may think curious.

"To turn to a more pleasant subject, it may be right to say, that there are two characters in this book which are drawn from life. It is remarkable that what we call the world, which is so very credulous in what professes to be true, is most incredulous in what professes to be imaginary; and that, while, every day in real life, it will allow in one man no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit a very strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the limits of probability. But those who take an interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of the Author's brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by stealth) some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour."

If I were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sorts of people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unlucky paragraph brought down upon me, I should get into an arithmetical difficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it to say, that I believe the applications for loans, gifts, and offices of profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the Brothers Cheeryble (with whom I never interchanged any communication in my life) would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and would have broken the Rest of the Bank of England.

Finally the Meagles give up the hope they had of bringing Tattycoram back when Doyce and Clennam went down on a Saturday to stay at the cottage until Monday. Doyce takes a coach to the house but Arthur decides to walk. Because of this he finds Pet, or Minnie as we now seem to be calling her, waiting for him as he walks along the path. She tells him she has walked out to meet him knowing he was coming because of Doyce's arrival quite some time ago. She had been collecting roses while she waited and now gave him one or two which he thanked her for. Minnie asks him if he knows that her father is planning another trip abroad and when Arthur answers yes, she tells him they aren’t going abroad, that her father had abandoned the idea. She asks to take him into confidence.

'I could never have been afraid of trusting you,' she returned, raising her eyes frankly to his face. 'I think I would have done so some time ago, if I had known how. But I scarcely know how, even now.'

'Mr Gowan,' said Arthur Clennam, 'has reason to be very happy. God bless his wife and him!'

She wept, as she tried to thank him. He reassured her, took her hand as it lay with the trembling roses in it on his arm, took the remaining roses from it, and put it to his lips. At that time, it seemed to him, he first finally resigned the dying hope that had flickered in nobody's heart so much to its pain and trouble; and from that time he became in his own eyes, as to any similar hope or prospect, a very much older man who had done with that part of life."

Up to this point I never thought for a minute Arthur was really in love with her, but now I'm not so sure anymore. Minnie worries about the void in her father’s life that she will leave behind saying that at first she will not be able to be to him all that she had been in the past. She asks Arthur to be sure to visit her father and to help persuade her father to accept her husband. Arthur promises to do his best. He kisses her cheek and as they meet up with Mr. Meagles and Daniel Doyce she leaves. Daniel soon returns to the house and Mr. Meagles tells Arthur that he always felt as if Arthur had also loved his dead child and had lost her, something which I can't quite understand. It is sad though, more sad than I thought the chapter would be and this is what makes me think that perhaps Arthur loved Pet after all:

"Mr Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on the river's brink in the peaceful moonlight for some half an hour, he put his hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of roses. Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but certainly he bent down on the shore and gently launched them on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away.

The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces on which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheerful. They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had such a ready store to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas."

The final chapter in this installment is Chapter 29 titled "Mrs. Flintwinch Goes On Dreaming". We go away now from the Meagle's and their troubles and go back to Mrs. Clennam and her rather bleak home described as this:

"The house in the city preserved its heavy dullness through all these transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each recurring with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant return of the same sequences of machinery, like a dragging piece of clockwork."

We're told there is a fair amount of business being carried out. Mistress Affery sees her husband having much to do in his office, seeing many people, more than had been there for years. Why? Also he was in and out frequently going to many other businesses. Again, why? He begins to spend evenings at a tavern in the neighborhood where he would look at the shipping news and speak with mercantile sea captains at the tavern. Why? Each day he and Mrs Clennam still met on matters of business; and to Affery it seemed that the two "clever ones" were busy making money. So what is going on?

Little Dorrit is packing up her things at the conclusion of a work day when Mr. Pancks visits Mrs. Clennam saying he was just in the area. Mrs. Clennam tells Mr. Pancks that neither he nor the Casbys have to trouble themselves about her. After he leaves she asks Little Dorrit why Pancks comes to see her and Little Dorrit agrees that Pancks does seem to come to see her but she doesn't know why. Mrs. Clennam then asks her if she has any friends and she says only three, Mrs. Clennam, Miss Flora, and another person she doesn't name. As she is leaving Mrs. Clennam kisses her on the forehead giving us this reaction from Mistress Affery, it's one of my favorite quotes:

"In all the dreams Mistress Affery had been piling up since she first became devoted to the pursuit, she had dreamed nothing more astonishing than this. Her head ached with the idea that she would find the other clever one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then the two clever ones embracing each other and dissolving into tears of tenderness for all mankind. The idea quite stunned her, as she attended the light footsteps down the stairs, that the house door might be safely shut."

Affery takes Little Dorrit to the door and as Little Dorrit leaves Affery sees Pancks is outside waiting for her. He says to Little Dorrit 'Pancks the gipsy, fortune-telling,' as he passes her and then goes away. Mistress Affery who is extremely alarmed at learning that Pancks may be a fortune telling gipsy is further upset by the thunderstorm.

"Mistress Affery, whose fear of thunder and lightning was only to be equalled by her dread of the haunted house with a premature and preternatural darkness in it, stood undecided whether to go in or not, until the question was settled for her by the door blowing upon her in a violent gust of wind and shutting her out. 'What's to be done now, what's to be done now!' cried Mistress Affery, wringing her hands in this last uneasy dream of all; 'when she's all alone by herself inside, and can no more come down to open it than the churchyard dead themselves!'

How did the door blow closed anyway? Don't doors open to the inside? When going inside you push the door open don't you? So if it was windy the door would have blown open, not shut. Anyway, shut it is and it is in this dilemma she is startled by a stranger’s hand on her shoulder. The stranger is described:

"dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about it, and a heap of cloak. He looked like a foreigner. He had a quantity of hair and moustache—jet black, except at the shaggy ends, where it had a tinge of red—and a high hook nose"

He offers to open the door for her if she will go and get her husband when he has opened it, she agrees. He then manages to climb through an open window and opens the door for her. Affery then goes as agreed, to bring home her husband:

"she flew into the next street, and sent a message into the tavern to Mr Flintwinch, who came out directly. The two returning together—the lady in advance, and Mr Flintwinch coming up briskly behind, animated with the hope of shaking her before she could get housed—saw the gentleman standing in the same place in the dark, and heard the strong voice of Mrs Clennam calling from her room, 'Who is it? What is it? Why does no one answer? Who is that, down there?'

So who is our mysterious stranger? I'd also like to know that.

I don't understand why Meagles just doesn't say no, you can't marry my daughter, and pack her up and leave no forwarding address. MiniPet would get over it. What's the point of a patriarchy if you can't steer your daughter away from disaster?

This is such an odd book.

Kim wrote: "Tattycoram gets angrier and angrier as Miss Wade talks and when she is finished refuses to go with Mr. Meagles saying she would rather die first. Mr. Meagles is upset about how Miss Wade has perverted his actions and distrusts her motivations saying she has a dark spirit inside her and a violent temper"

It is kind of fascinating to me how much everything Miss Wade says to "pervert" the situation tallies with everything I have thought about it all along. Apparently I'm a perverse thinker myself.

It is also a little sad how Meagles chalks up everything he dislikes in Tattycoram to the influence of her mother's bad character, without ever knowing anything about her mother except that apparently she wasn't able to take care of her child, who thereby ended up in an orphanage.

Contrast this to how kind Dickens is to the Oliver's mother and Nancy in Oliver Twist, and it seems gratuitously priggish of him.

On Meagles's side I guess we have that he was willing to take Tattycoram back without any fuss (though what an unbearable situation to go back to, if you ask me: even Meagles admits MiniPet probably treated Tattycoram badly the evening she left--and she's just supposed to take that brattiness and nobody tells MiniPet to count twenty-five, I guess because she has a respectable mother). And also Miss Wade is clearly a mean, vindictive person. So of course this won't end up well for T--but I can't blame her for trying.

Kim wrote: "Mr. Meagles tells Arthur that he always felt as if Arthur had also loved his dead child and had lost her, something which I can't quite understand."

I'll say it again: this is a very odd book.

Oh, well, there's another young woman cleared out of the way so we can get on to the inevitable Arthur-Amy, I guess.

Julie wrote: "Kim wrote: "Tattycoram gets angrier and angrier as Miss Wade talks and when she is finished refuses to go with Mr. Meagles saying she would rather die first. Mr. Meagles is upset about how Miss Wad..."

One more thing about this--we've been saying since the start that we might find the Meagles' treatment of Tattycoram to be pretty awful but in the context of the times they would probably be seen as very nice people. But I think this chapter makes it clear that in the context of the times, it was entirely possible for readers to see things the way Miss Wade puts them.

In other words, there was probably a contingent of Dickens's original readership that also thought the Meagles-Tattycoram relationship was tortuously unjust.

Dickens is voting against that readership in this chapter by calling their position "perverse." But he's well aware they're out there, since he just presented their position.

At this point I think there are tons of comparisons.

- Doyce and Clennam being complimentary to each other, the one creative and the other for business, seem to be successful together. On the other hand there is Mrs. Clennam (and her late husband, and Jeremiah) who surrounds herself with business-people and making money only, and when we look at how things are for them the business seems to be going to pieces.

- I found Minnie/Pet reacts very Amy-like to her father. But Minnie is loved and cared for, and dares to make her own choices despite being worried about how her father will keep going, while Amy is taken for granted and does not dare make her own choices.

It seems to me that this book is about balance. The Meagles' overprotectiveness to Pet is balanced by their money and their love giving her that bit of self-reliance that Amy misses. The way they mistreat Tattycoram is balanced by Miss Wade's being angry on her behalf (like no one seems to be angry on Amy's behalf). Etc.

Kim wrote: "Hello all, this week we have four chapters in our installment and we begin with Chapter 26, "Nobody's State of Mind". At the beginning of the chapter we are told that it is a good thing Arthur had ..."

Arthur seems to be a sounding board for others. Both Gowan’s mother and John Chivery’s mother seen to think Arthur is a good person to discuss their son’s emotional state of mind. Where the mothers got that impression must have come from their sons. How else would the mothers even know about Arthur’s existence?

Are we to assume this is Dickens signalling that Arthur’s point of view is to be both noticed and trusted by the reader? As Kim says in message two it seems that anyone who wants to know anything goes to Arthur.

Kim wrote: "Our next chapter titled "Five-and-Twenty" begins with Arthur wondering if the interest that Pancks showed in Little Dorrit, and whether his attempts to gain information of the Dorrit family would r..."

Tattycoram and Miss Wade. Now here is an interesting any mysterious pairing. What, if any hold, does Miss Wade have over Tattycoram? Mr Meagles, one who is generally very co-operative and meek, (Mr Meekagles?) has two sides to him. I still can’t claim to have a hold or understanding of his character. To Arthur and Doyce he has been a model of decorum and friendship. Not so much with Tattycoram and Miss Wade. Perhaps there is something darker yet to come that will explain the contradiction in his character.

Kim wrote: "Chapter 28 is titled "Nobody's Disappearance" and we are still with the Meagles, Mr. Meagles has been trying to get Tattycoram to return, but has been unsuccessful. He has written letters to both M..."

Thank you for including the comments Dickens made concerning the Cherryble brothers in the introduction to NN. While kindness and generosity may be in short display it does exist. I think Dickens’s detailed comments proves that many characters in his novels are based on real people.

Peter wrote: "Perhaps there is something darker yet to come that will explain the contradiction in his character. "

That would be a relief in a way. I have had the impression that we were just supposed to buy into him as an exemplary guy despite any misgivings we might have.

Certainly "dead twin" is dark enough to explain their spoiling of Pet--and that might also explain why they don't just ban her undesirable suitor from the house early on. After all, she likes his dog, and Pet can't be denied.

I would like Meagles a lot better if I thought his treatment of both his child and his ward were flawed responses to trouble in the past, rather than his just being a good guy and exemplary parent-guardian, which he just isn't. So I will root for "something darker yet to come" now. Sorry, Mr. Meagles! ;)

Jantine wrote: "It seems to me that this book is about balance."

Now that I think about it, Meagles had quite the opposition going between ideal Pet and evil Tattycoram, but Pet's gone and ruined that for him by falling for the wrong man, so now Meagles has drawn up his dead daughter and imagined her as the girl who would have done what he wanted (marry Clennam), and--a perfect dead twin is a lot for poor Pet to have to measure up to. No wonder the family needed Tattycoram to keep Pet looking good. Neither of these girls really stands a chance in this family.

Meanwhile Pet becomes a bit more realistic by not being perfect. But indeed, she has had to put up with losing her sibling and being compared to a dead sibling all of her life, and now we see how that dead sibling is made out to be perfect while she tries to make her own choice. I still think she gets more chances to be a balanced character than Amy though.

I’ve just read chapter 25, “Five and Twenty” again and been struck with how much suggested violence exists. At one point we read that Tattycoram’s emotions rise at the prodding of Miss Wade’s cleverly phrased words that suggest Tattycoram may want to return to the Meagles. Tattycoram responds “I’d die sooner.” Later in the chapter we read that Miss Wade laid her hand “protectively on (Tattycoram’s) neck” and then states “Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?”

Throughout the exchange with Meagles Miss Wade remains calm and controlled. At one point Tattycoram is described as having “her bosom swelling high, and speaking with her hand to her throat.” Tattycoram begs Miss Wade to “take me away!” What power is it that Miss Wade has over Tattycoram?

Regarding Tattycoram, Wade tells Meagles that “What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong.”

This exchange was framed earlier in this chapter with the appearance of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. Here is how Dickens sets up the confrontation. Dickens writes that Miss Wade says to Tattycoram, “‘come here, child.’ She had opened a door while saying this, and now lead the girl in by the hand. It was very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged fingers plating the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her composure itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable passion of her own nature.” What could this veiled passion be?

Tattycoram is constantly called a child by Miss Wade. To me the interplay between Tattycoram and Miss Wade has sexual overtones. The words that Dickens chooses, the actions of the characters, and the apparent control that Miss Wade has over Tattycoram suggest a sensual, if not sexual attraction exists between them. If so, then Dickens has moved this novel into previously uncharted territory.

Tattycoram needs Miss Wade to help her fight her battles. Most of us need some help. Tattycoram is fed up with the Mangles and she wants out. Miss Wade seems to be the only one who will help her. Does she not trust Arthur to help her? He seems to help everyone else. And I agree that there were sexual overtones between Tattycoram and M.Wade. Why are we thinking that?
Mangles still does not impress me with his personal skills.

A big thank you to all who have thoughtfully commented so far. I want to assure you that some of us read what you wrote and learn from it. Thanks for thinking and pointing out things to us. peace, janz

Greetings, all. Late to the party this week. Life! I don't get out much (often by choice) and the lock downs over the past couple of years have made it even more of a rarity. This weekend my husband and I had a normal outing - being around lots of people, eating out, etc. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it. And then I read this passage about Mrs. Clennam and it struck such a chord!

The house in the city preserved its heavy dullness through all these transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each recurring with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant return of the same sequences of machinery, like a dragging piece of clockwork.

The wheeled chair had its associated remembrances and reveries, one may suppose, as every place that is made the station of a human being has. Pictures of demolished streets and altered houses, as they formerly were when the occupant of the chair was familiar with them, images of people as they too used to be, with little or no allowance made for the lapse of time since they were seen; of these, there must have been many in the long routine of gloomy days. To stop the clock of busy existence at the hour when we were personally sequestered from it, to suppose mankind stricken motionless when we were brought to a stand-still, to be unable to measure the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than the shrunken one of our own uniform and contracted existence, is the infirmity of many invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost all recluses.

After being out with people on a sunny, unseasonably warm day, coming back home - to what I usually consider my refuge - almost felt like a putting a heavy cloak back on.

That's not to say I feel any sympathy for Mrs. Clennam. Her isolation is certainly self-imposed, and her mobility probably made worse from her own insistence on the wheelchair (I think there's a little "use it or lose it" component there). It does give me even more sympathy for Affery, who's in a prison not of her own making.

Does anyone else wonder if Affery is being drugged? Her confusion and "dreams" - could they be drug-induced hallucinations? Or is she just being abused and somehow gas-lighted?

I think we all know who the stranger with the hook nose and mustache is. Buckle up, folks!

I don't know about the sexual overtones between Miss Wade and Tattycoram, but it is beyond any question that Miss Wade must be moved by ulterior motives and also that she will not leave Harriet more liberty than the young woman had at the Meagles's place. After all, as you said, she refers to her as "my child", leads her into the room and takes her out of it, quite like an object, and treats her as a trophy of malevolence against her two visitors. Of course, if you take into consideration that both these visitors are male, there might be some sort of sexual overtones, with regard to Miss Wade's being driven by a hatred of male persons? What would fit in with this picture, is here repeated question of "Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?" as well as her spiteful remark towards Arthur when he is about to take his leave: Has she got any bone to pick with MiniPet (thanks for that name, Julie! I am going to use it from now on), and why should this be the case? And does she want to strike the Meagleses through Harriet, who would, after all, then be a means to an end? Or can there be a combination between ulterior motives and a genuine interest in Harriet?

Be that as it may, Miss Wade is definitely playing an evil game, as even her house - dark, dingy, a place where you have to grope your way in darkness through a narrow staircase - suggests.

As to Mr. Meagles, this week's chapters have thoroughly convinced me that I dislike the family, mainly for their treatment of Harriet. Let Miss Wade be as self-serving as she might, it does not change one iota of the truth in her assessment of Harriet's treatment at the hands of the Meagleses. Not for a moment does he really stop to consider whether his household might not be unfair to the young girl, and what is more, Arthur even corroborates him in his priggishness. MiniPet is such a spoilt and pampered brat that I look forward with some gloating - I am just a human being after all - to her marriage into the Gowan household. I truly wonder how Mr. Meagles can be so blind as to spoil the lives of two young women.

Oh, dear. It seems I'm in the minority re: Mr. Meagles. I don't really argue with any of the arguments made against him, and his attitude towards Tattycoram. But there is no pretense that this was an adoption and that the family loves her as one of their own. She is more like a paid companion, getting food and board, clothing, etc. in exchange for a home and (presumably) some education. I've seen no evidence of abuse - even of an emotional nature. I do hate it when I'm in a snit about something and after some time passes my husband says, "Feel better now?" in a tone that indicates his opinion that I'd overreacted, so I REALLY get why telling Tattycoram to count to 25 would be grating as all get out, but not enough to warrant running away from such a situation.

Plus, as Kim and Peter have pointed out, it's clearly obvious that we are meant to see Arthur as a good judge of character and a helpful friend. He likes Mr. Meagles, so that makes it hard for me to see anything nefarious in him.

Miss Wade is the forerunner to Miss Havisham. I know some, here and elsewhere, have speculated about a sexual component to the relationship between Harriet and Miss Wade. If so, I think it's solely on Miss Wade's end of things, and less about her love of women than her hatred of men. Harriet is being manipulated, just as Miss Havisham manipulated Estella, spreading bitterness and hatred. And, like Miss Havisham (and Aunt Betsy - who, thankfully, was in a better place with her mental health), I think it has everything to do with being badly treated by a man in her past.

I do feel a bit of compassion for Pet re: her dead twin. It's hard not to idealize a dead person, especially one who never had the opportunity to grow up and be a disappointment. All the hopes of the world are wrapped up in little babies! I had a sister who died when I was a baby, and while my head knows she and I may have had nothing in common, in my fantasies (naturally, I think) I just assume we would have been the best of friends. It's no surprise the Meagles idealize Pet's twin. They certainly aren't going to focus on her the fact that she was colicky or a fussy eater. She would have undoubtedly grown up to be a loving, dutiful daughter, and may well have solved the problems in the Middle East given the chance.

Kim wrote: "it's a good thing Arthur doesn't love Pet, or so we're told. Over and over and over and over. ..."

He is beating a dead horse here, isn't he? :-)
I wonder - has Doyce, too, made the decision not to love Pet?

Jantine wrote: "It seems to me that this book is about balance..."

I think you're right, Jantine. A good observation.

One more observation...

If Miss Wade's animosity towards men was, indeed, a result of being jilted, I think it's safe to say that the man in question really dodged a bullet!

Ok -- I am back - defending Miss Wade. I see her as a modern day defender of women as equal to men. Have I been in this discussion so many times in my 78 years? She sees herself as protecting Tattycoram/Harriet -- and I have been in that position. All I wanted to do was help a woman or student or young person gain the respect as a real citizen of the world and I am accused of being a bitch, hostile, evil, etc. I say don't judge Miss Wade just yet. She has some harsh words and some stringent rules regarding the respect of persons. Harriet felt comfortable and safe with her, not the Mangles. That is a point worth considering. If I feel safe with someone, why should I not look at that person as a protector? I don't regard Miss Wade as evil as some of you do. I regard her as a person who helps Tattycorum, who does not feel safe to go to anyone else, even pure Arthur. Let's wait and see - there is more to this book than we know so far. peace, janz

Mary Lou wrote: "He is beating a dead horse here, isn't he? :-)
I wonder - has Doyce, too, made the decision not to love Pet? "

That's a good question. Doyce gets treated as a sort of helpless savant, but savants have feelings too. I wonder.

Tristram wrote: "MiniPet is such a spoilt and pampered brat that I look forward with some gloating - I am just a human being after all - to her marriage into the Gowan household."

I can't really even look forward to that, because it's just going to make her like Amy, suffering away by sacrificing herself to someone who doesn't deserve it, while the soundtrack violins wail away in the background.

Peacejanz wrote: "Ok -- I am back - defending Miss Wade. I see her as a modern day defender of women as equal to men. Have I been in this discussion so many times in my 78 years? She sees herself as protecting Tatty..."

I think it is quite fair to leave the question as to Miss Wade's moral propensities open because I see your point and am strongly biassed against those Meagleses, whom I regard as thoughtless in their own way, e.g. by putting down Harriet with their Count 25 thing, and also as somewhat smug.

The later Dickens novels give more rounded portrayals of characters. Over time, we have moved from a simple flat character formula of “good guy versus bad guy” to the point where his characters have more depth and roundness which leads to more ambiguity and opportunity to change.

The Meagles are a good example of this. Miss Wade remains an enigma, Arthur oscillates between good guy, weak wimp, and helpless romantic and Mr Dorrit continues to anger me with his helpless-manipulative character. Such a lineup of characters makes the reading of this novel much more intriguing.

Peter wrote: "Such a lineup of characters makes the reading of this novel much more intriguing."

It certainly stirs the emotions. :)

Peter wrote: "Such a lineup of characters makes the reading of this novel much more intriguing."

It does so, indeed - even after the fifth time!

Peacejanz wrote: "Ok -- I am back - defending Miss Wade. I see her as a modern day defender of women as equal to men. Have I been in this discussion so many times in my 78 years? She sees herself as protecting Tatty..."

I totally agree here. I must admit that I don't see Miss Wade as a bad person at all. I see her as a woman who notices Harriet, and offers her the help she might wish she had at that point in life. It remains to be seen if her help is truly helpful, but I can totally imagine Harriet does not feel okay with going back to the Meagles to take care of Pet and be put down all the time just because she was born to a poor, probably single woman instead of with Pet's privilege. I wouldn't trust the friend of the man who always tells me 'count to 25' when he treats me unfairly (even if he thinks he is being fair because of who is my mother, ugh), and rather go to that older woman who understands what I'm going through, either.

Jantine wrote: "Peacejanz wrote: "Ok -- I am back - defending Miss Wade. I see her as a modern day defender of women as equal to men. Have I been in this discussion so many times in my 78 years? She sees herself a..."

What you're saying makes sense and yet I feel the book puts so much pressure on us to like Meagles and dislike Miss Wade. I guess it's the narrator, always describing her negatively and him positively. She is scornful and passionate and repressed and controlling, and I agree there is something not just sexual but predatory in her physical handling of Tattycoram; and Meagles is poor and earnest and consternated and forgiving.

I think Miss Wade has a much more accurate take on Tattycoram than Meagles does, but I'm 100% sure the book means to punish T for going along with her new patron. Even though it was a huge relief to me when somebody called the poor girl "Harriet."

Thanks to you Julie, I would give just about anything right now to hear someone tell MiniPet to count to 25. :-)

Five-and-Twenty

Chapter 27, Book 1

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"Gentlemen!" said Miss Wade, calmly. "When you have concluded — Mr. Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend —"

"Not without another effort," said Mr. Meagles, stoutly. "Tattycoram, my poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty."

"Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you," said Clennam in a low emphatic voice. "Turn to the friends you have not forgotten. Think once more!"

"I won't! Miss Wade," said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and speaking with her hand held to her throat, "take me away!"

"Tattycoram," said Mr. Meagles. "Once more yet! The only thing I ask of you in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!" — Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter 27, "Five-and-Twenty."

Commentary:

Arthur Clennam, at Meagles' insistence, accompanies him in what proves a fruitless quest to persuade Tattycoram, his adopted daughter, to return home. The defiant Miss Wade (left) proves more than equal to the arguments advanced by Meagles and his friend, and Tattycoram, fed up with being treated more like a servant than a member of the family, remains obdurate. Phiz conveys well the characters and motivations of the four characters in Miss Wade's parlor: Meagles is a naïve but sincere petitioner; Clennam is uncomfortable in having been called upon to be Meagles' second; Miss Wade regards both respectably dressed, middle-class males with dark suspicion; and Tattycoram is distraught. Although Meagles is the focal point, Phiz has been careful about making Arthur Clennam appear (as Dickens advised Phiz on 8 November 1856) "as agreeable and well-looking as possible".


...So what do you think of the commentary calling Tattycoram Meagles "adopted daughter" and also saying he is "naïve but sincere".

The first time I ever considered a sexual relationship between Tattycoram and Miss Wade was when I first read this commentary.



Tattycoram and Miss Wade

Harry Furniss

1910

Text Illustrated:

"Come here, child." She had opened a door while saying this, and now led the girl in by the hand. It was very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her composure itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable passion of her own nature.

"See here," she said, in the same level way as before. "Here is your patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this gentleman's daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking refuge with me — you can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven. What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?" [Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter 27]

Commentary:

For as long as the defensive Miss Wade remains her surety, Tattycoram feels that she can continue to thumb her nose at her employers, the Meagles.

A curious point about the present Furniss illustration is that its caption does not closely correspond to a particular passage. Although Furniss stipulates that the following passage is the moment realized, he or his editor, J. A. Hammerton, have condensed Dickens's text substantially: "Come here, child," said Miss Wade, opening the door. "Here is your patron, your master. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant willfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?" This condensed version of the paragraph of dialogue sharpens Miss Wade's criticism of the Meagles, and reveals how she is manipulating "Harriet" (no pet-names for the austere Miss Wade) psychologically. Furniss shows the speaker delivering these lines with considerable hauteur, and the auditor studying the speaker critically.

As the novel opens, feeling resentful about how her adoptive family treat her as her sister's maid, self-pitying Tattycoram falls under the spell of another resentful female, Miss Wade, and runs away to be with this woman in what appears to be the only incidence in Dickens of a lesbian relationship. In Dickens's illustrators' rendering of this scene, Miss Wade seems to be contemplating Tattycoram's case, and considering how she will cope with the younger woman's temperamental fits if Tattycoram is to be her close "companion."

In neither Furniss's nor Phiz's illustration may we regard Tattycoram as a "handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very neatly dressed." In Phiz, Tattycoram is a neurotic wreck seeking shelter, whereas Furniss does not go so far as to suggest she is mentally unbalanced. In the case of the original illustrator, reading the novel in installments, Phiz in producing his illustration would not have had the benefit of reading Miss Wade's telling of her own circumstances in the March 1857 monthly number when he prepared the serial illustration in the autumn of 1855.

Mahoney and Furniss both certainly knew about the contents of that much later chapter in what was originally serial installment no. 16. However, only Mahoney's characterization reifies her supercilious and suspicious nature. In the rest of Little Dorrit, Miss Wade is a mysterious but clearly unpleasant person; Pancks . . . remarks that 'a woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived'".

In his portrait of Miss Wade, Mahoney captures his subject's judgmental nature, her aloofness, and her rigid sense of herself — here, then, is a character that the reader may not like, but one with whom the reader can nonetheless sympathize. One sees little of this complexity in the images of Miss Wade by Phiz and Furniss. The latter illustrator communicates her haughtiness, but little more in her stiff, unbending pose, dismissive gesture, and almost closed eyelids, and Furniss is not nearly so interested in her.

Floating Away

Chapter 28, Book 1

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"Will you come in?" said Mr. Meagles, presently.

"In a little while."

Mr. Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on the river's brink in the peaceful moonlight for some half an hour, he put his hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of roses. Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but certainly he bent down on the shore and gently launched them on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away.

The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces on which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheerful. They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had such a ready store to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas. — Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter 28, "Nobody's Disappearance."

Commentary:

This painterly second Phiz illustration for Part 8, Floating Away (July 1856), a dark plate, realizes the scene in which Arthur Clennam tosses away the roses given him by Pet after she has confirmed her engagement to Henry Gowan, a socialite-sculptor of whom Clennam entertains suspicions that the mask of affable indolence hides an exploitative and mean-spirited disposition. Clennam's grounds for regarding Gowan with antipathy the reader suspects at this point may be conditioned by jealousy.

The eighth monthly part in the original serial has scenes of Mr. Meagles' advising the volatile Tattycoram to count to five-and-twenty in order to calm down before she responds (Ch. 27), and Clennam's throwing rose petals into the Thames (conclusion of Ch. 28). The moonlit scene is in fact anything but romantic as Clennam, having bidden Pet goodnight after her disturbing confirmation of her impending marriage to Henry Gowan, throws into the Thames at twilight the petals of the roses she has given him before their parting. Whereas the reader must locate the moment in the text to uncover the cause of the solitary walker's despondency in the Phiz dark plate, the reader easily detects Clennam's discomfort at Pet's news in Mahoney's Household Edition illustration, in which an abstracted Pet, holding the roses, stands well apart from Clennam, rather than very close to him, as at the end of the melancholy dialogue.

The Phiz steel-engraving captures the last moment in the chapter Arthur Clennam launched the handful of roses on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away. Here and in The Ferry we see the influence of an area of the Thames that Phiz knew well, above the Richmond Bridge. Valerie Lester Browne describes the pair of river scenes as contrasting the novel's pervasive darkness and prison imagery: "Phiz took the opportunity to let a little fresh air to flow through the gloom". Frederic G. Kitton has pronounced Phiz's moonlit dark plate "romantic," "an evening scene, the moon rising behind the trees", even though Clennam's gesture with the roses suggests the termination for his hopes (vague as these have been) of marrying Minnie Meagles. This illustration is one of just eight mezzotints in the original sequence, and features machine ruling in its background. For a more realistic and less sentimental version of the scene between Minnie (Pet) Meagles and Arthur Clennam, see James Mahoney's wood-engraving for the same chapter in the 1873 Household Edition volume, Minnie was there, alone. (Book One, Chapter 28, "Nobody's Disappearance").

Minnie was there, alone.

Chapter 28, Book 1

James Mahoney

Text Illustrated:

Clennam had stopped, not for the first time by many times, to look about him and suffer what he saw to sink into his soul, as the shadows, looked at, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the water. He was slowly resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the path before him which he had, perhaps, already associated with the evening and its impressions.

Minnie was there, alone. She had some roses in her hand, and seemed to have stood still on seeing him, waiting for him. Her face was towards him, and she appeared to have been coming from the opposite direction. There was a flutter in her manner, which Clennam had never seen in it before; and as he came near her, it entered his mind all at once that she was there of a set purpose to speak to him.

She gave him her hand, and said, "You wonder to see me here by myself? But the evening is so lovely, I have strolled further than I meant at first. I thought it likely I might meet you, and that made me more confident. You always come this way, do you not?"

As Clennam said that it was his favourite way, he felt her hand falter on his arm, and saw the roses shake.

"Will you let me give you one, Mr.Clennam? I gathered them as I came out of the garden. Indeed, I almost gathered them for you, thinking it so likely I might meet you. Mr. Doyce arrived more than an hour ago, and told us you were walking down." [Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter XXVIII, "Nobody's Disappearance".

Commentary:

The caption in the American Household Edition, published by Harper and Brothers (New York), has a somewhat more extensive quotation: He was slowly resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the path before him which he had, perhaps, already associated with the evening and its impressions. Minnie was there alone — Book 1, chap. xxviii. Because the illustration occurs some eleven pages ahead of the passage realized, one must anticipate its meaning, read it proleptically, then revert to it when one encounters the scene in which Minnie Meagles and Arthur Clennam part by the Thames near Twickenham.

This present illustration of Arthur Clennam and Pet Meagles by the river is James Mahoney's response to the Phiz illustration for Part 7, Floating Away (July 1856), a dark plate in which Arthur tosses away the roses given him by Pet after she has confirmed her engagement to Henry Gowan.

The eighth monthly part in the original serial has scenes of Mr. Meagles' advising the volatile Tattycoram to count to five-and-twenty in order to calm down before she responds (Ch. 27), and Clennam's throwing rose petals into the Thames (conclusion of Ch. 28). The moonlit scene is in fact anything but romantic as Clennam, having bidden Pet goodnight after her disturbing confirmation of her impending marriage to Henry Gowan, throws into the Thames at twilight the petals of the roses she has given him before their parting. Whereas the reader must locate the moment in the text to uncover the cause of the solitary walker's despondency in the Phiz dark plate, the reader easily detects Clennam's discomfort at Pet's confirmation of the engagement in Mahoney's illustration, in which an abstracted Pet, holding the roses, stands well apart from Clennam, rather than very close to him, as at the end of the melancholy dialogue.

The Phiz steel-engraving captures the last moment in the twenty-eighth chapter Arthur Clennam launched the handful of roses on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away. Here and in The Ferry we see the influence of an area of the Thames that Phiz knew well, above the Richmond Bridge. Valerie Lester Browne describes the pair of river scenes as contrasting the novel's pervasive darkness and prison imagery: "Phiz took the opportunity to let a little fresh air to flow through the gloom". Frederic G. Kitton has pronounced Phiz's moonlit dark plate "romantic" — "an evening scene, the moon rising behind the trees", even though Clennam's despairing gesture with the roses suggests the termination for his hopes (vague as these have been) of marrying Minnie Meagles.

How much of this background Mahoney was aware of is difficult to determine, although Phiz was part of the team of Household Edition illustrators and Fred Barnard, the lead illustrator, had heard many of the anecdotes connected with the original serial illustrations directly from Hablot Knight Browne. Certainly, however, Mahoney would have been aware of the evocative "Floating Away". Why, then, did he react with a revision that minimized the river backdrop and emphasized the figures of Minnie and Arthur, fashionably dressed, young bourgeoisie whose relationship has taken an irrevocable turn as Minnie has acknowledged that she has accepted Gowan's proposal? The figures are realistically realized, and a vigorous wind, perhaps suggestive of change, blows through the picture from right to left, agitating the grass on the riverbank and billowing out Minnie's summer dress and loosely worn hair. Her figure is just as Dickens describes it after the moment suggested by the caption, after the two have met:

"It is very grave here," said Clennam, "but very pleasant at this hour. Passing along this deep shade, and out at that arch of light at the other end, we come upon the ferry and the cottage by the best approach, I think."

In her simple garden-hat and her light summer dress, with her rich brown hair naturally clustering about her, and her wonderful eyes raised to his for a moment with a look in which regard for him and trustfulness in him were strikingly blended with a kind of timid sorrow for him, she was so beautiful that it was well for his peace — or ill for his peace, he did not quite know which — that he had made that vigorous resolution he had so often thought about.

What seems to have interested Mahoney was not the natural backdrop, so elegantly realized in Phiz's painterly composition, but the dialogue leading up to the moment of the rift between Arthur Clennam and Pet Meagles. The Mahoney illustration is therefore rather more complicated than it first appears, as Minnie is as she was at the beginning of the interview, Arthur as he is in the middle of the interview, and the backdrop as it is at the end of the interview. Minnie is holding her bouquet of roses (as when she deliberately intercepts him on the walk back to the cottage that he and Doyce are renting), but he appears to clasping something to his chest — namely the roses that she has given him. Furthermore, the single tree on the riverbank suggests that they are not at the beginning of their walk through the canopy of trees, as the caption would suggest, but rather at the end of that walk. Consequently, the reader has to interpret the wood-engraving as representing both the opening and closing of the interview. Pet gives Arthur the roses before they enter the grove and discuss her engagement; the roses, then, exist in two places, just as the scene realizes both the beginning and end of their walk through "the avenue of trees" which still frame Arthur Clennam in the Phiz illustration. The Mahoney plate by the absence of the surrounding trees implies the conclusion of the interview ("He put the roses in his breast and they walked on for a little while, slowly and silently, under the umbrageous trees".

Their walk ends when the avenue of "umbrageous trees" terminates at the Meagles' garden gate, concluding not merely their discussion but their relationship as she henceforth will be Mrs. Henry Gowan. The Mahoney illustration, then, suggests both beginnings and endings, whereas Phiz's ends with a tragic note of resignation after Minnie has left Arthur by the brink of the river in the growing gloom.

Mr. and Mrs. Meagles

Sol Eytinge, Jr.

Commentary:

The seventh paired character study to complement Dickens's narrative, Eytinge's "Mr. and Mrs. Meagles," characterizes the eminently practical but kindly upper-middle-class couple whom Arthur Clennam met at the quarantine station in Marseilles as comfortable and congenial with one another. Their picture, situated in their retirement cottage at Twickenham but juxtaposed against the opening of Chapter 28, "Nobody's Disappearance," is more likely associated with the domestic scene in the previous chapter, "Five and Twenty" (as in the number to which Tattycoram is to count in order to keep her temper at the latest instance of her young mistress's insensitivity).

Eytinge is perhaps exploiting the superficial "comfort" of the figures since the subject of their amiable conversation is in fact their maid's decamping. The young woman, nicknamed "Tattycoram" after a diminutive of her Christian name (Harriet) and the Coram Foundling Hospital (the realization of the philanthropic vision of sea captain Thomas Coram (1668-1751), was founded in 1739, although the cornerstone of the Bloomsbury institution was not laid until September 1742), has fled to Miss Wade, feeling exploited and put upon by Mr. Meagles' insensitively demanding that she count up to five-and-twenty before saying precisely what she thinks of "Pet" Meagles's behaviour and petulant demands. As complacent bourgeoisie, the Meagles' have several blind spots in their appraisals of themselves and their motivations. This would seem to be the relevant passage:

"I said to mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her [Tattycoram's] story; we see, in this unhappy girl, some reflection of what was raging in her mother's heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was in the world; we'll gloss her temper over, mother, we won't notice it at present, my dear, we'll take advantage of some better disposition in her, another time.

Eytinge communicates the couple's well-matched, cheerful, and "comfortable" dispositions through the matching stuffed chairs the respectably-dressed upper- middle-class, middle-aged couple are occupying in their sitting-room. However, the flaw in Eytinge's method of dual "characterization" rather than "realization" of a specific moment in the narrative is evident here since his subject ought to be the Meagles' family in total, and their relationship with Tattycoram ought to be the subject of the illustration; however, limiting himself to visual character studies of no more than two characters at a time, Eytinge has had to reserve Pet for his dual study of the Gowans, and Tattycoram for a pairing with Miss Wade.

"What's the matter?" he asked in plain English. "What are you frightened at?"

Chapter 29, Book 1

James Mahoney

Text Illustrated:

In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, with her apron as a hood to keep the rain off, ran crying up and down the solitary paved enclosure several times. Why she should then stoop down and look in at the keyhole of the door as if an eye would open it, it would be difficult to say; but it is none the less what most people would have done in the same situation, and it is what she did.

"From this posture she started up suddenly, with a half scream, feeling something on her shoulder. It was the touch of a hand; of a man's hand.

"The man was dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about it, and a heap of cloak. He looked like a foreigner. He had a quantity of hair and moustache — jet black, except at the shaggy ends, where it had a tinge of red — and a high hook nose. He laughed at Mistress Affery's start and cry; and as he laughed, his moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache.

"What's the matter?" he asked in plain English. "What are you frightened at?"

"At you," panted Affery.

"Me, madam?"

"And the dismal evening, and — and everything," said Affery. "And here! The wind has been and blown the door to, and I can't get in." — Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter 29.

Commentary:

The caption in the Harper and Brothers (New York) printing of the Household Edition volume is much more extensive: Why she should then stoop down and look in at the key-hole of the door, as if an eye would open it, it would be difficult to say. From this posture she started suddenly, with a half scream, feeling something on her shoulder. It was the touch of a hand; of a man's hand — Book 1, chap. xxix.

In the background, Mahoney has sketched in the rain falling in sheets over an industrial chimney and houses, with an iron railing (upper right) above a six-foot wall to imply the prison-like nature of the Clennam mansion, and a supporting beam to sure up the outer wall. In the foreground, the stranger fixes a mesmeric gaze on the cringing maid, pinning her against the double entrance-doors of the house, his fur hat and cloak implying his status as a traveler, lately alighted from the continental packet-boat. Since the London to Dover rail route opened only in 1844, he has likely come from the Continent (probably the Pas-de-Calais) on board a Royal Mail packet-steamer, and then traversed the final leg by stage-coach, or a faster, more expensive mail-coach. By 1833 the packet-boats (with paddle-wheels rather than screw propellers) built by the General Steam Navigation Company were carrying the mails from London to Hamburg, Ostend, Boulogne, and Rotterdam, but the time period of the early part of the novel, the late 1820s, suggests that he has crossed from Calais.

The stranger effects an entrance to Mrs. Clennam's house

Harry Furniss

1910

Text Illustrated:

From this posture [Affery] started up suddenly, with a half scream, feeling something on her shoulder. It was the touch of a hand; of a man's hand.

The man was dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about it, and a heap of cloak. He looked like a foreigner. He had a quantity of hair and moustache — jet black, except at the shaggy ends, where it had a tinge of red — and a high hook nose. He laughed at Mistress Affery's start and cry; and as he laughed, his moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache. . . . .

"Let me make, then, a fair proposal. Fairness is a part of my character. I am just landed from the packet-boat, as you may see." He showed her that his cloak was very wet, and that his boots were saturated with water; she had previously observed that he was dishevelled and sallow, as if from a rough voyage, and so chilled that he could not keep his teeth from chattering. "I am just landed from the packet-boat, madam, and have been delayed by the weather: the infernal weather! In consequence of this, madam, some necessary business that I should otherwise have transacted here within the regular hours (necessary business because money-business), still remains to be done. Now, if you will fetch any authorised neighbouring somebody to do it in return for my opening the door, I'll open the door. If this arrangement should be objectionable, I'll go and with the same smile he made a significant feint of backing away.

Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect the proposed compromise, gave in her willing adhesion to it. The gentleman at once requested her to do him the favour of holding his cloak, took a short run at the narrow window, made a leap at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, and in a moment had his hand at the sash, raising it. His eyes looked so very sinister, as he put his leg into the room and glanced round at Mistress Affery, that she thought with a sudden coldness, if he were to go straight up-stairs to murder the invalid, what could she do to prevent him?

Happily he had no such purpose; for he reappeared, in a moment, at the house door. "Now, my dear madam," he said, as he took back his cloak and threw it on, "if you have the goodness to — what the Devil's that!" [Book the First, "Poverty," Chapter 29, "Mrs. Flintwinch goes on Dreaming"]

Commentary:

This situation has no parallel in Phiz's original serial illustrations, but has an equivalent in James Mahoney's Household Edition illustrations of 1873, although Furniss's version is far more effective as character comedy. The over-the-top poses of the characters are complemented by gothic architectural elaboration around a gloomy portal worthy of Edgar Allen Poe, with a gargoyle leering down upon Affery from the capital, upper centre. Such touches are entirely absent in Mahoney's 1873 treatment of the same scene. The Miltonic overtunes are unmistakable as the Satanic Frenchman's housebreaking parallels Satan's surreptitiously entering the precincts of Eden in Paradise Lost, but Mistress Affery seems more terrified and distracted than the naive, gullible Eve. Significantly, the illustration lacks the usual, lengthy caption of the majority of Furniss's illustrations for this novel, as if he has a situation rather than a particular passage of description or dialogue in mind.

He put in his head at the door of Clennam's sitting-room to say good night. "Come in, come in!" said Clennam

Chapter 26, Book 1

James Mahoney

Text Illustrated:

Mr. Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and would have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr. Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce's mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to Mr. Doyce's turn, rather than to Clennam's, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held together. These were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

Mr. Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of Clennam's sitting-room to say Good night.

"Come in, come in!" said Clennam.

"I saw you were reading," returned Doyce, as he entered, "and thought you might not care to be disturbed."

But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not have known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut it up, rather quickly. — Book the First, "Poverty"; Ch. 26, "Nobody's State of Mind".

Commentary:

Although the novel in serial and volume has been illustrated some four times between 1855-57 and 1910, none of the other illustrators has focused on the interesting, atypical Dickensian character Daniel Doyce, an engineer and business partner of Arthur Clennam, in the sequence of chapters that were originally in Part Eight (July 1856). Rather, in Chapters 26 through 29 Phiz has set the stage for the introduction of Doyce by having Flora and Mr. F.'s Aunt visit the partners' factory ("works") in Bleeding heart Yard (Ch. 23), and in the eighth monthly part has scenes of Mr. Meagles' advising the volatile Tattycoram to count to five-and-twenty in order to calm down before she responds (Ch. 27), and Clennam's throwing rose petals into the Thames (Ch. 28). Mahoney's illustrations for these chapters do neither Daniel Doyce nor his invention any justice; indeed, the best illustration, of Clennam and Pet Meagles, is not particularly engaging, and certainly not as atmospheric as its equivalent in Phiz's sequence, Floating Away (Ch. 28). This omission by the chief illustrators of the novel, as well as by Sol Eytinge, Jr. in the 1867 Diamond Edition and Harry Furniss in the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, is unfortunate as Doyce is representative of the class that would transform Victorian England, the scientific entrepreneur.

At the Circumlocution Office (for which Dickens omits no opportunity for vilification), where he has gone to deal with William Dorrit's chief creditor, Mr. Tite Barnacle, Arthur Clennam through Mr. Meagles meets the innovative engineer who is treated with contempt by the muddle-headed bureaucracy. With Doyce sets up a small factory for which he continues to seek in vain the governmental financial support through the Circumlocution Office. Dickens describes the man of applied science as "a short, square, practical looking man, whose hair had turned grey, and in whose face and forehead there were deep lines of cogitation", but who is regarded as "a public offender" by the Barnacles for his scientific ingenuity exercised over a dozen years in producing "a very curious secret process" with considerable commercial application and importance to the British economy. However, in the text as in the Mahoney illustration, "He was not much to look at, either in point of size or in point of dress". Unlike the earlier illustrators, Mahoney at least includes Daniel Doyce in his cast of characters. And, with eighteen more scenes at his disposal, Mahoney has added satirical portraits of the Barnacles that are wholly lacking in Phiz's sequence. It is odd, considering the emphasis that Dickens as editor Household Words placed in those years on contemporary applications of applied science and principles of engineering, that Browne, acting under Dickens's instructions, did not give Daniel Doyce any place in the illustrations.

Mahoney could have made Doyce more significant had he introduced him in the context of the Circumlocution Office or the works in Bleeding Heart Yard. The earnest, somewhat diffident middle-aged gentleman in sober, bourgeois business clothing shares leased rooms with the young capitalist, Arthur Clennam, in the financial district near the Bank of England, but the present illustration in no way does much to characterize either tenant. Nor does Mahoney distinguish Clennam's room, except for the bell-pull by the fireplace. On his lap is an unopened book, and the nearby gaslight implies that Clennam has stayed up, trying to read and waiting for Doyce's return.

Julie wrote: "Jantine wrote: "Peacejanz wrote: "Ok -- I am back - defending Miss Wade. I see her as a modern day defender of women as equal to men. Have I been in this discussion so many times in my 78 years? Sh..."

Yes. Meagles calls Pet’s maid Tattycoram and seems to think any and all of her problems can be solved by counting to twenty-five. Whatever we may think of Miss Wade to this point in the novel she does use the name Harriet and not Tattycoram. By doing so, Miss Wade gives Harriet her proper identity, and thus, by extension, grants Harriet dignity.

On the other hand, Meagles use of the name Tattycoram is demeaning. The word Coram is based on an orphanage of the same name. The word “tatty” is defined as “cheap, tawdry.” Thus the nickname Tattycoram reduces Harriet’s person and humanity. That Harriet is constantly instructed by Meagles to count to twenty- five is punitive and insulting.

Then again, he calls his own daughter Pet. This name is also reductive in nature. I’m starting to lose my regard for Meagles.

Hooray! to Peter. Beginning to see the light of a simple man thinking he is lord of all. It is an easy deduction based on culture/society at that time and continuing to some people until today. But some of us are fighting it, looking for equity between human beings. Thanks, Peter. peace,janz

Kim wrote: "

Five-and-Twenty

Chapter 27, Book 1

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"Gentlemen!" said Miss Wade, calmly. "When you have concluded — Mr. Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend —"

"Not without ano..."

Kim

I certainly do not like Meagles calling Tattycoram his “adopted daughter.” Meagles reduces his daughter to a pet name by calling her Pet. As we have seen, Meagles has also reduced Harriet to the rather insulting name of Tattycoram. Arthur needed to say no to Meagles and should not have accompanied him.

If we look this Phiz illustration did anyone notice a similarity between it and the illustration of Amy looking out a window and telling a fairy tale to Maggy. Both illustrations have a window through which the sun streams into the room. Both illustrations are focussed on women. In this illustration the sun focusses on Miss Wade and Tattycoram. In the earlier illustration the sun streams on Amy. What, if anything, can we infer from these similar illustrations?

Kim wrote: "The first time I ever considered a sexual relationship between Tattycoram and Miss Wade was when I first read this commentary.



Tattycoram and Miss Wade

Harry Furniss

1910

Text Illustrated:

"..."

I disagree with the comment in this illustration that Harriet is thumbing her nose at her employers. To Harriet, her working conditions with the Meagles was insufferable. As readers we have been given the perspective of only Meagles and his five-and-twenty psychological interventions.

Hopefully Dickens will gives us a perspective from Harriet's point of view.

Kim wrote: "

"What's the matter?" he asked in plain English. "What are you frightened at?"

Chapter 29, Book 1

James Mahoney

Text Illustrated:

In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, with her apron as a hood to ..."

Mahoney has captured this moment perfectly. Affery looks petrified and the traveller looks like he is related to, or is, the devil himself. His facial expression, his extended hand, the gloomy setting of a graveyard-like background and the indication of the leaning, crumbling house, all add up to yet another suggestion that unknown forces and peoples have been unleashed into the narrative.

Tristram wrote: "I don't know about the sexual overtones between Miss Wade and Tattycoram, but it is beyond any question that Miss Wade must be moved by ulterior motives and also that she will not leave Harriet mor..."

I do not respond to Miss Wade and Tattycoram as you do and I think your assumption may be too broad. I do not believe that Miss Wade is "moved by ulterior motives." Miss Wade is the protector of a "poor wretched person who has been misused" and is going to help her. Some of us are just generous at times. When I was a graduate student I met a young woman who was walking in the plaza between building, crying her eyes out, loudly - something was very wrong. I was a much older female and others were obviously going around her, looking at her and doing or saying nothing. I walked up to her, put my arm around her and said, "I will help you." I guided her to a small sitting area away from the main walking area and kept my arm around her and asked her to stop crying and tell me what was wrong. She was a freshman and I can not even remember what her problem was - but she calmed down and we (I sugested) figured out a way to ease her problem. During the next few days, professors and students wanted to know what was wrong when I sat there with a crying girl. I had no ulterior motive except to help her and stop others from avoiding her. It seemed that every person I knew on that campus had seen us or hear of my sitting with an out-of-control girl. Now, Miss Wade is more sharp than I was - I did not speak to any other person while I sat there in the sun and listened to her problem and helped her talk it out. So, some of us just want to help others, and maybe Miss Shaw just wants to help Tattycorum. I do not argue that Miss Shaw is an angel - I argue that she is helping Tattycorum at this moment by chasing away those men. peace, janz

Peacejanz wrote: "I do not respond to Miss Wade and Tattycoram as you do and I think your assumption may be too broad. I do not believe that Miss Wade is "moved by ulterior motives." Miss Wade is the protector of a "poor wretched person who has been misused" and is going to help her. "

What makes me a bit distrustful of Miss Wade is that venemous parting remark she made to Clennam, which suggests that she is quite well-informed about the happenings in the Clennam household and about Pet's being courted by Gowan. From this I infer that it is not just pure interest in Harriet that makes Miss Wade interfere - although, of course, as far as Harriet's treatment is concerned, intereference on Miss Wade's part does her honour - but also a wish to get one over on the Meagles.

In a way, Harriet's position is more awkward than she realizes: On the one hand, there are the insufferably self-complacent Meagleses, who do not even realize that they are putting Harriet down - by giving her that silly name, by making her play maidservant to their oh so wonderful daughter, who is likewise just a kind of semi-stand-in for the dead twin, and by smugly telling her to count 25 whenever she feels angry, and on the other hand there is the rather sinisterly spiteful Miss Wade, who encouraged Harriet to take the leap. But to what end?

Like Peter, I agree that the commentary on the Furniss illustration is somewhat off the mark: Harriet certainly does not thumb her nose at her employers but leave a genuinely dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship, and neither is she "self-pitying" as the commentator suggests.

The interesting thing about the Harriet-Meagles-Wade (and Clennam) situation is that for most of us modern readers the Meagles behaviour would reek of thoughtlessness, smugness, arrogance although it was probably meant kindly by Mr. Meagles himself, who obviously cannot understand what he did wrong (and is confirmed in his ignorance by dutiful Mr. Clennam) and who in saying that Harriet can return (and no apologies needed) does even chalk this forbearance down as his own merit - unconsciously assuming that actually, the blame is all on Harriet's side and if she had to do with a less generous and less humble man, she would undoubtedly have to eat humble pie before being readmitted into the family fold. The point is that our narrator clearly shares Mr. Meagles's reading of the situation and wants us to share it ourselves - and therefore he makes us dislike Miss Wade. As the narrator is the God in the universe of his creation, he can have it that Miss Wade is indeed motivated by ignoble thoughts and aims.

Nevertheless, this does not change one iota in Harriet's feelings of indignation being justified! And in her needing to leave the Meales household! This is something we should not forget, and we should not succumb to the narrator's trick of denigrating Harriet's feelings by denigrating Miss Wade's motives.