A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club)

by Charles Dickens

  And indeed she never did.

  [END OF INSTALMENT 30]

  CHAPTER 15

  The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

  Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression ever again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

  Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezabels, the churches that are not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. ‘If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,’ say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, ‘then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!’ Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.

  As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.

  Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals, by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.

  There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long Street of St Honoré, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.

  On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, ‘Has he sacrificed me?’ when his face clears, as he looks into the third.

  ‘Which is Evrémonde?’ says a man behind him.

  ‘That. At the back there.’

  ‘With his hand in the girl’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man cries ‘Down, Evrémonde! To the guillotine all aristocrats ! Down, Evrémonde!’

  ‘Hush, hush!’ the Spy entreats him, timidly.

  ‘And why not, citizen?’

  ‘He is going to pay the forfeit; it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.’

  But, the man continuing to exclaim, ‘Down, Evrémonde!’ the face of Evrémonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evrémonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

  The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the foremost chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.

  ‘Thérèse!’ she cries, in her shrill tones. ‘Who has seen her? Thérèse Defarge!’

  ‘She never missed before,’ says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

  ‘No; nor will she miss now,’ cries The Vengeance, petulantly. ‘Thérèse.’

  ‘Louder,’ the woman recommends.

  Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!

  ‘Bad Fortune!’ cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, ‘and here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment! ’

  As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash! – A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.

  The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash! – And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their work, count Two.

  The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.

  ‘But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.’

  ‘Or you to me,’ says Sydney Carton. ‘Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.’

  ‘I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.’

  ‘They will be rapid. Fear not!’

  The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.

  ‘Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me – just a little.’

  ‘Tell me what it is.’

  ‘I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate – for I cannot write – and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.’

  ‘Yes, yes: better as it is.�
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  ‘What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this: – If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time; she may even live to be old.’

  ‘What then, my gentle sister?’

  ‘Do you think:’ the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: ‘that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?’

  ‘It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.’

  ‘You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him – is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

  ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

  The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

  They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

  One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe – a woman – had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

  ‘I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

  ‘I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

  ‘I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

  ‘I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man, winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place – then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement – and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

  ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.’

  THE END

  [END OF INSTALMENT 31]

  PENGUIN ENRICHED EBOOK FEATURES

  Early Reception of A Tale of Two Cities

  The first reviews of A Tale of Two Cities began before the novel was finished with its serial run, as often occurred with Dickens’s fiction. Not only literary reviews, such as the Saturday Review, but also newspapers—the Sun, Examiner, Morning Chronicle, and Observer—all weighed in on the achievements and failures of the novel. These reviews, as well as letters to Dickens from individual readers, influenced the novelist as he wrote the later numbers.

  Dickens’s penchant for dramatic incident was universally recognized if not unanimously applauded. Critics disagreed about the aesthetic value of his use of pathos. Highbrow critics derided its popular appeal and disparaged Dickens for “working upon the feelings by the coarsest stimulants,” as Sir James Fitzjames Stephen put it in his essay review of the novel. But other more middlebrow critics, such as the anonymous reviewer in the Sun, admired Dickens’s “extraordinary command over our emotions as a pathetic narrator”—pathetic in this instance being complimentary.

  The novel’s treatment of the history of the Revolution was another disagreed upon point. Not surprisingly, the Saturday Review essay by Stephen found Dickens’s knowledge of the momentous events to be scanty, apparently, the critic sneered, based upon a single reading of Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution. Though not disputing that “the French noblesse had much to answer for,” Stephen was most critical of A Tale for “exaggerat[ing] the faults of the French aristocracy in a book which will naturally find its way to readers who know very little of the subject except what he [Dickens] chooses to tell them.” The class bias here is clearly marked. (Stephen also poked fun at Dickens’s translations from French, which he deemed awkwardly literal; this, too, was a mark of class prejudice.) On the other hand, the review in the Observer found Dickens’s presentation of the Revolution not radical enough: “he has written of it as though he were imbued with all the prejudices of the days of Pitt, against the actors and the drama,” that is, exhibiting the fear of Republicanism common during Prime Minister Pitt’s government (1783–1801).

  Other critics, such as the anonymous Morning Chronicle reviewer, were less concerned about the novel misleading the uneducated British populace, and instead acknowledged “the great attraction [. . .] found in the isolated pictures of life which abound in its pages.” The Sun’s review of the work in progress declared Dickens had “recently developed genius as a master of Terror.” (One might dispute the recent development of this talent; Dickens’s skill at depicting terrifying incidents was evident from earlier novels, such as the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist, the crowd riot in Barnaby Rudge, and the haunted guilty conscience of Jonas Chuzzlewit in Martin Chuzzlewit.) A longtime friend and admirer of Dickens, John Forster, who reviewed the novel for the Examiner, emphasized the relationship the novel explores between nation and family. Part of the strength of the story, according to Forster, is “[t]he subtlety with which a private history is associated with a most vivid expression of the spirit of the days of the great French Revolution.” He claimed that in Dickens’s “broadest colouring of Revolutionary scenes, [. . .] he is working out closely and thoroughly the skilfully designed tale of a household.” Like other Victorian novels, such as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), A Tale of Two Cities aggrandizes the private history and minimizes the national story by comparison.

  Forster was not the only critic to praise the novel for its sympathy with the suffering—the suffering that caused the Revolution as well as that which was inflicted by the Revolution. The Sun review called the scene in which Dr. Manette is restored to the world and to his daughter “among the most exquisite things Charles Dickens has ever written.” Regarding the dénouement, the reviewer for the Morning Chronicle was “perfectly amazed at a solution so unexpected, and withal so natural.” Forster, in The Life of Charles Dickens (1872–74), reflected on the effect of A Tale of Two Cities. He suggested that the death of Sydney Carton merited the most acclaim: “Though there are excellent traits and touches all through the revolutiona
ry 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 [. . .].”

  Psychology in A Tale of Two Cities

  Widely regarded as a subfield of philosophy until the mid-nineteenth century, psychology was first developed into an independent scientific discipline in Germany. The British psychologists (to employ a slight anachronism) of Dickens’s period were influenced by the ideas of John Locke about the self as a composite of experience, and particularly by his theory of association. Throughout the nineteenth century scientists attempted to discover a biological mechanism for the association of ideas. One early hypothesis, the pseudoscience of phrenology, first developed by Franz Gall and then popularized in Britain by George Combe, had widespread impact. Phrenology claimed that different areas, or “organs,” of the brain (which manifested in the shape of the skull and its varying protrusions) corresponded to character traits—spirituality, love, greed, language. The larger its organ in the brain, the more developed the trait in the person. Combe’s hypothesis was popular because it offered a simple, physical explanation for personality. Counterintuitively, however, another reason for the popularity of phrenology was its emphasis on self-formation. Mapping one’s head, and thereby identifying weak and strong faculties, it was believed, enabled one to exercise and further develop one’s deficient capacities, thus overcoming the limitations endowed by nature at birth.

  Phrenology eventually was disputed by scientists, but both psycho-physiologists (as those who studied mind-brain phenomenon were known at the time) and popular writers of self-help manuals agreed about the power of beliefs, mental associations, and habits to shape a person’s character. In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is a cynic about human nature and, though brilliant, dissolute and self-destructive. His last, heroic (yet utterly self-destructive) act is associated with his romantic feelings for Lucie Manette, which bring out his ideal nature. Dickens also creates a fascinating representation of psychology in Dr. Manette’s reaction to his long and solitary imprisonment, that is, the physical activity of shoe making, which is a solace to his fears of solitary confinement and also how he safely channels his anger. Alone after his daughter weds the nephew of the man who had Manette imprisoned, the doctor loses his ability to repress his associations between his new son-in-law and his former prison cell, and he slips into an almost catatonic state, just like the one in which Mr. Lorie finds him after his release from the Bastille. In this state of mind, Manette reverts to the activity that provided an outlet to him while in prison: he begins making shoes. In chapter 19, when Mr. Lorry questions his friend about the causes of the relapse, Dr. Manette suggests that it was sparked by a “strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think.” The idea of destroying the bench and the tools causes Manette to feel “a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.” His poignant description highlights the feelings of vulnerability, as well, perhaps, as a repressed desire for revenge, that remains deeply embedded in his mind, even after his recovery.