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Lying Awake and Night Walks - Our 9th and 10th Final Summer Reads (hosted by Sam)
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Welcome to the discussion for Dickens' Lying Awake and Night Walks. When Jean asked me if I would lead a dicussion for one of our summer short reads, I cringed and was reluctant to volunteer since I haven't the Victorian or Dickensian background I felt necessary to lead a discussion adequately. On second thought, I accepted, thinking if I chose a short piece, I could probably fake my way through it and none would notice which led me to choose the short essay, Lying Awake, but Mr. Dickens deceived me since the length did not reflect the complexity of the topic or the writing. The above is all immaterial though because I loved the essay and it prompted me to add a second essay "Night Walks," to the discussion since the two have a symmetry. My "in for a dollar," approach does not remedy my shortcomings though and I beg your cooperation in correcting any of my errors and in supplementing my inadequacies with any thoughts you feel are of value. I hope you enjoy both essays as much as I. Lying Awake is a short essay and should be read in sitting I believe, but I will limit the first summary to the point of the balloon ascents and add the remaining summary in a couple of days.
In anticipation of your reading the essay, I am listing some questions you might wish to consider and perhaps discuss, and though I will have no definitive answers for any of them myself, they were points I pondered.
1. Why is Dickens writing this?
2.Is there any significance to his starting the essay with an epigraph from one American and quickly adding an allusion from another?
3. Can you identify with Dickens' experience, in trying to fall asleep yourself?
4. It has thought that this particular state and the dream state itself were sources of creativity for the artist. Do you think Dickens is in agreement from reading the essay?
5. Did the shifting tense of the narration work for you?
6. What do you make of the rising intensity of the thoughts of the narrator?
7. Do you feel the narration is the real Dickens or is he using a constructed persona that fans recognize like Oscar Wilde or Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)?
8. Do you find the essay humorous?
9. Do we notice a pun in the title?
10. After finishing the essay, upon where do your thoughts reflect? What are you left thinking about?
Although I will try to write very brief and general summaries, I have no like or talent for them and hope you read the text to form your own thoughts. There are also elements in both essays that have left me puzzled and I will try and note them as we go on. I have not mastered adding pictures and I won't be adding any though I will add links for some and Jean is going to add some for me. If you find any you feel are appropiate and of interest to the group add away. I do have an interest in commentimg on the text whether it is on the topic or the writing and that is where I will focus my efforts. I think this first essay offers a lot worthy of commentary and once again hope you will join in helping us all investigate and appreciate the essay.
Background and links.Lying Awake was first published in the journal Household Words, October 30, 1852
https://www.online-literature.com/dic...
Night Walks was an untitled segment of "The Uncommon Traveller," column of the journal, All the Year Round, July 7, 1860
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&s...
Further reading:
The Washington Irving epigraph is from a sketch, "The Adventures of My Uncle," available in Tales of a Traveller. 1824
https://www.online-literature.com/irv...
Benjamin Franklin's "The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams, Inscribed to Miss ++++, Being written on her request" 1786
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N2...
The essay opens with an epigraph from Washinton Irving, where Irving's character, Uncle Charlie recounts trying to fall asleep and the thoughts that visited him in process.Our narrator notes how he has had a similar experience recently though with difference and that for him it resulted in insomnia. He speculates he experience may have been 'illustrating the theory of Duality of the Brain," but regardless he could not get to sleep and in trying to do so, claims 'something in him was as obstinate as George III."
The thoughts of the above and George III got him thinking of Benjamin Franklin and his prescriptive essay on procuring dreams which our narrator quotes one prescription which he tries with no success in obtaining sleep.
Thinking of Franklin and Irving have inspired him to think of and comment on Niagra Falls though which Dickens visited on an earler U.S. visit. The narrator regains his thoughts and tries again to focus on sleep but finds himself thinking of an actor friend (whom he thought of earlier in the day) playing Macbeth on the stage at Drury Lane Theater and apostrophising sleep as, "the death of each day's life."
Our narrator tries to focus back on sleep again but his mind wanders to Clare Market but he seems to regain his thoughts thinking on the class "equality of sleep," and whether it affects Queen Victoria and "Winking Charlie," a vagrant in the "Her Majesty's jails," the same.
It is in the long paragraph which began with what I just recounted that our narrator left me in a place where I could no longer parse what was exactly happening and for those that understand better than I, please explain in a comment, but the gist of it is, I believe, that our narrator has moved to a deeper level of twilight sleep where he is actually dreaming for a bit though he will jar awake almost immediately.This brief seemimgly dreamt episode is described more surrealistically and vaguely with, first, the narrator seeing himself and then the others in separate comparable and slightly embarrassing positions. but then the narrartor, the Queen, and Winking Charley, seem unified in the narrator's dream, having all three "committed murders and hidden bodies.' or "have all desparately wanted to cry out, and have had no voice." or "have all gone to the play and not been able to get in." and finally "have all dreamed much more of our youth than of our later lives: that---I have lost it! The thread is broken." The last being where the narrator finishes that perticular thread of dream thoughts.
Next the narrator is climbing through the Great St Bernard Pass in the Swiss Alps which Dickens had once climbed with friends which now at least two are dead. In this paragraph, the narrator claims he is experiencing this while "broad awake," and notes the various details of Dickens real ife visit to the spot while pointing out a difference where he can hear noises that were inaudible at the time. After describing some of the details, he exclaims "what and why does this thing stalkinto my mind on the top of a Swiss Mountain!"
It is a grotesque figure chalked on a door near a churchyard that scared our narrator as a youth and has revisited his thoughts in a kind of nightmare many times since. And as the narrator tries to bring his thoughts back to sleep, we shall break until Friday for the remainder of the summary.
Thank you for choosing this piece Sam. I read it yesterday and thought it was brilliant!I wouldn’t describe myself as an insomniac but I’m not the greatest sleeper and so I felt it was a great picture of where your mind goes when you can’t sleep, yes they’re often dark places so I could totally relate to the piece.
I’m not sure who winking charley is but when I googled you can get Royal Doulton mugs of Old Charley winking, so he must be a character from something.
He’s in his pyjamas in public in this dreamy bit. There’s lots of different interpretations when I googled that. One is that you’re afraid that something private could become public.
Thank you, Sam, for giving us the link to the Washington Irving story. It was amusing that the uncle in the Irving story was able to go back to sleep(view spoiler), but Dickens was tossing and turning all night for no particular reason at the start of the essay.The Benjamin Franklin link was also wonderful. Among other things, Franklin was noted for his sense of observation and scientific experiments, and now he's made an informal study of sleeping! What works for one person may not work for another! As an occasional insomniac, I can empathize with Dickens.
Dickens was such a genius, and was constantly working on multiple projects so it's not surprising that his mind wouldn't quiet down and allow him to sleep.
Dickens' quote from Macbeth is from the part of the drama after Macbeth kills King Duncan. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth cannot sleep because they have guilty consciences. Macbeth realizes that he has lost any inner peace and will never be able to sleep well again. He also experiences visions because of his guilt."Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast..."
On the road so I can only answer a couple of these briefly, but will post more info on the first part of the essay. First, for those of you that like rereads, I found this essay to yield more pleasure and meaning each reading and I am on my seventh or eighth. The essay reads better after all those rereads than many poems I have read and I think that is the greatest compliment I can offer the author. On Winking Charley: I saw the Royal Doulton piece but could not find any connecting reference before 1930's, when it was designed. Charlies were aliases for night watchmen but I could not find a winking one that went to jail. My last reference was the dictionary/index of Dickens characters which described the character no further than the vagrant in Her Majesty's jails. I would love to know more about the origin.
The two American allusions become even richer in comparison when we look at what Dickens is doing. Irving's sketch is a humorous piece with a ghost story theme. The story isn't that thrilling and the humor mostly comes from digressions which were more an eighteenth century trope. Franklin's piece is more also humorous but one can't help seeing the flaws in the advice as Connie pointed out. Dickens examinination of the process of what is happening during this insomnia episode is worked out in detail and skill that matches an Enlightenment inquiry but Dickens still maintains the humor, and adds some very realistic thrills. My guess is that Dickens is comparing his author persona to the two earler celebrities and proving he is their master at writing using their own techniques!
Connie again is accurate in the Macbeth attribute and I think the Drury Lane actor was MacCready and will post my evidence tomorrow along with some other annotations when I can access my notes.
I would like everyone to note how the narrator's thoughts and emotions are progressing through this essay. Emotional stirrings that started as thrills with with Niagra and the Alps reach anxiety by the time of the chalk figure on the door. I did not research the figure but at first I was thinking it was like a scarecrow but after a few reads the figure had become a full blown Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street ( but note how Dickens still controls the image with humor by describing "carrot fingers" and stating how he was unsure in his childhood memory if it was the figure or the whole door that chased him.) Anyone have any thoughts on this figure?
This essay also yields more enjoyment IMO, when considering Dickens biographical background. For example, I think we tend to look at the essay differently, knowing Dickens' father died the year before this was published even though there is no evidence to link that event to this insomnia. But the knowledge makes it more interesting as we consider what is provoking the melancholy and anxiety.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Here are a few additional links related to the first summary of the essay, This youtube video features several slides of Niagra Falls in the 1850's,
https://youtu.be/CY4pKbQFftc
The biographical notes that accompany this portrait of William Charles Macready shall explain my thoughts on why he is the Drury Lane Theater actor mentioned in the essay. First, Dickens and several other celebrity authors toasted him after his farewell performance in 1851. That can be read in the notes toward the end of the piece. But if you read from the beginning the notes discuss the Astor Place Riot which occurred in New York in 1849 and was started as a result of feuding between fans of Macready and those of a popular U.S. Shakespearean actor. The end result left quite a few people dead. I will leave a wikpedia description of the event which is quite good.
First a portrait and bio of Macready:
https://www.artwarefineart.com/galler...
Link about the Astor Place Riot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_P...
Finally, a link about Dickens and St Bernard monastery. Be sure to view the mortuary picture link from the essay I link for full effect.
https://adcochrane.wordpress.com/2016...
I am afraid my eyes have given out so I apologize for lack of an edit on this post but the links work.
Wonderful links, Sam! The Astor Place Riot is an amazing story - and thinking about it would keep anyone awake.
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“Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an image of beauty, to remain there, changeless and indelible for years to come.”
In our side read of The Life of Charles Dickens: The Illustrated Edition (not sure which volume) John Forster talks about it.
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Our short read of To Be Read at Dusk, led by Sara also takes place there, and from memory I think it crops up in another side read of Pictures from Italy! Doubtless there are other references too.
Just let me know (by pm, or here) if you'd like me to add any specific images, Sam. And thank you!
The wonderful thing about the Victorian photos of Niagara Falls, or paintings of the Falls by the Hudson River artists, is that the countryside was totally untouched. The area has to safely accommodate thousands of tourists every day now. I visited the Falls years ago, and can still remember the sheer power of the Falls and the thundering sound of all that water.
Summary #2In reviewing where I left off, I realized I had stated I would add the conclusion of the summary last Friday when I meant to say I'd add summary notes at that time. My apologies. Observing a strict schedule is somewhat difficult at the moment, but my overall plan is to post the last Lying Awake summary today with notes to follow on Monday when I am available as I have medical appointments clogging my midday schedule for a few hours. We will start Night Walks on Wednesday with the first summary and the concluding summary on the weekend. I will add a few notes in between summaries but sparingly as most notes on that essay IMO require a Londoner with the experience of having walked Dickens' route and with more familiarity with the landmarks. I will have comments on the essay instead.
We left off last time with the narrator's memory of a childhood scare, a type of bogeyman that was memorable enough to have revisited his thoughts more than once. This seemed the first really disagreeable thought that intruded on the narrator's intended memories, but he still handles it with a bit of humor as when he speaks of the horror of the bogeyman chasing him,' ... though whether disconnected from the door, or door and all, I can't say, and perhaps never could.' That is my favorite line in the essay and I find the thought of a door with the chalked image chasing our character down the road by first moving its right side and then left as if walking to be very amusing, and Dickens choice to phrase this in just that way leads me to believe he intended it to amuse me. In the next paragraph or two things will be less amusing so let us get there.
Just one more digression first. I keep stating the narrator instead of Dickens when discussing who is speaking. I am still not sure. Because of the mixture of truth and art, my belief is that the narrator is Dickens the persona rather than Dickens the man though the memories would be shared by both. I'll continue to use narrator and let you decide.
The narrator starts in the next paragraph to describe the balloon ascents at Cremorne but instead his mind slides to the public execution of the Mannings, husband and wife, which Dickens attended and I think tis passage is notable in how the narrator was unable to pass the scene of execution for some time without still seeing the bodies hanging there but one night in passing 'actually seeing the bodies were not there, my fancy was persuaded, as it were, to take them down and bury them within the precincts of the jail..." What lovely compassion is shown here, but note how the narrator has taken the negative intrusive thought and shaped it into something artistic.
The narrator focuses on the balloon ascents once more but he moves quickly from description to opinion and commentary on a contemporary issue concerning safety at the events which had become more elaborate in what was actually lifted into the air under the balloon as the events became more festive and attended. I think it is interesting here that Dickens is reasoning, perhaps even prewriting in this presleep state. He takes a more active role in the attempt to control his thoughts and offers a little social commentary in the essay. I want to note that there has been speculation up until the time of this essay and after about the role of this presleep state and that of dreams on creativity, and there was a belief that it was a source of creativity. Think of Coleridge's Kubla Khan or Vision in a Dream.
The narrator is in full argument on his opinion of the responsibility of the crowd on safety at Cremorne when he has another intrusive thought. This time it is a story told by a kinsman of a man with a cut throat running towards him, pursued by attendants from a madhouse. The narrator gets his mind back on the balloon ascents and his opinions on the social issue generated by the growing risks taken by performers.
The narrator's thoughts drift to the Paris Morgue and its horrors which Dickens had seen and written on previously. He dismisses this thought by thinking of a humorous American story about an excellent marksman, Captain Martin Scott, who trees a raccoon. The raccoon surrenders upon recognizing the Captain as he is about to shoot him with the catch-phrase, "I am aa gone coon." This story would have been seen by Dickens in Frederick Marryat's A Diary in America 1839. Note there is also a pejorative association with the term and though I could find no intended relation between the pejoration and the uses here the negative association of the term was popularized in songs by mid 1800's and might be considered offensive despite the intent because of its later use.
Dickens shifts his thoughts to the "late brutal assaults." but again a phantom from a ghost story that would look through glass doors at certain hours disrupts that topic. I do not know the source of this but it seems self-explanatory. The narrator returns to the thoughts on recent brutal assaults which refers to increased street crime. He starts another opinionated argument on the cons of whipping in the penal system and argues against "pet prisoning," a topic that Dickens had written on before. I think the opinions in these arguments matter less than what process the mind is in. The mind of the narrator seems much more awake than earlier in the essay with conscious rational thoughts firmly in control, except for intrusions by contrary negative memories, thoughts, or emotions, which may be disruptive but won't help him get to sleep any more than his conscious arguments on the care of prisoners.
The essay ends with the narrator intending to go for a night walk since the melancholy thoughts refuse to go away and become too numerous, which leaves us with that nice segue into the next essay which I won't spoil with any more of my thoughts.
More on Cremorne Gardens festivities and controversies : In the summary, I tried to explain Dickens' comments, limiting myself to what he presented in the essay. In truth there was far more going on at Cremorne than balloon ascents and I have linked some web pages that flesh out the scene at Cremorne Gardens and the reason for controversy.
https://victorianweb.org/history/lond...
https://www.victorianlondon.org/enter...
https://www.londongardenstrust.org/fe...
More on the Mannings reference. This Wikpedia article gives background to the case and adds details on the well attended public execution. Note in the references the text of the letter Charles Dickens wrote to the Times in 1849 concerning the event. The article has a potential spoiler for Bleak House.(view spoiler)
A fuller description:
https://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/m...
Another page with the text of Dickens letter:
https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/pu...
A lovely link clarifying the Paris Morgue Dickens describes:https://daily.jstor.org/the-paris-mor...
The following links are related to The Martin Scott raccoon episode.The real Martin Scott:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_...
Origins of the story:
https://wordhistories.net/2018/08/12/...
Link to Marryat's book which contained the story and would have been published in Britain:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23137
An article on the history of Prison punishments including whippings:https://brewminate.com/punishment-sen...
And another link more specific to whippings:
https://www.corpun.com/counukj.htm
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Tomorrow we move on to another piece, and if we read Charles Dickens's final words for Lying Awake, we can see exactly why Sam has chosen Night Walks to complement it as a companion piece:
"I had proceeded thus far, when I found I had been lying awake so long that the very dead began to wake too, and to crowd into my thoughts most sorrowfully. Therefore, I resolved to lie awake no more, but to get up and go out for a night walk - which resolution was an acceptable relief to me, as I dare say it may prove now to a great many more."
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Summary #1 Night WalksThe picture that opens the discussion on Night Walks may seem diffent than expected with a picture of a man about to stab a meat pie, but this is a engraving by Charles S. Reinhart that was used to illustrate one version of this chapter of the Uncommon Traveller, now commonly know by the later added title "Night Walks."
https://victorianweb.org/art/illustra...
I chose this picture instead of the usual romantic view of Charles Dickens walking the streets of London, because I wanted to stress the aspects other than the nostalgic that this essay offers. It is the various moods the narrator suggests to us from his observations and commentary that make this essay so worth reading IMO. While I loved the last essay, I felt the prose a bit jarring as that narrato described his various states of mind in the processs of trying to fall asleep. In this essay, the narrator has much more control of the prose as he shares his thoughts on a walk through London while he can't sleep. The prose shows Dickens at his best and compares to what he wrote in his most critically praised works.
The essay opens with narrator giving us his reason for the night walk. The opening paragraph pretty much sums up what we read in the last essay. The second paragraph points out that the narrator learns from the experience of night walking, noting how it brought him into "sympathetic relations with the people." I feel that mention of empathy is almost meant as a guide for our reactions to what the narrator sees.
He notes it is March, "damp, cloudy and cold.' His walk begins sometime after 12:30 AM and will continue through dawn, five hours later. At first he has a lot of company but when the drinking establishments closed, the drunkards ramble around a bit occasionally getting into fights, but then things start to quiet except for some bad areas like Haymarket, known for prostitution. Eventually almost all activity stops and we have a poignant note of loneliness as the narrator, "Houselessness" seeks any sign of life. He walks the streets alone in the raining seeing no one but some policemen engaged in their duties until he meets another "furtive head peering out a doorway, a few yards ahead of him" and we have a marvelously described scene of silent confrontation between the two unto the narrator moves off toward Waterloo Bridge to gain the company of the toll keeper and "get a glimpse of his fire". The narrator crosses the bridge but thinks it dreary and discouraging but in a brilliant bit of a flash-forward, the narrator tells us it was before the time of "the chopped-up murdered man," a reference to a sensational murder that took place in 1857, known now as the Waterloo Bridge mystery. It is wonderful how the narrator talks of that future corpse, now likely sleeping "undisturbed by any dream of where he is to come." But even though this murder is yet to come the narrator feels melancholic and notes how the lights reflected in the water of the river, 'seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show us where they went down."
This is a good moment to link a map of the narrator's walk from Waterloo Bridge:
https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/im...
After crossing the bridge the narrator visits the the theater district. a note I read presumed these theaters to be the Adelphi and Strand/Covent Garden. Our narrator thinks some more lonely melancholic thoughts, making reference to Yorick's skull from Hamlet. He writes of entering one on one of his night walks and reminiscing about past shows while imagining the present environment in atmospheric moody descriptions
He then moves to Newgate prison and ponders the "wicked little Debtor's Door-- shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw-- which has been Death's Door to so many." One can't help recall Dickens' father's debt troubles in relation to this passage. The narrator wonders if any old bankers are haunting the Bank Parlour at the Bank of England or wonders if it is as 'quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?' With Aceldama, "field of blood, " referring to the place where Judas Iscariot died after betraying Jesus Christ. Our narrator's social criticism bites deep. We end today as the narrator walks past the bank, visits Billingsgate, the market, a little too early to find company, and crosses London Bridge to see the brewery which is where I will continue on Saturday.
I'm so glad you chose this essay, Sam! Following along the map made it even more enjoyable since I've never visited London. It brought back memories of some of the novels we read in this group like Little Dorrit and David Copperfield where Dickens' characters took long walks through the city streets. London in the dark is a very different place from what people see during the day. There is some important social commentary in this piece, as you pointed out.
There’s some beautiful writing in this piece. It’s interesting he wrote it a few years later than lying awake. It seems to follow straight on and continue some of the ideas (eg Queen Victoria in both)Thanks for choosing it Sam.
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Sorry to backtrack a bit Sam, but l'm still thinking about Lying Awake! Like you, I'm finding I keep reading it over again as it's so extraordinarily good. (Thank you! If I ever had read it, I don't remember it. "I recollect everything I read then as perfectly as I forget everything I read now,", as Charles Dickens says here, but I fear I must be at the next stage where even books I read long ago are all drifting away ...)
But the point of this comment is that I too have been trying to find out about "Winking Charley". The internet was no help as everything was too modern, and even my books just referred to Lying Awake as the source. So I think he's an invention of Charles Dickens, as a sort of archetype of a villain in London's jails. I also had this thought ...
There's quite a lot of wry humour in this piece. Some is overt, and some more subtle. When Charles Dickens said at the beginning that he "was illustrating the theory of the Duality of the Brain", because it is capitalised, the reader would assume he was talking about the mind-body problem in philosophy; perhaps he was referring to René Descartes - or even earlier philosophers whose work was concerned with Duality. But immediately we realise that he is joking because he quips: "perhaps one part of my brain, being wakeful, sat up to watch the other part which was sleepy" which made me laugh :D
So ... is it possible that "Winking Charley" is an alter-ego? At this time authors were experimenting with early ideas of a hidden "other side" of the personality - it reached its pinnacle 34 years later in 1886 with The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I can quite see that the upstanding social reformer Mr. Dickens, who couldn't even keep his proselytising out of this dreamlike piece, would have a hidden dread of himself as potentially being one of the murdering vagabonds he so despised. This terror would be most likely to come about when half asleep, and not in command of his own thoughts.
We have his name "Charley", and the "winking" bit applies to him trying to sleep - getting "forty winks". It's a fanciful idea for sure, but I'm quite taken with it.
Your questions: This whole piece to me feels very stream of consciousness. You asked about the tenses, but I wasn't aware of a jolt. The present tense is when he is applying himself to trying to sleep, and he uses the past tense when he is remembering actual events. Isn't that just what we do? Novels written in all the present tense for effect feel very odd. Likewise I felt the flights of imagination were just matched to what was happening at the time, and not a separate section. Sometimes he drifted off to sleep, but only for a few seconds, so it was like a waking dream in miniature.
Sorry again for the intrusion ... I can timetable things just fine, but find it hard to tell my brain to have the ideas at the right time! And I'm so grateful to members like you and Janelle, who find and lead unusual pieces by Charles Dickens, which reveal a whole other side to him!
Glad to see your interest in "Lying Awake." I think your idea of "Winking Charley," as a persona is quite credible and likely. This could make Winking Charley an imagined or dreamed Charles Dickens himself, as the character and carries on both the sleeping theme and the humorous theme if expecting us to pick up on the joke. I dodged posting my research on The Duality of the Mind because of so many possibilities and because of where duality led in the later nineteenth century which I thought might be confusing. I will give my thoughts now. I don't think Cartesian duality helps much because his duality is more mind/body or mind/soul, though the sense of dichotomy traces through him I think. There are also many developments that are soon to follow, with Paul Broca leading the way with his work on Broca's area leading the way and most internet inquiries lead to Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde references which extend beyond what Dickens referenced.
I think Dickens was probably referencing Arthur Wigan's Duality of the Mind 1844 and I will drop a couple of links
See the first paragraph of this essay:
https://academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
The actual book:
https://books.google.com/books/about/...
On the different tenses, you caught me in one of those moments where not being able to find the word I want, I just throw whatever seems close so the reader can figure it out.
The essay seems to incorporate several different points of view, or frames of reference, that are cycled through in the course of the short essay. There is the Dickens trying to fall asleep and the Dickens remembering past events, but there is also the Dickens writing the piece which is taking place after the events and after the Night Walk if we are to believe the narration. I also thought we had the presence of an unconscious "Dreaming Dickens," at least for a few moments in the piece especially in the episode with the Queen and Winking Charley. Last, we have the social criticism towards the end which I would call the "Working Dickens" or "Prewriting Dickens" where he seems to be fully conscious and prewriting a future essay in his mind while laying down, still trying to fall asleep. There is one more "Dickens" to consider and that is the Dickens of the intruding thoughts. That seems to be rationalized by the commenting Dickens personas but also might have a character of its own if studied. I found getting all these voices organized took some time and effort and that is why I called the switch between them jarring and as I mentioned, couldn't think of a quick word to define what I meant, hence the use of "tenses." Be thankful you don't have to talk with me since I instead of interrupting a conversation when I can't remember the word I want, I just make a defining reference. The "thing that goes with the car," would be defined as keys and the "thing that goes on my head," would be sunglasses. Family members have many humorous stories about my shorthand and how quickly they would guess what I meant.
The Waterloo Bridge murder mystery.One of my favorite parts of the "Night Walks" essay is Dickens treatment of the "chopped-up murdered man,' which we see described not as a thought of the narrator as he crosses the bridge, but as an event that happens much later, a thought in the mind of the narrator as he writes the piece interposing his present thought on the thoughts of the narrator at the time of the actual night walk. This part of the essay was not only a favorite of mine but had developed as a part of cultural history stemming from Dickens' writing about it in this piece and has spawned books and commentary and even murder mystery walks. I wanted to include a link with more information.
https://www.miamighostchronicles.com/...
The "Debtor's Door":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgate...
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMa...
https://m.facebook.com/londonsinister...
https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/cri...
Summary of "Night Walks" part 2We left off at the Brewery after crossing London Bridge and our narrator sets off for the King's Bench Prison where he recounts a story of Horace Kinch. an individual with the disease of Dry-Rot in men. "The first external revelation is a tendency to lurk and lounge, to be at street-corners without intelligible reason...to do nothing tangible, but to have the intention to performing a variety of intangible duties tomorrow or the day after." The narrator elaborates on the symptoms of this dry-rot but never really defines it leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions which readers have done over the years with varied answers usually somewhat related to their own situations. But I can't help thinking the disease is one that can affect all men after a certain amount of living.
The narrator continues on past Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam) partly because he had a thought, "Are not the sane and insane equal at night as the sane lie dreaming" The narrator's comparison of Dreaming and insanity may seem a little dated today but the aspect of social criticism works because the narrator accents our similarities rather than differences, appeals to our compassion and humility, and stands himself as an example. Throughout the essay are elements that remind us of the previous essay, "Lying Awake," and one of them is where the narrator repeats the allusion to Shakespeare's Macbeth.
The narrator proceeds from Bethlehem Hospital over the Westminster Bridge noting as he passes Parliament, the Courts of Law and Westminster Abbey. The narrator comments how "if all the dead buried in the city were raised while the living slept, there wouldn't be a pinpoint's space for the living." He follows this with a philosophical statement on how when a church bell strikes, the narrator at first gets a feeling of company but as the sound waves of reverberations expand out into silence he is left with a greater sense of loneliness.
This prompts him to tell another story of how when St. Martin's was striking three, another houseless human being, a youth, rose in front of him just before our narrator was about to step on him. The narrator describes him as like an animal, an it, who twists out the rags he wears as the narrator reaches out to calm him and runs away. This prompts another social commentary on the homeless children that prowl Convent-garden-Market at night. The narrator then describes early Convent-garden Market where early morning coffee was available and tells a story of the character whos picture opened the piece, another of the most striking stories of these essays where the narrator just describes the character without adding more of the significance of why he is telling us the story. The narattor tells of when he did not go to the Convent-garden Market, he would go by the railway terminus to perhaps get coffee but it was only available for a short time. He tells of the coming of day with cattle being drive along the high road and early risers on their way to work, and the gas growing paler in the lamps. Our narrator ends the essay with how now tired and sleepy "going home was not the least wonderful thing in London.' He ends the essay with the association of Houselessness with loneliness once more and how it was his choice.
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It strikes me that Charles Dickens might have been a very different sort of writer if he hadn't been an insomniac, who spent a great part of the nights walking.
I’m curious why these pieces aren’t better known. I think they’re the two best short Dickens I’ve read. It’s just brilliant writing!
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We are on our "official" last day for this one, but I'm sure both works are ones to ponder for a long time. Thank you so much Sam for bringing them to our attention, and presenting so much fascinating associated material.
These have been great pieces to complete our summer reads, and I hope other readers find these little gems soon :)
Bionic Jean wrote: "You've paired these together Sam even though there are several years between them. I can understand why, but can you tell us which you prefer, and the reasons? It strikes me that [author:Charles ..."
I don't really have a preference and I like them for their similarities in style and mood. Also, The depth present in these essays leave much for the reader to analyze or ponder and there are so many approaches one can take with these essays. I think "Night Walks," is the much better and more polished essay but my feeling is that the reading experience from reading them together is different and more fulfilling than with either essay alone.
My last post on Night Walks can be incorporated into this response I think. The strength of the essay for me is in the vivid images and supplemental stories that accompany an otherwise reportorial account of London at night, and I think they tend to stylistically foreshadow different movements and threads in art and literature from future periods. I am going to group some of these since it is the totality of the effect that I feel is most significant. For example, I have already mentioned elements of the image we get on Waterloo Bridge, where Dickens gets some sensationalism in by having his narrator metafictionally intrude on the thoughts of the figure on the bridge with a flash forward to a murder that has yet to be committed at the time the narrator is on the bridge. The effect is marvelous alone but let us view two images of encounters on the night walk in concert with the Waterloo bridge scene. Let us add the first silent encounter with another person standing in the shadows during the rain. I find that to be the most frightening image in the piece and there is a sense the narrator is seeing a "double," or reflected image in that scene before he walks away. The next image to consider is the parallel image toward the end of the piece where the narrator encounter's a youth and it is the youth that is scared near to death. The effect having read these three scenes sequentially in context reminded me of the sense I get when viewing Edvard Munch's, "The Scream," and were it possible create a triptych that reflected each scene, I feel the sense of angst would match that the famous painting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream
Other modern ideas from the essay seem to anticipate other threads from modernity. The "Dry-Rot Man " reminds us of something written by T'S'Eliot. The dream analysis offered near Bedlam brings Freud and Jung to mind. The story of the "Red-faced man," of the drawing, IMO, captures all the elements of absurdity and could be found in something by Beckett, Pinter, or Stoppard.
That sense of modern, puts the Night Walks essay up a notch. Thanks for the invitation to participate Jean and for for the encouraging comments from the group.
That's a fabulous comment about the key scenes in the "Night Walks" essay and the comparison to "The Scream," Sam. I found the scene with the frightened youth especially poignant, and I kept reading it over. The youth disappeared into nothing and the walker was left with rags in his hand. It seemed to show how society views these impoverished, homeless people - they are nothing and will leave no trace that they ever existed.The essay was so sensual, and imaginative while still pointing out the need for social reform. It was a five-star read! I appreciate all your research into these essays, Sam.
Thanks Jean. I hope I didn't scare away your regulars. I am not skilled at social media and don't drum up many comments from others. But the works speak for themselves. We only touched on Night Walks and there is plenty more to discuss if someone wants to revisit the essay. I will n9t be around for the upcoming biography discussion since I missed the first two but hope to attend another book discussion in the future.
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Bionic Jean, "Dickens Duchess"
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In fact I was so taken with Lying Awake, that I wrote a review (I haven't done that for many of our short reads!) LINK HERE if you'd like to read it.
And thank you!
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Sam, thank you for the read! I really enjoyed your thoughtful summaries, analysis, insights, and plentiful additional info. You've done a great job!Jean, I'm impressed by your insight into Winking Charley! The more I think about your theory, the more probable it seems. Although 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' were published almost forty years later, Dickens was known for anticipating literary developments, wasn't he? In fact, one of my first impressions from this read was how modern this writing is for Victorian times.
Janelle, Connie, thank you for your interesting comments.
I agree with Jean that 'Lying Awake' is a stream of consciousness; I believe, in fact, that Molly's famous monologue in Joyce's 'Ulysses' might be indebted to, or at least partly inspired by, this short story.
What is perhaps even more striking is that here we have an excellent representation of the 'monkey mind' concept - I believe it was not known outside the Buddhist world until much later, or am I mistaken?
A possible literary allusion to 'Night Walks' happens in 'The Lord of the Rings': Dickens's sentence 'the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down' reminded me immediately of this famous scene from Tolkien: 'They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.'
This is also characteristic of Dickens's obsession with drowning (which might, of course, have been just the usual Victorian interest for the macabre). Drowning is mentioned in 'Lying Awake', too: 'the swollen saturated clothes hanging up, and the water dripping, dripping all day long, upon that other swollen saturated something in the corner'.
Oh, and what about 'what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were raised while the living slept...'? Stephen King might be jealous of this turn of phrase, don't you think?
And (sorry for the monkey mind coherence): 'left me standing alone with its rags in my hands' - isn't that a popular cinematic trope?
Another typically Dickensian thing is to mix the macabre with the hilarious, and I was truly grateful that both stories had some humourous relief in them.
Off: Sam, I'm afraid I pose similar riddles to 'the thing that goes with the car' to my family :)
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Oh, I forgot to mention: I enjoyed Irving's story, too! I think it's anticlimactic on the surface, but subversively humorous, - I can see why it would have appealed to Charles Dickens. What do 'Lying Awake' and 'The Adventures of My Uncle' have in common? This 'farrago' of night-time thoughts; ghosts; irony; but also the recreation of atmospheric details and vivid characterization.
Plateresca wrote: "Sam, thank you for the read! I really enjoyed your thoughtful summaries, analysis, insights, and plentiful additional info. You've done a great job!Jean, I'm impressed by your insight into Winkin..."
Thanks Plateresca, i mean to read those eesays again in a year once I have read more Dickens and what has been written about Dickens.
Great reminder of how great literature begets great literature. Thanks for reminding us.
Dickensians!
Books mentioned in this topic
Lying Awake (other topics)To Be Read at Dusk (other topics)
Lying Awake (other topics)
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (other topics)
David Copperfield (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Charles Dickens (other topics)Charles Dickens (other topics)
René Descartes (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
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A balloon ascent at Cremorne Gardens in London by Walter Greaves, 1872
This thread is to discuss our 9th Summer read, Lying Awake by Charles Dickens. There is a link to the text in comment 3.
Reading is between 14th - 20th September.
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Sam will also lead the short read Night Walks, between 21st - 27th September
This is piece 13 in The Uncommercial Traveller. Here is the text if you would like to read it online:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/914/9...
Our discussion for Night Walks begins LINK HERE.