The Old Curiosity Club discussion
A Tale of Two Cities
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TTC Final Discussion
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Thanks, Peter. As for the humor, there was, as I think Janz pointed out, sardonic humor, like we might get with Silas Wegg, or Smallweed, or in the Circumlocution Office. But there was precious little warm humor, such as Pickwick chasing his hat down the street, or Mrs. Bagnet suffering her loving family's attempts to spoil her on her birthday. I missed that. The closest we come is the interchange with Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry, the only light moment in an otherwise very heavy novel. I prefer a little more balance. The snark is great and often drives a point home, but I do miss Dickens' gentler humor here.
Dickens relies too heavily on the use of doppelgangers in his stories, to the point where it becomes trite. Had we not seen it so often before, the resemblance between Carton and Darnay, on which the whole book hinges, would have been much more enjoyable for me, though I think he used it well here. Perhaps had I read TOTC first...
Alternate titles? Hmm... Probably something to do with resurrection or reflections, or maybe to do with the blood/wine/communion connection. I've always been taken with Madame Defarge's knitting, but I doubt any title referencing that would sound very literary.
You're right about the cinematic writing. Surprisingly, TOTC is one of the only Dickens' titles that I don't own in a movie adaptation. If I have time later today, I hope to find one streaming somewhere and see how it was handled. Do the films use the same actor for Darnay and Carton, I wonder?
I did miss the larger scope of his longer novels and would have loved another hundred pages or so to do a bit more character development and include some of those scenes that make us really care for (or despise) the people we're reading about.
Question: I'm still unsure why Carton made a point of visiting the wine shop and showing himself to the Defarges before the Big Switch. What was the purpose?
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There is a great b&w version of TTC starring Ronald Colman.
It does seem strange that Sydney would visit the Defarge’s wine store prior to the death of Charles Darnay. The way I puzzle my way through his seemingly brash action is as follows.
The Defarge’s know that Charles Darnay is safely tucked away in jail. Therefore when they see Sydney Carton they may be amazed at the likeness but they know it can’t be Darnay. This suits Sydney just fine. If Sydney can confuse and confound the Defarge’s then he is certain he can trick the prison employees.
We are told that Sydney Carton understands the French language so he will understand everything the Defarge’s and the other patrons of the wine shop say. Therefore, the more the French say about the likeness between Sydney and Charles the better. If the Defarge’s or the other patrons say anything else about the plans for the execution of Charles, Sydney will have foreknowledge of such a plan or action.
There is a great deal of subtle irony in the fact that while the Evremonde brothers were the cause of Mme. Defarge’s grief, Charles (Evremonde) Darnay is ultimately saved by a man who could be his twin brother.
There are many layers of twins, doppelgängers, and mirror images refracting throughout the novel.
Peter wrote: "The Defarge’s know that Charles Darnay is safely tucked away in jail. Therefore when they see Sydney Carton they may be amazed at the likeness but they know it can’t be Darnay. This suits Sydney just fine. If Sydney can confuse and confound the Defarge’s then he is certain he can trick the prison employees."I thought it was so that when "Sydney Carton" left France in a carriage with Manette and Lorry, it would be no big deal if someone noticed his resemblance to Darnay, since the key revolutionaries would already be aware Darnay has a doppelgänger, an Englishman who might be expected to be leaving France soon. As Sydney says before he shows himself there, "It is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here."
So no one would be suspicious if "Sydney" who happens to look exactly like Darnay left the country, and they're not going to stop the carriage to ask what's up.
My overall take: I don't think this is necessarily the best Dickens. The plot is unlikely--there are a lot of coincidences here, including the coincidence of doubles Darnay and Carton. This isn't the worst of Dickensian coincidences (I like that the two men become associated because one happens to notice at a critical moment that he looks very much like the other, so it's not an entirely random thing), but we do still have to suspend disbelief through much of the book. And speaking of giving the benefit of the doubt, I tried very hard this time to see her deeper side, but failed: Lucie remains a pretty flat character, or at least ends up that way despite a potentially promising start. So I wouldn't say it's the best Dickens. I find, however, that it remains my favorite Dickens. I don't mind suspending disbelief as I'm asked to here: I think it's worth it as a sort of thought experiment ("what if two men of opposite character but identical appearance..."). I love the tension throughout the story. The imagery seems to me stunningly rich, and the stylistic experiments--the way the perspective changes, the headlong prose of the storming of the Bastille--seem to me bold and successful. I enjoy the spookiness of it all--from the almost laughable moments (young Cruncher running home in terror from the graveyard) to the horrific (the grindstone). I am never bored when I'm reading this book.
Also I find on this re-read how struck I am by what I see as the everyday heroism of characters like Lorry and Manette. I was so struck by it that I figured I'd be saying at the end how much more I was touched by their small daily sacrifices than by Sydney's grand sacrifice at the end. But instead at the end, I was touched by both. I guess there's room for both kinds of people.
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Julie
Yes. Your logic is perfect. My goodness but this novel gets better every reading and every discussion opens up so many new insights.
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Julie
“ … the best Dickens” and then “the worst of Dickensian coincidences.” Nice.
Yes, Lucie does not give the reader any new type of Dickensian female character. She falls into the role of a support character without much oomph.
I’m always torn when I use the words “best” and “favourite.” I think Bleak House is a massive, complicated and grand novel. Great Expectations, which is coming next, is so tight, so perfect, so much more realistic (at least to me) I find it a marvellous novel.
And then there is Tale of Two Cities. I first read it in my grade 10 English class. I always liked reading but TTC mesmerized me. I distinctly remember crying at parts. I didn’t understand then how a book could be so powerful. With TTC began my lifelong love affair with literature. So here I am some 60 years later still reading Dickens.
To me, Bleak House is the most grand of Dickens's novels and Great Expectations is a marvellous novel but I will always love Tale of Two Cities the most.
Peter wrote: "Julie wrote: "My overall take: I don't think this is necessarily the best Dickens. The plot is unlikely--there are a lot of coincidences here, including the coincidence of doubles Darnay and Carton..."That's a good point! There are many different kinds of best.
Tale of Two Cities is my kind of best. :)
I am thinking now that this is the most "serious and sad" Dickens book. And I cannot define exactly what I mean. Every other book has funny parts and people, deaths and births - this entire book is just serious. At the end, I cannot remember any amusing event - yes, Miss Prost whacks the old knitter, but that is not funny; it is justice. There is satire, overstatement at time, but not funny. All in all, it is a sad book. It ends sadly. Others end with hope. Maybe Our Mutual Friend is sad but I have not read that in many years. So, what other book of Dickens ends on a sad note? peace, janz
Mod
Yes, I too think this is a serious and sad book. On the other hand, we could frame our opinion on the book as the one which shows us the greatest possibilities that exist within humankind. Each of us, as Whitman said, “contains multitudes.”
I can’t think of another Dickens novel that ends on such a sad note from the one’s we have finished. Our next novel is Great Expectations. One could say it has a sad ending as well. Let’s compare the two as we read on.
OK - my last GE was a loooong time ago so this will be a good experiment. Thank you for your comment and your insight. Now I will be looking at GE in a comparative way as opposed to just reading it for a new view. I think GE is the most popular Dickens book in high school English classes here in the US. But my information is 50 years old - last time I worked in HS. Thanks again for your thoughts. peace, janz
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Oh, and now that we're finished here's the book's cover by Phiz, I feel like I'm working backwards:
The Cover - Phiz
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The Trial of Evremonde
Frontispiece
Fred Barnard
The Household Edition
Commentary:
The frontispiece for the slender, 176-page Household Edition of A Tale of Two Cities, first published in volume form in 1859 and reissued as one of twenty green-bound volumes by Dickens's own publishers, Chapman and Hall, shortly after the novelist's death in the larger, double-columned, format (reminiscent of the 1850s journal Household Words) is consistent with the new modes of production and techniques and technologies of illustration of the late 1860s. This large-scale woodblock illustration, probably composed of several blocks glued together, establishes this as an historical novel of epic dimensions in terms of the scope of its narrative. Fred Barnard's "The Trial of Evrémonde" sets the keynote, the legal and extra-legal harassment of blameless individuals caught up in the throes of great historical movements. The original victim of aristocratic malice, the former Bastille prisoner, Dr. Manette, and his married daughter, Lucie, are centre; Charles Darnay, the Liberal-minded aristocrat who has renounced his family name "St. Evrémonde" and fortune, is to the left in the witness box. The courtroom scene from Dickens's second historical novel, the first being Barnaby Rudge (1841), is dramatic both textually and visually as Barnard envisages it as set on stage. However, in contrast to such heroic revolutionary artists as Jacques Louis David, the very English Fred Barnard conceives of this event as staged in a dingy courtroom occupied by ragtag "patriots" — proletarians (left) and a piratical jury of "Jacobins" sporting cockades and revolutionary caps (above). On the wall behind the prisoner, the neatly inscribed "Liberty" and "Equality" are paramount, whereas "Brotherhood" has been scrawled in as an afterthought, implying that the court is devoid of human sympathy and understanding in these dread tribunals. In place of a tricolor flag or other national symbol to suggest the authority of the court Barnard has placed a Phrygian cap on the outlet of the gas-jet, implying that revolutionary fervor — not to say bias — has stifled any possibility for illumination that might guide the whole proceeding.
The frontispiece thus both comments upon and anticipates the highly charged trial late in the story, in Book 3, Chapter 9, and therefore invites the reader to compare the much earlier trial of Darnay as a French spy in the Old Bailey (Book Two, "The Golden Thread," Chapter 3, "A Disappointment"). Whereas Phiz had focused on the impact of the foregone verdict in "After the Sentence" (December 1859) on Charles Darnay's wife (exploiting the sensational and emotional dimensions of the situation in the manner of a Victorian melodrama), Barnard treats the whole affair as mundane, as just another day in the life of a brutal but prosaic revolution. In contrast, in his head note vignette for Book 3, Chapter 1, American illustrator John McLenan had shown an alienated Charles Darnay, ironically well-dressed for the occupant of so dismal a prison cell in "In Secret", then transported to his trial under heavily armed guard in "'You are a cursed emigrant,' cried a farrier", then re-arrested in "The Citizen Evrémonde, Called Darnay" in Book 3, Chapter 6, and finally unseen as he is indicted by his father-in-law's own hand in "This is that paper, written" in Book 3, Chapter 8. McLenan shows us various studies of an isolated Darnay, ending with the head-note vignette for Book 3, Chapter 13 ("Fifty-two"), but fails to depict him in the context of one of the novel's most dramatic events.
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Title-page Vignette
Fred Barnard
"The figure of a female Jacobin, either the Vengeance or Madame Defarge, who is holding up a blood-dripping dagger, sets the keynote as the wind of violent revolution blows through her hair and garments from left (the past) to right (the future)."
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Sidney Carlton faces execution
A. A. Dixon
Cover for the Collins Edition
Illustration from Book 3 Chapter 15
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"The Characters is the Story"
Ornamental title page
Harry Furniss
Charles Dickens Library Edition 1910
Commentary:
A feature of each volume in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), "The Characters in the Stories," as Furniss has entitled the thumbnail vignettes that form the four borders of the title-page, includes most of the characters in the novel: in the top register, left to right, are the principals of the story, often in postures and poses that anticipate their appearances in the full-page illustrations.
Consequently, for example, Furniss describes Charles Darnay (in upper right-hand corner) and Sydney Carton (in the upper left-hand corner) in exactly the poses in which they will subsequently appear. Darnay is seen in profile, with a Jacobin cap above and behind him, in the same posture that he strikes as he pleads his innocence before the revolutionary tribunal in Darnay arraigned before the Judges in Book Three, Chapter Six, "Triumph," a study which also resembles Furniss's study of him at the Old Bailey, The Likeness in Court, in which however, he faces right rather than left, as in the title-page vignette and the French courtroom scene.
Even though A Tale of Two Cities initially appeared in weekly installments in Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round without the benefit of illustration, Furniss nevertheless had two sets of competent illustrations available as references, even if he had not seen the work of American illustrators Sol Eytinge, Junior and John McLenan dating from the 1860s: the sixteen steel engravings in the monthly parts illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and the twenty-five 1874 wood-engravings by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition — to say nothing of the Barnard study of Carton on the scaffold from 1879 for his first series of Character Sketches from Dickens (London: Cassell, Petter, and Gilpin, 1874-79), a version of which, by Toulouse Lautrec admirer John Hassall served to advertise Sir John Martin-Harvey's highly successful stage adaptation The Only Way at London's Lyceum Theatre (which debutéd on 16 February 1899, ran until 25 March 1899 with 168 performances, and was revived some ten times in London up to 1909). And issued just five years earlier than Furniss's edition, the Collins Pocket Edition offered Furniss realistic lithographs as reference points, there being two illustrations of Carton's final moments in that series. Thus, the influences at work in Furniss's frontispiece are legion.
Providing a sort of visual overture to characters and situations in the novel, Furniss offers thumbnail sketches of almost all of the characters, the exceptions apparently being "The Honest Tradesman," Jerry Cruncher, and his son; the road-mender; Gaspard; the chief St. Everemonde family retainer (Gabelle); the wood-sawyer; the Darnay children; and the professional spy for two nations and both sides in the Revolution, Solomon Pross (alias "John Barsad"). The thumbnails filling the borders of the title-page encompass some thirty-seven distinct figures in the sort of ornamental picture-frame that precedes each of the eighteen volumes (including Hammerton's The Dickens Picture Book and The Dickens Companion, volumes seventeen and eighteen). Indeed, sometimes a volume containing several works, such as Volume 13, contain additional title-pages, but these are generally an overview of the most celebrated characters from the novels, as is the case for that for American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy.
As a weekly novel written for a limited number of installments (as opposed to the nineteen-month, full-length novels, beginning with The Pickwick Papers), A Tale of Two Cities, appearing 30 April through 26 November 1859 and simultaneously in eight parts issued over seven months, has a limited cast of characters and concomitantly fewer dramatic scenes appropriate to illustration. Thus, whereas the equivalent page for Pickwick, for example, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition has forty-five figures, this title-page has far fewer recognizable characters: Sydney Carton, raising a glass, perhaps in celebration of winning the Darnay case, and Stryver, striking an aristocratic pose with his walking-stick, exactly as in Mr. Stryver in Book Two, Chapter Eleven (upper left); the idyllic scene under the plane-tree in the garden at Soho: Doctor Manette, Lucie, Miss Pross, and (disappearing off right) Sydney Carton in the center of the top register; Charles Darnay, the heretofore Marquis St. Evremonde, before the Revolutionary tribunal (upper-right); the Marquis as "Monseigneur in Town," trampling a proletarian child, and (below) killing a youth (Madame Defarge's brother) with his rapier (right-hand margin); the St. Antoine Jacobins (lower right); their leaders, the Defarges, in their wine-shop (lower right); the Vengeance, beating her drum as the mob storms the Bastille (bottom center); Madame Defarge, wielding both a dagger and a Sabre as she tramples Foulon (lower left); Jarvis Lorry on his stool in Tellson's counting-house (lower left-hand corner); above him, the coachman on the Dover Road and Aggerawayter, Jerry Cruncher's much-abused wife; the Judges in the Revolutionary Tribunal; Foulon, a bound captive of the mob; and Lucie, inquiring after her husband with a guard at La Force (upper left).
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Title Page
John McLenan
Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book I, ch. 1
Harper's Weekly ( May 7, 1859)
[This page begins the first installment of the novel, which All the Year Round published in the U.K. on April 30, 1859 — exactly a week earlier than Harper's.]
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In The Bastille
Phiz
Commentary:
This illustration formed the Title-page for the text and served to enable the viewer to reflect on the formative experience of Dr Manette and his wrongful imprisonment for eighteen years in The Bastille. This is the last image Phiz ever drew for Dickens and is highly effective; both in its composition and its positioning within the novel. The viewer peers into the cell through the portal of the framing arch: we notice the enormous stone blocks which form an inescapable structure; the heavy chains on the wall; the meager bedding and the ewer on the floor. The casting of the light illuminates the face of the weary figure at the center of the picture. Dr Manette is old, exhausted and broken, hunched over something to occupy his mind against the horror of what has happened to him. It is a striking, poignant and incredibly moving image. Through this illustration we really grasp the horror of the injustice perpetrated against Dr Manette by the Evremonde brothers. Many have paralleled this image with Cruikshank's image of Fagin in Oliver Twist as he awaits execution.
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From John Forster's "The Life of Charles Dickens":
Dickens's next story to Little Dorrit was the Tale of Two Cities, of which the first notion occurred to him while acting with his friends and his children in the summer of 1857 in Mr. Wilkie Collins's drama of The Frozen Deep. But it was only a vague fancy, and the sadness and trouble of the winter of that year were not favorable to it. Towards the close (27th) of January 1858, talking of improvements at Gadshill in which he took little interest, it was again in his thoughts.
"Growing inclinations of a fitful and undefined sort are upon me sometimes to fall to work on a new book. Then I think I had better not worry my worried mind yet awhile. Then I think it would be of no use if I did, for I couldn't settle to one occupation.—And that's all!"
"If I can discipline my thoughts," he wrote three days later, "into the channel of a story, I have made up my mind to get to work on one: always supposing that I find myself, on the trial, able to do well. Nothing whatever will do me the least 'good' in the way of shaking the one strong possession of change impending over us that every day makes stronger; but if I could work on with some approach to steadiness, through the summer, the anxious toil of a new book would have its neck well broken before beginning to publish, next October or November. Sometimes, I think I may continue to work; sometimes, I think not. What do you say to the title, One of these DAYS?"
That title held its ground very briefly. "What do you think," he wrote after six weeks, "of this name for my story—Buried Alive? Does it seem too grim? Or, The Thread of Gold? Or, The Doctor of Beauvais?"
But not until twelve months later did he fairly buckle himself to the task he had contemplated so long. All the Year Round had taken the place of Household Words in the interval; and the tale was then started to give strength to the new weekly periodical for whose pages it was designed.
"This is merely to certify," he wrote on the 11th of March 1859, "that I have got exactly the name for the story that is wanted; exactly what will fit the opening to a T. A Tale of Two Cities. Also, that I have struck out a rather original and bold idea. That is, at the end of each month to publish the monthly part in the green cover, with the two illustrations, at the old shilling. This will give All the Year Round always the interest and precedence of a fresh weekly portion during the month; and will give me my old standing with my old public, and the advantage (very necessary in this story) of having numbers of people who read it in no portions smaller than a monthly part. . . . My American ambassador pays a thousand pounds for the first year, for the privilege of republishing in America one day after we publish here. Not bad?" . . .
He had to struggle at the opening through a sharp attack of illness, and on the 9th of July progress was thus reported. "I have been getting on in health very slowly and through irksome botheration enough. But I think I am round the corner. This cause—and the heat—has tended to my doing no more than hold my ground, my old month's advance, with the Tale of Two Cities. The small portions thereof, drive me frantic; but I think the tale must have taken a strong hold. The run upon our monthly parts is surprising, and last month we sold 35,000 back numbers. A note I have had from Carlyle about it has given me especial pleasure."
A letter of the following month expresses the intention he had when he began the story, and in what respect it differs as to method from all his other books. Sending in proof four numbers ahead of the current publication, he adds:
"I hope you will like them. Nothing but the interest of the subject, and the pleasure of striving with the difficulty of the form of treatment,—nothing in the way of mere money, I mean,—could else repay the time and trouble of the incessant condensation. But I set myself the little task of making a picturesque story, rising in every chapter, with characters true to nature, but whom the story should express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean in other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written (in place of the odious stuff that is written under that pretense), pounding the characters in its own mortar, and beating their interest out of them. If you could have read the story all at once, I hope you wouldn't have stopped halfway."
Another of his letters supplies the last illustration I need to give of the design and meanings in regard to this tale expressed by himself. It was a reply to some objections of which the principal were, a doubt if the feudal cruelties came sufficiently within the date of the action to justify his use of them, and some question as to the manner of disposing of the chief revolutionary agent in the plot.
"I had of course full knowledge of the formal surrender of the feudal privileges, but these had been bitterly felt quite as near to the time of the Revolution as the Doctor's narrative, which you will remember dates long before the Terror. With the slang of the new philosophy on the one side, it was surely not unreasonable or unallowable, on the other, to suppose a nobleman wedded to the old cruel ideas, and representing the time going out as his nephew represents the time coming in. If there be anything certain on earth, I take it that the condition of the French peasant generally at that day was intolerable. No later inquiries or provings by figures will hold water against the tremendous testimony of men living at the time. There is a curious book printed at Amsterdam, written to make out no case whatever, and tiresome enough in its literal dictionary-like minuteness; scattered up and down the pages of which is full authority for my marquis. This is Mercier's Tableau de Paris. Rousseau is the authority for the peasant's shutting up his house when he had a bit of meat. The tax-tables are the authority for the wretched creature's impoverishment. . . . I am not clear, and I never have been clear, respecting the canon of fiction which forbids the interposition of accident in such a case as Madame Defarge's death. Where the accident is inseparable from the passion and action of the character; where it is strictly consistent with the entire design, and arises out of some culminating proceeding on the part of the individual which the whole story has led up to; it seems to me to become, as it were, an act of divine justice. And when I use Miss Pross (though this is quite another question) to bring about such a catastrophe, I have the positive intention of making that half-comic intervention a part of the desperate woman's failure; and of opposing that mean death, instead of a desperate one in the streets which she wouldn't have minded, to the dignity of Carton's. Wrong or right, this was all design, and seemed to me to be in the fitness of things."
These are interesting intimations of the care with which Dickens worked; and there is no instance in his novels, excepting this, of a deliberate and planned departure from the method of treatment which had been preeminently the source of his popularity as a novelist. To rely less upon character than upon incident, and to resolve that his actors should be expressed by the story more than they should express themselves by dialogue, was for him a hazardous, and can hardly be called an entirely successful, experiment. With singular dramatic vivacity, much constructive art, and with descriptive passages of a high order everywhere (the dawn of the terrible outbreak in the journey of the marquis from Paris to his country seat, and the London crowd at the funeral of the spy, may be instanced for their power), there was probably never a book by a great humorist, and an artist so prolific in the conception of character, with so little humor and so few rememberable figures. Its merits lie elsewhere. Though there are excellent traits and touches all through the revolutionary scenes, the only full-length that stands out prominently is the picture of the wasted life saved at last by heroic sacrifice. Dickens speaks of his design to make impressive the dignity of Carton's death, and in this he succeeded perhaps even beyond his expectation. Carton suffers himself to be mistaken for another, and gives his life that the girl he loves may be happy with that other; the secret being known only to a poor little girl in the tumbril that takes them to the scaffold, who at the moment has discovered it, and whom it strengthens also to die. The incident is beautifully told; and it is at least only fair to set against verdicts not very favorable as to this effort of his invention, what was said of the particular character and scene, and of the book generally, by an American critic whose literary studies had most familiarized him with the rarest forms of imaginative writing:
...."Its portrayal of the noble- natured castaway makes it almost a peerless book in modern literature, and gives it a place among the highest examples of literary art. . . . The conception of this character shows in its author an ideal of magnanimity and of charity unsurpassed. There is not a grander, lovelier figure than the self-wrecked, self-devoted Sydney Carton, in literature or history; and the story itself is so noble in its spirit, so grand and graphic in its style, and filled with a pathos so profound and simple, that it deserves and will surely take a place among the great serious works of imagination."
I should myself prefer to say that its distinctive merit is less in any of its conceptions of character, even Carton's, than as a specimen of Dickens's power in imaginative story-telling. There is no piece of fiction known to me, in which the domestic life of a few simple private people is in such a manner knitted and interwoven with the outbreak of a terrible public event, that the one seems but part of the other. When made conscious of the first sultry drops of a thunderstorm that fall upon a little group sitting in an obscure English lodging, we are witness to the actual beginning of a tempest which is preparing to sweep away everything in France. And, to the end, the book in this respect is really remarkable.
Mod
“…he’ll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he’ll be cut into quarters. That’s the sentence.”
Francis Henry de la Motte, upon whose trial Darnay’s is based, was sentenced to this punishment. According to the Annual Register of 1781, he was to be “hanged by the neck, but not till dead; then to be cut down, and his bowels taken out and burnt before his face, his head to be taken off, his body cut into four quarters, and to be at his majesty’s disposal”. In actual fact, he was hanged for fifty-seven minutes before being disemboweled, and was the last convict to be publicly disemboweled in England (Gatrell 317).
Francis Henry de la Motte, or François Henri de la Motte, was a French citizen and ex-French army officer executed in London for High Treason on 27 July 1781. He had been arrested in January 1781 on suspicion of being a spy, and held for six months in the Tower of London. At an Old Bailey trial on 23 July he was found guilty of running an operation which sent secret naval intelligence to France—a country which supported the rebellious American colonists, and with which Great Britain had been at war since 1778.
Specifically, the intelligence concerned British fleet dispositions at Portsmouth and other British ports. In July 1781 the War of American Independence was not over (though it would be within a few months) and the navies of Great Britain and France were still fighting each other not only in the North Atlantic but as far afield as the Indian Ocean.
What sealed de la Motte's fate was the damning testimony of a former accomplice, Henry Lutterloh, who was the chief prosecution witness. Having been found guilty by the jury, the terrible sentence pronounced by the judge was that the prisoner be hanged, drawn and quartered. In fact de la Motte was spared some of the gruesome refinements — after hanging for nearly an hour, he was taken down and his heart cut out and burned, but he was not quartered, nor subjected to the refinements visited on David Tyrie, a Scottish spy, the following year. (Tyrie (whose trial was at Winchester) was also found guilty of sending naval intelligence to the French. He was hanged for 22 minutes, following which he was beheaded and his heart cut out and burned. He was then emasculated, quartered, and his body parts put into a coffin and buried in the pebbles at the seaside.
Public executions were considered a spectator sport in the eighteenth century, and when individuals of high rank were involved the attraction was irresistible. It was not just the lower orders who turned up to witness these occasions (see the diaries of George Selwyn). A crowd of more than 80,000 people witnessed de la Motte's execution at Tyburn. On this occasion people from all walks of life turned up to witness the edifying prospect of a handsome gentleman of rank, elegantly dressed, and in the prime of life, being ceremoniously butchered in public — "pour décourager les autres", French for "to discourage others".
De la Motte's life and execution resonated in the imagination of writers like Charles Dickens and W. M. Thackeray. The drama and language of the trial scene of Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities is very close to that of de la Motte's trial, with Dickens emphasising the grotesqueness and the gruesomeness of the proceedings in his inimitable manner.
As for Thackeray, in his last, unfinished novel, Denis Duval we find de la Motte and his sometime accomplice, Henry Lutterloh, figuring there as leading characters. Thackeray portrays de la Motte as a tortured, demonic figure, which is not at all how he comes across in contemporary reports in the press. Still less is that the impression conveyed in a sympathetic memoir published by a French writer some time between the trial verdict and the execution — in the hope (perhaps) of mitigating the severity of the sentence.
The official trial report is known for its obtuse grammar. It includes single sentences of nearly 4000 words.
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Some of you might have noticed that I absented myself for some time from the discussion of the final reading bits of the novel but that was because my family and I went on holiday and I couldn't find peace and quite to sit down and sketch some of my impressions. Even if I could have, I didn't, of course, take my computer with me because then it would not have been a holiday at all.
As to an alternative title, the first one to spring to my frivolous and sarcastic mind would be The Knitty-Gritty of Life but that's out of the question, of course. I liked the idea of calling the novel Buried Alive as there are many ways in which these words apply. For starters, they refer to Dr. Manette and all the other prisoners in this novel - e.g. the victims of the September Massacres, who can but wait for death in their cells. But then, the phrase can also hint at the pent-up anger and human aggressiveness that is buried in the souls of the seemingly subdued French masses. It is the Revolution which is going to show how much life (and death) there is in these destructive feelings hidden beneath a surface of humility and hopelessness. Last, and definitely not least, it is an allusion to Sydney Carter, who feels that his life has been misspent and idled away all those years - and whose final self-sacrifice leads to his resurrection. All in all, I think that such a title would have given us more room for spreculation than A Tale of Two Cities, all the more so since, strictly speaking, it is hardly ever London and Paris that are in the focus of the tale.
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I am reading a veritable doorstopper of a novel at the moment, Thackeray's The Newcomes, and to this, ATOTC proved a very good contrast. While Thackeray writes in an elegantly discoursive style, hardly ever describing anything and often with a slight sneer, Dickens is a master of detail, of symbolism and of poignancy, even in a short novel such as the one we have been reading here. While I tend to share Thackeray's more cynical view of human nature, I still have a lot of admiration for Dickens's skill of arousing dramatic effects. ATOTC is a book with lots of memorable details whereas The Newcomes will sooner or later fade away from my memory - apart from its gist. But how could I ever forget the wine spilling over the pavement or the grindstone with the red on it that the sun can never take away? I can fully understand Peter who said that it was this book that kindled his life-long interest in literature within him.
It will never be my favourite Dickens novel, which is Bleak House, followed by Our Mutual Friend but still it will always range high amongst his novels for me.
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Have I missed the schedule for reading GE? I can't find it in any of my files but I saw that it is to start tomorrow. Obviously, we will chart with Chapter 1 but how many chapters? New chapters once a week? Thanks. peace, janz
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The first thread will be opened on 4 August, by the way.
I have to say that I didn't enjoy Tale of Two Cities at all I'm afraid.I found it a bit dour and hard-going without the eccentric and humorous characters from other books. I just couldn't find a lot to love here. It's impressive in scale and interesting from a historical point of view, but there was no warmth and nothing to make me chuckle which is one thing I love about Dickens. It made me pine for Mr Pickwick and his club.
I even found the ending a bit over-sweet with one of Lucie's suitors sacrificing himself to save the other. Why would he do that ?
And I was a bit confused as to what Dickens view of the Revolution was. My feeling has always been that although many horrific things were done in the name of liberty etc, it was essential that sacrifices were made for a progressive society to be installed. Maybe it would count as a terrorist insurrection nowadays, but society seemed fairer in the long run.
Anyway, sorry for all the negative feelings ! Great Expectations is one of my favourites, so I'm already feeling upbeat about that.
GE contains my favourite Dickens line of all time, but I'll wait until we reach it to point it out.
I'm glad to know someone else feels very much like I do about this book, David, though I appreciate it more when I see it from others' perspectives. I'm dying to know what you're favorite Dickens line is! If I don't join the GE read, I hope you'll also share it in whatever tavern we end up in when the time comes. Dickens gave us so many wonderful lines from which to choose, I don't know if I could pick one favorite.
I have read ATOTC once before, but didn't really remember much apart from the famous lines, the wine incident and Charles and Sidney looking like each other and that it was a major plot device. Somehow the pace and seriousness of the book made me read it too much of a hurry back then, because I didn't really like it.
While it certainly is not my favourite Dickens by far, I liked it much better this time. Taking my time reading a book can do that much, apparently. I still had a harder time joining the discussions though. Because it was all so condensed, I felt like everything had been said about the installment pretty quickly, if that makes sense? Like, it was interesting, but it was all a bit more cookie cutter because there was not enough time to keep people wondering.
While it certainly is not my favourite Dickens by far, I liked it much better this time. Taking my time reading a book can do that much, apparently. I still had a harder time joining the discussions though. Because it was all so condensed, I felt like everything had been said about the installment pretty quickly, if that makes sense? Like, it was interesting, but it was all a bit more cookie cutter because there was not enough time to keep people wondering.
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I have been wondering about this self-sacrifice of Sydney's myself quite a lot, David, and here are some of my thoughts:
We see that in many ways Sydney is utterly dissatisfied with his life. He is a talented man but has never had the stamina and discipline to put his talents to some better use than being the man who does Stryver's work. He is an alcoholic and a cynic, and if he had never met Lucie, his life would have gone on in that rut for years and he might have felt disgusted and dissatisfied with it, but more on that subconscious level that drove him into drinking. Seeing Lucie, though, made him rethink his life - not only did he fall in love - which might already drive some men into self-sacrifice - but he also became aware of the fact that your own life should matter to somebody or else it is wasted. No man is an island, and all that, and when Sydney comes to realize this, and also to realize that Lucie's happiness depends on Darnay (and also that of the child), he thinks that he can ennoble his own existence by sacrificing it. The sempstress standing next to him in the tumbril is another token of Sydney's mattering now, and maybe a stand-in for Lucie - by holding her hand, he gives her courage and comfort, and so his being in that place matters the more.
In other words, I don't think that it was merely for Lucie's sake and out of love that Sydney did what he did - he didn't do it for Darnay at all, you may be sure - but it was for himself that Sydney sacrificed himself. This way he could prove that his life actually mattered and made a difference.
That is how I read it too. Sidney wanted to matter, he wanted to have done something good with his life for once instead of being a pawn with a bad reputation.
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Although to me it also had a bit of 'suicide by guillotine' to it. Because he was so dissatified with life, and I often got the impression that he was done with it all and without Lucy (and later Lucy Jr.) might not just have sunk into more drunkenness, but perhaps even ending it all. Apart from Lucy he had nothing to live for. And there was his chance to not only end his own misery, but helping the only people he wanted to not be dead for in the process. Just like he was very aware that he had to give up Lucy to Darnay to make her happy in the whole courthip debacle, he again made room for Darnay simply because it would matter for them. And I think he didn't care either way to be honest. Or if he did, having your head cut off by a sharp blade is a much cleaner death than alcohol poisoning or drowning because you manage to walk into the Thames with your stupid drunk head.
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Although to me it also had a bit of 'suicide by guillotine' to it. Because he was so dissatified with life, and I often got the impression that he was done with it all and without Lucy (and later Lucy Jr.) might not just have sunk into more drunkenness, but perhaps even ending it all. Apart from Lucy he had nothing to live for. And there was his chance to not only end his own misery, but helping the only people he wanted to not be dead for in the process. Just like he was very aware that he had to give up Lucy to Darnay to make her happy in the whole courthip debacle, he again made room for Darnay simply because it would matter for them. And I think he didn't care either way to be honest. Or if he did, having your head cut off by a sharp blade is a much cleaner death than alcohol poisoning or drowning because you manage to walk into the Thames with your stupid drunk head.
There was a thread of research about 15-20 years ago trying to demonstrate that all sacrifice/all service/all altruism was to the benefit of self. By doing for others, we increase our value to ourselves. Some valid studies supporting this, a few did not find relevance, but it is very difficult to measure the true mindset/opinion of a human being. They did have support for the attitude of giving caused viewers/those who were aware to be more giving. I play this game every year at Christmas. I have volunteered to ring bells for the Salvation Army to collect monies in the past (I am old now and too tired to stand for so long and ring those bells which do get heavy very quickly) and now I always stand near the bucket and drop in a handful of coins (noisy) when someone comes by. Or I fold a couple of dollar bills several times and make a production of pushing the money into the kettle. Please do not think that I only give a little. At least once a year, I give a big check, drive it down to the main office in my area and give it to the secretary. Quietly, no big deal. The noise and bill stuffing is a ploy to influence others. Some research seems to show that it does influence others. So Sidney was doing something good so he could feel good about himself in his last moments. peace, janz
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There is quite a cynical German saying, "Tue Gutes und rede darüber", i.e. "Do something good and keep talking about it." You should see and hear me talking about myself after cleaning out the dishwasher. I'm the singer of my own epic song after such a sacrifice.
Tristram wrote: "Nevertheless, I have come to love this novel more and more, especially because of its mature ending - no genuine happy-ending because in life there is hardly something like that"Do you really think so? I'm at an age where I am losing my parents' generation, and I would say certainly not all but many people do very well at making the most of their time, and have that to look back on at the end with no small happiness.
Tristram wrote: "In other words, I don't think that it was merely for Lucie's sake and out of love that Sydney did what he did - he didn't do it for Darnay at all, you may be sure - but it was for himself that Sydney sacrificed himself. This way he could prove that his life actually mattered and made a difference."Jantine wrote: "Although to me it also had a bit of 'suicide by guillotine' to it. Because he was so dissatified with life"
I think you're both right. And adding onto that--for religious/cultural reasons, I expect, Sydney would not have been able to consider suicide a good option, but he wanted an out and this was it. Though I think he regrets not being able to see what his sacrifice accomplishes (so the narrator gives it to him anyway). It's kind of a paradox: he can contribute more by dying than by living, so in dying he kind of acquires the attachment to life he couldn't really have while he was still living it.
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Julie, I am not saying that there aren't any people who have experienced happiness in their lives and who wouldn't be able to look back and say, It was well worth it. Still, this is a long shot from the "And they lived happily ever after", which we often get in novels, also in Dickens. Every silver lining has a cloud, and I think that in ATOTC, Dickens left a lot of space for the cloud but also showed us its silver lining.
Tristram wrote: "Still, this is a long shot from the "And they lived happily ever after", which we often get in novels, also in Dickens. Every silver lining has a cloud, and I think that in ATOTC, Dickens left a lot of space for the cloud but also showed us its silver lining."A very long shot! That's a good point. I would say he was writing about a particularly cloudy time--but then there's that intro chapter, which says it was both. Huh. I'm going to say he was writing about a particularly cloudy time anyway. I wouldn't want to keep company long with the people who saw the Reign of Terror as the best of times, whatever they might think of the revolution as a whole.
While I would agree Dickens supplies a lot of happy endings, sometimes frustratingly so (things work out a little too neatly for David Copperfield), most of the time these are adulterated by sorrow: Dombey and Son, Barnaby Rudge, oh lord Old Curiosity Shop just for starters. There's *lots* of bleak still in Bleak House. Usually someone the main characters with the happy ending care about ends up ruined, if maybe also last-minute redeemed. Even Oliver Twist with its ridiculous good luck has (view spoiler) at the end. I guess the main difference between the Tale and all of these is that we lose a main player (though really he doesn't get all that much more page-time than most of the cast--he's a main player largely because we end with him), and the last chapter is reserved for his tragedy. But I don't think I find it all the more realistic than the other books for that reason.
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I agree with you when you say that despite the happy endings in Dickens's novels, there is always some tragedy at the end, too, but mostly, these tragic side endings are some kind of collateral damage. Sydney Carton, however, is one of the main characters of the novel, and his self-sacrifice seems to me the very point why the novel was written. I don't know whether I succeeded in making my point clear here, but this makes the novel a lot more mature to me. I don't know whether it is realistic and not just melodramatic, but the conflict at Sydney's heart seems quite realistic to me.
Tristram wrote: "I don't know whether it is realistic and not just melodramatic, but the conflict at Sydney's heart seems quite realistic to me. "Agreed. That chapter where he's wandering around Paris waiting to swap places with Darnay could have been horribly melodramatic, but I found it very moving.
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Kim wrote: "Hi everybody, I came on here to post a few illustrations I was given that I was holding to the end. Now I can't find them since I'm not 100% sure where I am at the moment. I'm pretty sure I'm home ..."Oh, no, Kim! Hope it all clears up soon.
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Good grief Kim. Forget the illustrations. Take care of yourself.
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Sending prayers your way, Kim. I hope you'll have a long stretch of good health soon.
Well, we have completed our discussion of Tale of Two Cities. It was exciting for me to revisit the novel. I think it holds up very well to a re-reading. To me, it was even better this time around.
For this week, let’s open up our forum to questions, issues, compliments, and criticisms of the novel.
Please feel free to join our conversation. I have offered a few discussion points but do not feel bound to them. What is on your mind as being unresolved after finishing the novel?
Thoughts
In the past I have found little humour in this novel. Julie has pointed out what I have missed or viewed in a different light. What’s your take on the humour in TTC?
I’ve often wondered if Charles Darnay was set up by the Evermondes in the hope the English court system would solve their “problem” concerning his presence. What do you think?
Chapters like the Wine Shop are highly cinematic. Dickens frequently focuses on a concrete object such as a wine cask, or a jail cell, or the stone faces on the chateau. No detail is insignificant. Everything is a thread that will, sooner or later, be woven into the fabric of the novel. What scenes, event, or object suggested the best cinematic possibilities to you?
For fun, suggest a different title for the novel. Would you like to suggest why your title is appropriate?