There appeared to be nobody stirring in that quarter of the town; for the windows of the houses were all closely shut; and the streets through which they passed, were noiseless and empty.
2. By the time they had turned into the Bethnal Green Road, the day had fairly begun to break. Many of the lamps were already extinguished;
a few country waggons were slowly toiling on, towards London; and now and then, a stage-coach, covered with mud, rattled briskly by:
the driver bestowing, as he passed, an admonitory lash upon the heavy waggoner who, by keeping on the wrong side of the road, had endangered his arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute after his time.
The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open.
By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed; and a few scattered people were met with.
Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads: donkey-carts laden with vegetables;
chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with pails;
and an unbroken concourse of people, trudging out with various supplies to the eastern suburbs of the town.
3. As they approached the City, the noise and traffic gradually increased;
and when they threaded the streets between Shoreditch and Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar of sound and bustle.
It was as light as it was likely to be, till night came on again; and the busy morning of half the London population had begun. . . .
4. It was market-morning.
The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire;
and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle,
and mingling with the fog,
which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. . . .
Countrymen,
butchers,
drovers,
hawkers,
boys,
thieves,
idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade,
were mingled together in a dense mass;
5. the whistling of drovers,
the barking of dogs,
the bellowing and plunging of oxen,
the bleating of sheep,
the grunting and squeaking of pigs;
the cries of hawkers,
the shouts, oaths and quarrelling on all sides;
the ringing of bells
and roar of voices, that issued from every public-house;
the crowding, pushing, driving, beating,
whooping and yelling;
the hideous and discordant din that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded the senses.
How often have we encountered just such a structure in the work of Griffith? This austere accumulation and quickening tempo, this gradual play of light: from burning street-lamps, to their being extinguished; from night, to dawn; from dawn, to the full radiance of day (It was as light as it was likely to be, till night came on again); this calculated transition from purely visual elements to an interweaving of them with aural elements: at first as an indefinite rumble, coming from afar at the second stage of increasing light, so that the rumble may grow into a roar, transferring us to a purely aural structure, now concrete and objective (section 5 of our break-down); with such scenes, picked up en passant, and intercut into the whole—like the driver, hastening towards his office; and, finally, these magnificently typical details, the reeking bodies of the cattle, from which the steam rises and mingles with the over-all cloud of morning fog, or the close-up of the legs in the almost ankle-deep filth and mire, all this gives the fullest cinematic sensation of the panorama of a market.
Surprised by these examples from Dickens, we must not forget one more circumstance, related to the creative work of Dickens in general.
Thinking of this as taking place in “cozy” old England, we are liable to forget that the works of Dickens, considered not only against a background of English literature, but against a background of world literature of that epoch, as well, were produced as the works of a city artist. He was the first to bring factories, machines, and railways into literature.
But indication of this “urbanism” in Dickens may be found not only in his thematic material, but also in that head-spinning tempo of changing impressions with which Dickens sketches the city in the form of a dynamic (montage) picture; and this montage of its rhythms conveys the sensation of the limits of speed at that time (1838), the sensation of a rushing—stagecoach!
As they dashed by the quickly-changing and ever-varying objects, it was curious to observe in what a strange procession they passed before the eye. Emporiums of splendid dresses, the materials brought from every quarter of the world; tempting stores of everything to stimulate and pamper the sated appetite and give new relish to the oft-repeated feast; vessels of burnished gold and silver, wrought into every exquisite form of vase, and dish, and goblet; guns, swords, pistols, and patent engines of destruction; screws and irons for the crooked, clothes for the newly-born, drugs for the sick, coffins for the dead, church-yards for the buried—all these jumbled each with the other and flocking side by side, seemed to flit by in motley dance . . .11
Isn’t this an anticipation of a “symphony of a big city”?*
But here is another, directly opposite aspect of a city, outdistancing Hollywood’s picture of the City by eighty years.
It contained several large streets all very like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.12
Is this Dickens’s Coketown of 1853, or King Vidor’s The Crowd of 1928?
If in the above-cited examples we have encountered prototypes of characteristics for Griffith’s montage exposition, then it would pay us to read further in Oliver Twist, where we can find another montage method typical for Griffith—the method of a montage progression of parallel scenes, intercut into each other.
For this let us turn to that group of scenes in which is set forth the familiar episode of how Mr. Brownlow, to show faith in Oliver in spite of his pick-pocket reputation, sends him to return books to the book-seller, and of how Oliver again falls into the clutches of the thief Sikes, his sweetheart Nancy, and old Fagin.
These scenes are unrolled absolutely a la Griffith: both in their inner emotional line, as well as in the unusual sculptural relief and delineation of the characters; in the uncommon fullbloodedness of the dramatic as well as the humorous traits in them; finally, also in the typical Griffith-esque montage of parallel interlocking of all the links of the separate episodes. Let us give particular attention to this last peculiarity, just as unexpected, one would think, in Dickens, as it is characteristic for Griffith!
Chapter XIV
COMPRISING FURTHER PARTICULARS OF OLIVER’S STAY AT MR. BROWNLOW’S, WITH THE REMARKABLE PREDICTION WHICH ONE MR. GRIMWIG UTTERED CONCERNING HIM, WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN ERRAND.
. . .“Dear me, I am very sorry for that,” exclaimed Mr. Brownlow; “I particularly wished those books to be returned tonight.”
“Send Oliver with them,” said Mr. Grimwig, with an ironical smile; “he will be sure to deliver them safely, you know.”
“Yes; do let me take them, if you please, Sir,” said Oliver. “I’ll run all the way, Sir.”
The old gentleman was just going to say that Oliver should not go out on any account; when a most malicious cough from Mr. Grimwig determined him that he should; and that, by his prompt discharge of the commission, he should prove to him the injustice of his suspicions: on this head at least: at once.
[Oliver is prepared for the errand to
the bookstall-keeper.]
“I won’t be ten minutes, Sir,” replied Oliver, eagerly.
[Mrs. Bedwin, Mr. Brownlow’s housekeeper, gives Oliver the directions, and sends him off.]
“Bless his sweet face!” said the old lady, looking after him. “I can’t bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight.”
At this moment, Oliver looked gaily round, and nodded before he turned the comer. The old lady smilingly returned his salutation, and, closing the door, went back to her own room.
“Let me see; he’ll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest,” said Mr. Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table. “It will be dark by that time.”
“Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?” inquired Mr. Grimwig.
“Don’t you?” asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling.
The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig’s breast, at the moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend’s confident smile.
“No,” he said, smiting the table with his fist, “I do not. The boy has a new suit of clothes on his back; a set of valuable books under his arm; and a five-pound note in his pocket. He’ll join his old friends the thieves, and laugh at you. if ever that boy returns to this house, Sir, I’ll eat my head.”
With these words he drew his chair closer to the table; and there the two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the watch between them.
This is followed by a short “interruption” in the form of a digression:
It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our own judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not by any means a bad-hearted man, and though he would have been unfeignedly sorry to see his respected friend duped and deceived, he really did most eamestly and strongly hope, at that moment, that Oliver Twist might not come back.
And again a return to the two old gentlemen:
It grew so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in silence: with the watch between them.
Twilight shows that only a little time has passed, but the close-up of the watch, already twice shown lying between the old gentlemen, says that a great deal of time has passed already. But just then, as in the game of “will he come? won’t he come?”, involving not only the two old men, but also the kind-hearted reader, the worst fears and vague forebodings of the old housekeeper are justified by the cut to the new scene—Chapter XV. This begins with a short scene in the public-house, with the bandit Sikes and his dog, old Fagin and Miss Nancy, who has been obliged to discover the whereabouts of Oliver.
“You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?” inquired Sikes, proffering the glass.
“Yes, I am, Bill,” replied the young lady, disposing of its contents; “and tired enough of it I am, too. . . .”
Then, one of the best scenes in the whole novel—at least one that since childhood has been perfectly preserved, along with the evil figure of Fagin—the scene in which Oliver, marching along with the books, is suddenly
starded by a young woman screaming out very loud, “Oh, my dear brother!” And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.
With this cunning maneuver Nancy, with the sympathies of the whole street, takes the desperately pulling Oliver, as her “prodigal brother,” back into the bosom of Fagin’s gang of thieves. This fifteenth chapter closes on the now familiar montage phrase:
The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting anxiously at the open door; the servant had run up the street twenty times to see if there were any traces of Oliver; and still the two old gentlemen sat, perseveringly, in the dark parlour: with the watch between them.
In Chapter XVI Oliver, once again in the clutches of the gang, is subjected to mockery. Nancy rescues him from a beating:
“I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin,” cried the girl. “You’ve got the boy, and what more would you have? Let him be—let him be, or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to the gallows before my time.”
By the way, it is characteristic for both Dickens and Griffith to have these sudden flashes of goodness in “morally degraded” characters and, though these sentimental images verge on hokum, they are so faultlessly done that they work on the most skeptical readers and spectators!
At the end of this chapter, Oliver, sick and weary, falls “sound asleep.” Here the physical time unity is interrupted—an evening and night, crowded with events; but the montage unity of the episode is not interrupted, tying Oliver to Mr. Brownlow on one side, and to Fagin’s gang on the other.
Following, in Chapter XVIII, is the arrival of the parish beadle, Mr. Bumble, in response to an inquiry about the lost boy, and the appearance of Bumble at Mr. Brownlow’s, again in Grimwig’s company. The content and reason for their conversation is revealed by the very title of the chapter: OLIVER’S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO LONDON TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION. . .
“I fear it is all too true,” said the old gentleman sorrowfully, after looking over the papers. “This is not much for your intelligence; but I would gladly have given you treble the money, if it had been favourable to the boy.”
It is not at all improbable that if Mr. Bumble had been possessed of this information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have imparted a very different coloring to his little history. It was too late to do it now, however; so he shook his head gravely; and, pocketing the five guineas, withdrew. . . .
“Mrs. Bedwin,” said Mr. Brownlow, when the housekeeper appeared; “that boy, Oliver, is an impostor.”
“It can’t be, Sir. It cannot be,” said the old lady energetically. . . .“I never will believe it, Sir. . . . Never!”
“You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors, and lying story-books,” growled Mr. Grimwig. “I knew it all along. . . .”
“He was a dear, grateful, gentle child, Sir,” retorted Mrs. Bedwin, indignantly. “I know what children are, Sir; and have done these forty years; and people who can’t say the same, shouldn’t say anything about them. That’s my opinion!”
This was a hard hit at Mr. Grimwig, who was a bachelor. As it extorted nothing from that gentleman but a smile, the old lady tossed her head, and smoothed down her apron preparatory to another speech, when she was stopped by Mr. Brownlow.
“Silence!” said the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far from feeling. “Never let me hear the boy’s name again. I rang to tell you that. Never. Never, on any pretence, mind! You may leave the room, Mrs. Bedwin. Remember! I am in earnest.”
And the entire intricate montage complex of this episode is concluded with the sentence:
There were sad hearts in Mr. Brownlow’s that night.
It was not by accident that I have allowed myself such full extracts, in regard not only to the composition of the scenes, but also to the delineation of the characters, for in their very modeling, in their characteristics, in their behavior, there is much typical of Griffith’s manner. This equally concerns also his “Dickens-esque” distressed, defenseless creatures (recalling Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess in Broken Blossoms or the Gish sisters in Orphans of the Storm), and is no less typical for his characters like the two old gentlemen and Mrs. Bedwin; and finally, it is entirely characteristic of him to have such figures as are in the gang of “the merry old Jew” Fagin.
In regard to the immediate task of our example of Dickens’s montage progression of the story composition, we can present the results of it in the following table:
The old gentlemen.
Departure of Oliver.
The old gentlemen and the watch. It is still light.
Digression on the character of Mr. Grimwig.
The old gentlemen and the watch. Gathering twilight.
Fagin, Sikes and Nancy in the public-house.
Scen
e on the street.
The old gentlemen and the watch. The gas-lamps have been lit.
Oliver is dragged back to Fagin.
Digression at the beginning of Chapter XVII.
The journey of Mr. Bumble.
The old gentlemen and Mr. Brownlow’s command to forget Oliver forever.
As we can see, we have before us a typical and, for Griffith, a model of parallel montage of two story lines, where one (the waiting gentlemen) emotionally heightens the tension and drama of the other (the capture of Oliver). It is in “rescuers” rushing along to save the “suffering heroine” that Griffith has, with the aid of parallel montage, earned his most glorious laurels!
Most curious of all is that in the very center of our breakdown of the episode, is wedged another “interruption”—a whole digression at the beginning of Chapter XVII, on which we have been purposely silent. What is remarkable about this digression? It is Dickens’s own “treatise” on the principles of this montage construction of the story which he carries out so fascinatingly, and which passed into the style of Griffith. Here it is:
It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.
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