[In the following essay, Friedman explores the way the motifs of reading and literacy serves not only to reinforce the themes of Our Mutual Friend, but also to help move the plot forward and to define characters.]

Two-thirds of the way through Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Eugene Wrayburn responds to his friend's criticism:

“You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses. (By-the-bye, that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An actress's Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer's Reading of a hornpipe, a singer's Reading of a song, a marine painter's Reading of the sea, the kettle-drum's Reading of an instrumental passage, are phrases ever youthful and delightful.)”¹

Eugene's casual digression, a leisurely “by-the-bye” meandering from an extremely serious discussion, reflects his insouciance and languor. But this wordplay, with its reference to various arts, fulfills another purpose, that of directing our attention to the subject of reading as a leitmotif of some significance in Our Mutual Friend's thematic development. Although Eugene is here concerned with figurative uses of the word, there are throughout the novel many references to the actual process of reading—the interpretation of written or printed symbols: characters often engage in reading and respond to it, while the narrator and others in the story frequently comment on the concept of literacy. Indeed, the motif of reading serves not only to reinforce the novel's theme, but also to advance the plot and to illuminate the personalities of various characters.

Critics studying Our Mutual Friend have cited a number of themes and images that Dickens employs as unifying devices to bind more closely his two principal stories, the John Harmon-Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam-Eugene Wrayburn matches. Money, the dust-heaps, and the river have been seen as the main symbols, features that help develop such themes as avarice, predation, death and rebirth, the quest for identity, and pride.² To these images and ideas, we may add what Monroe Engel calls the “social themes of Our Mutual Friend—having to do with money-dust, and relatedly with the treatment of the poor, education, representative government, even the inheritance laws.”³ The motif that I intend to examine closely—reading, or literacy—is, of course, related to education, but Engel and other scholars who have discussed Dickens' interest in education have been chiefly concerned with methods of formal classroom instruction.⁴ The primary goal of this paper is to isolate the many references to literacy and illiteracy, to books in general, and to the reading of specific books by characters in Our Mutual Friend, and to interpret the artistic usefulness of such references in illuminating the novel's meaning.

The two most extensive uses of the motif of reading in Our Mutual Friend appear in the scenes in which Noddy Boffin hears Wegg's renditions of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and, afterwards, listens to various accounts of notorious misers. Moreover, these reading sessions, even though only a few are described, are understood by us to continue for most of the time period included in the narrative.

When Boffin is initially introduced (Bk. 1, ch. 5), he enlists Wegg as a retainer who can open the gates of print for him. It is Noddy's interest in reading, therefore, that brings the balladmonger into one of the narrative's main plots, and the one-legged scoundrel then serves as a villain and comic butt, playing a part in the moral education of Bella and the testing of Mr. Venus. Wegg's employment allows the Golden Dustman to adopt, as part of his feigned degeneration, a pretended bibliomania for books about misers, the reading of which is instrumental in accomplishing the frustration of the avaricious Wegg, since the accounts of misers tempt and mislead him.

Although Boffin confesses to illiteracy, he nevertheless shows remarkable enthusiasm for literature, repeatedly expressing joy once he has arranged to have Wegg read: “Print is now opening ahead of me. This night, a literary man—with a wooden leg … will begin to lead me a new life” (I.v.55-56). Noddy considers literacy a great benefit, even though his work for the elder Harmon evidently did not require it.

In discussing the proposed employment, Wegg refers to print as a horse or some kind of animal antagonist: “I believe you couldn't show me the piece of English print, that I wouldn't be equal to collaring and throwing” (I.v.52). His metaphor suggests that for him reading is a struggle,⁵ and, indeed, Boffin himself apparently views it as a demanding physical task—an attitude which explains his awe at Wegg's ability to read despite his wooden leg. Such feelings increase Noddy's discomfort at his own insufficiency: “Here am I, a man without a wooden leg, and yet all print is shut to me” (I.v.52). Referring to his neglected education, Boffin adds that he can recognize the “B” beginning his last name, but implies that this letter is the only one he knows.⁶ He exclaims, “Now, it's too late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books” (I.v.53), another expression that links reading with strenuous physical labor and facetiously suggests that Boffin sees it in terms of his previous work with dust-mounds.

Later in the novel, however, we learn that Noddy is not so illiterate as he at first seems. On one occasion he is seen in “severe literary difficulties,” his nose and forehead besmeared with ink: “Many disordered papers were before him. … He had been engaged in some attempts to make notes of these papers” (I.xv.184-85). Despite Boffin's frustration, his having tried to sort and abstract bills suggests that he can, at least to some extent, read and write. When we are subsequently told of his receiving Mr. Venus' card proposing a secret meeting, no mention is made of Boffin's requiring anyone to read the note to him (III.xiv.596). Moreover, when Wegg later threatens to report his discovery of another Harmon will, Noddy requests “to see the document” (IV.iii.680). In Venus' shop, Wegg holds Boffin's arms after telling Venus, “If you'll open it [the will] and hold it well up in one hand, sir, and a candle in the other, he can read it charming.” The narrator then reports, “Venus … produced the document, and Mr. Boffin slowly spelt it out. …” (IV.iii.681-82).

But Boffin, although he may be partly literate, is hardly proficient, becoming evasive when queried by Rokesmith about the spelling of “Harmon's” (I.viii.103). Unless we consider Dickens inconsistent on this point, we may assume that Boffin can read, but only with great difficulty.⁷

According to their original agreement, Wegg was to read to Boffin for two hours a night, six nights a week (I.v.53). After the move from the Bower to a fashionable mansion, the hours are changed and perhaps increased, a reflection of the Golden Dustman's unabated appetite for reading (II.vii.308). But the initial talk with Wegg also reveals other details about Boffin's attitude toward books. Even before hiring the peddler, Noddy has purchased an eight-volume set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, a choice evidently based on the volumes' physical features, since Boffin is “slightly disappointed” when, after describing the books' appearance, he is asked by Wegg, “The book's name, sir?” (I.v.55). The mistake in the reply—“Decline-and-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire”—may safely be ascribed to Boffin rather than the bookseller and may humorously reflect continuing Russophobia in England after the recently concluded Crimean War.⁸

During their first reading session, the unsophisticated Noddy experiences a stronger response than his “literary man” does: “Mr. Wegg having read on by rote and attached as few ideas as possible to the text, came out of the encounter fresh; but, Mr. Boffin, who had soon laid down his unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently staring with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, was so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend Good-night. …” (I.v.62). Afterwards, Boffin reflects upon the events he has heard related: “Wegg takes it easy, but upon-my-soul to a old bird like myself these are scarers” (I.v.63). Boffin is both excited and frightened by ancient Rome's violence and turmoil, while for Wegg the words he has been reading have produced little effect.

Nevertheless, Noddy's thoughts after this first reading session hint that his understanding of Gibbon is limited:

“Commodious fights in that wild-beast-show, seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character only! As if that wasn't stunning enough, a hundred lions is turned into the same wild-beast-show all at once! As if that wasn't stunning enough, Commodious, in another character, kills 'em all off in a hundred goes!”

(I.v.63)

These recollections suggest Boffin's failure to realize that when Commodus competed “seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character” (that of the Secutor, a gladiator armed with helmet, sword, and buckler, who was matched against the Retiarius, equipped with trident and net), the Emperor was fighting human beings. Moreover, Noddy either disregards or jumbles chronology, since in Gibbon's account Commodus' killing of one hundred lions precedes his appearances as a gladiator. For Gibbon (in chapter 4 of the Decline and Fall), Commodus' feats in the arena are ignoble, cruel, and contemptible, but Boffin seems awed rather than outraged. In noting the limitations of Noddy's response, however, we should remain aware that Gibbon's prose is often extremely difficult to follow when auditory rather than visual perception is used, and we should also remember Wegg's obvious inadequacy as a reader.

The primary significance of the sessions in which Wegg reads Gibbon may seem unclear. E. D. H. Johnson suggests, “Boffin and his wife are Dickens' agents for ridiculing respectively the snobbish aspiration for culture and the love of fashionable display which accompany newly gained riches.”⁹ But the first part of this assertion appears unwarranted, since Noddy does not seek to parade his interest in Gibbon before others. Northrop Frye offers another explanation: “Dickens's view of the liberalizing quality of the Victorian Classical training is perhaps symbolized by the grotesque scenes of Silas Wegg stumbling through Gibbon's Decline and Fall to the admiration of the illiterate Boffins: an unskillful performance which nobody understands.”¹⁰ But Frye's point, too, seems questionable, for Wegg clearly has not received “the Victorian Classical training” and therefore does not represent one of its products.

Dickens himself, in a note in the Memorandum Book he kept from about 1855 to 1865, gives one clue about his intentions: “Gibbons's Decline and Fall. The two characters. One reporting to the other as he reads. Both getting confused as to whether it is not all going on now.”¹¹ In the novel, a comment by the narrator, when Boffin asks Wegg to resume the account of the affairs of Belisarius, seems partly intended to develop this idea: “Which [affairs], indeed, had been left overnight in a very unpromising posture, and for whose impending expedition against the Persians the weather had been by no means favourable all day” (I.xv.196). The remark reminds us that time in a narrative remains suspended while the reader is away from his book (or awaiting the next installment of a serial publication) and also suggests that Boffin's great interest virtually makes Belisarius a contemporary. Except for this passage, however, Dickens apparently modified his original plan, leading John Forster to comment, before presenting the note from the Memorandum Book, “The studies of Silas Wegg and his patron as they exist in Our Mutual Friend, are hardly such good comedy as in the form which the first notion seems to have intended.”¹²

Dickens' note also implies a parallel between Victorian England and ancient Rome, and various critics have seen the novelist's reference to Gibbon as an effort to foretell the decline and fall of Great Britain, another empire distinguished by greed and corruption.¹³ But this idea, too, is not really developed in the text, for no specific parallels are advanced. If, as several commentators suggest, Dickens knew the Decline and Fall well,¹⁴ we may wonder why he did not call attention to an incident like Didius Julianus' purchase of the throne (in Gibbon's chapter v), especially since this event occurs right after the death of Pertinax, referred to in Our Mutual Friend (I.viii.90). The purchase parallels on a grand scale Veneering's successful attempt to buy a seat in Parliament. Furthermore, when we examine the pages that mention the reading of Gibbon (I.v.61-63; I.viii.90; II.vii.308; III.vi.495), we may also wonder why Dickens makes reference to so few other details from the Decline and Fall.

Although Wegg reads up to the death of Commodus, nearly four chapters of the Decline and Fall, at the first session (I.v.62), his pace later seems to slacken greatly. Despite the fact that he presumably reads six times a week and completes approximately three percent of the text on the first evening, Wegg takes over a year to finish; the Lammles get married and celebrate their first anniversary in the period between Wegg's initial reading and his conclusion of the work (III.vi.495), Dickens having virtually ignored these continuing reading sessions for almost fifteen chapters. At the beginning of the eighth monthly installment, we are told that the Romans “were by this time on their last legs” (II.vii.308), but not until the middle of the twelfth monthly number does the narrator mention the Romans again, to tell us that the Empire had “worked out its destruction” (III.vi. 495).

At one time, however, Dickens apparently intended to give the reading of Gibbon more prominence. Ernest Boll, in “The Plotting of Our Mutual Friend,”¹⁵ offers a transcript of the working notes for the novel and includes the following lines:

Lead up to Boffin's Bower

and to “declining and falling off the Rooshan Empire.” Mrs Boffin a High-Flyer at Fashion. In a hat and feathers. This to go through the Work.

From “Mrs. Boffin” through “the Work” appears on one line in Boll. But Boll, in transcribing Dickens' handwriting into print, has made some misleading changes. The … remark, “This to go through the Work,” should appear directly under the … comment, “and to ‘declining and falling off the Rooshan Empire’” (the single underlining being continued to the end of the line), while the phrase “In a hat and feathers” should be placed directly under “Mrs Boffin a High-Flyer at Fashion,” with both comments about Mrs. Boffin placed at the left and separated from the other notes by three straight lines, forming (with the margin) an irregular box. In other words, the comment “This to go through the Work” clearly applies to the “declining and falling off,” not to Mrs. Boffin's interest in fashion. But in the novel itself the relative infrequency of references to Gibbon would seem to indicate a change in plans. Perhaps Dickens realized that unless he summarized or quoted extensively from Gibbon, relatively few readers of Our Mutual Friend would be sufficiently familiar with the Decline and Fall to appreciate parallels to the story, while lengthy quotation or paraphrase from Gibbon might disrupt the flow of the narrative.

After the reading of Gibbon has been completed, Boffin tries Charles Rollin's Ancient History, Josephus' Wars of the Jews, and Plutarch's Lives, but only the last of these seems to interest him. Dickens, in mentioning these new reading ventures, provides virtually no details, presenting merely the names of authors and titles of the texts with a few general remarks on their contents. And, before long, Noddy abandons his concern with ancient history and arrives one evening at the Bower with books about misers. Unlike Wegg, we are not surprised, since we have seen Boffin developing an apparent bibliomania for such narratives (III.v.486). This bibliomania and the subsequent sessions with Wegg provide the most important use of the motif of reading to be found in Our Mutual Friend. As we learn later, Boffin feigns an interest in misers in order to offer a monitory example to Bella and to test and punish Wegg. Assessing the morality of Noddy's ruse, Humphry House remarks, “Even apart from his pretended miserhood he [Boffin] behaves to Silas Wegg rather like mistresses who leave half-crowns in corners hoping the servants will steal them. …”¹⁶ But Wegg evokes little sympathy, especially since his “friendly move” antedates Boffin's pretense and is a poor compensation for the Golden Dustman's generosity.

In the scene in which Wegg reads accounts of specific misers (III.vi.498-505), we find lengthy quotations from the texts, instead of the extremely brief reports given of the readings from the Decline and Fall. The books brought to the Bower by Boffin actually exist, and were among the volumes found in Dickens' library at the time of his death: the Annual Register, James Caulfield's Characters, R. S. Kirby's Wonderful Museum, Frederick Somner Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers, and Henry Wilson's Characters.¹⁷ Moreover, in creating Wegg's readings, Dickens makes extraordinarily close use of source material found in two of these texts, those by Merryweather and Kirby.

Wegg, “turning to the table of contents and slowly fluttering the leaves” of Merryweather's book, reads out the names of seven misers: John Overs, John Little, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the Rev. Mr. Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, and Daniel Dancer (III.vi.500). Since Merryweather's table of contents does not contain the full forms for two of these names, and since the table lists Dancer's name prior to that of Elwes, perhaps Wegg—and Dickens—first took from the table of contents the names of Overs, Little, Jarret (mistakenly called “Jarrel”), and Elwes, and then leafed through the actual text to get the names of “the Reverend Mr. Jones of Blewbury” (mentioned in the table of contents only as “the reverend Miser of Blewbury”) and Vulture Hopkins (whose surname alone appears in the table of contents), before settling on the chapter describing Dancer.¹⁸

Wegg calls out the correct page number, “a hundred and nine,” and then actually reads the contents description at the head of Merryweather's eighth chapter: Dickens quotes exactly, except for some changes in capitalization and punctuation. Next, Wegg offers a brief summary of this chapter's first eighteen pages, one detail (the reference to Dancer's “warming his dinner by sitting on it”) evidently remembered by Dickens from another source, since Merryweather, although he refers to this incident in the chapter's list of contents (“A substitute for a Fire”), omits it.¹⁹ Then, Wegg reads out nearly verbatim the final two paragraphs from Merryweather's chapter, Dickens' only variations being slight changes in punctuation or spelling, a few very minor alternations in wording, and the omission of two clauses and one long sentence.

The next story mentioned, the account of Elwes, appears after that of Dancer in Merryweather's book, and the subsequent details about female misers and a French miser can also be found in this text. Continuing with Wegg's reading, we find that the lengthy description of the Jardines is another direct quotation, the only changes being trivial except for the omission of four sentences within the passage Wegg is reading and two sentences at the end. Dickens therefore copied nearly verbatim (1) the description of contents preceding Merryweather's chapter on Dancer, (2) a long passage about Dancer, and (3) most of a long paragraph about the Jardines—these three segments containing, respectively, about 70, 265, and 190 words.²⁰

The novelist then has Wegg present a lengthy passage, about 230 words, taken almost exactly from Kirby's book, the account describing the “most extraordinary case” of the will left by Roger Baldwin. Indeed, the only changes in this passage, except for punctuation, are extremely minor, consisting of a few omissions, several slight verbal changes, and the fusing of two sentences.²¹ In addition, we find that Boffin gives the correct volume number for this narrative, and that the three stories Wegg thumbs through before finding this one—“Remarkable petrifaction,” “Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking Rushlight,” and “Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece”—are all found in Kirby's text, the order of their appearance being identical with the sequence followed by Wegg.²²

We probably cannot determine whether Dickens believed such close use of sources would be noticed by his public. Having found these passages, he evidently considered them perfect for his purposes and proceeded to incorporate them skillfully into the chapter.

In the various scenes of pretended miserliness, Boffin shows great histrionic ability, at one point seeming to contradict his once high valuation of reading. Speaking to Rokesmith in the presence of Bella, Boffin asserts, “… it ain't that I want to occupy your whole time; you can take up a book for a minute or two when you've nothing better to do, though I think you'll almost always find something useful to do” (III.v.482). This disparagement of the utility of reading fits in with Boffin's pose and resembles the remark previously made to Jenny Wren by Fledgeby, the truly avaricious man (II.v.291).

Besides feigning bibliomania for books about misers, Boffin also pretends to be guided by these accounts. Bella notices “that, as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records with the ardour of Don Quixote for his books of chivalry, he began to spend his money with a more sparing hand” (III.v.487). So seriously does the Golden Dustman follow his studies that Wegg thinks Boffin sees an “evident parallel” between the behavior described in the passages read and that of old Harmon (III.vii.517). Afterwards, in talking to Rokesmith and then to Bella, Boffin seems to identify with some of these misers whom he has come to know through books (III.xv.611, 615). And later, when Wegg is asked by Noddy not to tell Mrs. Boffin about the extortion which is to take much of their wealth, the “literary man” replies, “I suspect, Boffin … that you've found out some account of some old chap, supposed to be a Miser, who got himself the credit of having much more money than he had” (IV.iii.683). Apparently, Wegg believes that Noddy's behavior is being influenced by the stories.

Various critics have questioned whether Boffin's degeneration was always planned by Dickens to be mere pretense, especially since the narrator, after Boffin has left Wegg and Venus at the latter's shop and is walking home alone, comments on Noddy's doubt concerning the taxidermist: “It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets” (III.xiv.606).²³ But F. X. Shea, examining the holograph manuscript now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, has found, both in the working notes and in various passages Dickens cancelled because of space limitations, convincing evidence that the novelist apparently never intended Boffin to become actually corrupted.²⁴ Moreover, Mrs. Boffin's obviously constrained behavior during her husband's attack on Rokesmith (III.xv.619, 621) seems to confirm Noddy's later assertion that his wife was disturbed by the pretense (IV.xiii.800). One other explanation of the convincing nature of Boffin's pose is offered by Masao Miyoshi:

Boffin's miserliness was originally put on in the interests of Rokesmith and Bella, but it served Boffin himself as well, as a way of obviating an unpleasant new self that could very well have emerged from his sudden condition of wealth.²⁵

By pretending to be a Don Quixote of avarice, Boffin helps Bella to reject the mercenary values of Victorian society, but, as he later tells her, the books about misers were also obtained “partly for the punishment of … Wegg, by leading him on …” (IV.xiii.800). And Wegg responds to the stories in an entirely predictable way: he is tempted to indulge his own avarice. Having been led to assume that Boffin is emulating famous misers, Wegg begins searching for hidden wills and treasure, since the readings his employer selects include stories of money left in a teapot and a will hidden in a desk (III.vi.502, 505). Significantly, Wegg's reaction differs from that of Venus, whom Boffin is also testing. A moral man who has been induced to join Wegg because of disappointment in love, Venus, although initially fascinated by the descriptions of misers, later decides to warn Boffin. Whether the continued reading of tales of avarice has caused the taxidermist to react against Wegg's greed is uncertain, but, whatever the reasons, Venus does repent.

There is, of course, a paradox in Boffin's pretense that the literature about misers reinforces his own newly developed tendencies to avarice, for virtually all tales about misers present them as negative exemplars, people who experience great unhappiness as a result of their greed. Indeed, Rokesmith, when asked if he knows about the misers John Elwes and Daniel Dancer, gives the conventional moral: “They lived and died very miserably” (III.v.493). After Wegg's exposure, his claim that these tales have corrupted him is therefore self-condemnatory. Moreover, our awareness that he began plotting the “friendly move” well before Boffin started the pretense (II.vii.315) makes the following excuse absurd: “… it's not easy to say how far the tone of my mind may have been lowered by unwholesome reading on the subject of Misers, when you was leading me and others on to think you one yourself, sir” (IV.xiv.814). Although Wegg here seeks to blame reading for his moral failings, we have seen that his treatment of the Romans showed extreme insensitivity to print. He responded excitedly to the stories of misers simply because his own avaricious tendencies led him to believe that these accounts contained clues about Boffin's behavior (III.vii.517).

Wegg, a villain whose limited literacy makes comic his role as a “literary man,” pretentiously seeks to mask his ignorance: “… know him? Old familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir!” (I.v.55). His absurd mispronunciations of Roman names—“Polly Beeious” for Polybius, “Commodious” for Commodus, “Vittle-us” for Vitellius, “Bully Sawyers” for Belisarius (I.v.62-63; I.xv.193)—and his ludicrous offerings of doggerel verse, together with his assertion that reciting poetry places a “strain upon the intellect” (I.v.54), make him a comic butt, vastly inferior both in morality and literacy to Mr. Venus, who corrects his renditions (III.xiv.595-96). Like Riderhood, Wegg is a lazy, envious, and deceitful scoundrel who attempts extortion. A mock schoolmaster, he serves as the main villain of the Bella-John story, just as Headstone is the principal antagonist in the Lizzie-Eugene plot, Headstone's passionate violence contrasting with Wegg's crafty threatening.

Bella apparently is exposed to the literature about misers only during visits to booksellers, since Boffin, although he makes a point of taking her on his shopping expeditions, later keeps the books hidden (III.v.485-86). These books are therefore primarily important in tormenting Wegg, while the major effort to teach Bella her true nature is made in the scenes in which Boffin berates and ridicules Rokesmith. The feigned bibliomania seems intended to enhance the credibility of Boffin's behavior in these scenes, by serving as an added symptom and also, perhaps, as a supposed contributory cause.

Boffin's illiteracy, besides bringing Wegg into the story, also facilitates the task of John Harmon, disguised as Rokesmith, in gaining a position as Noddy's secretary. Subsequently, this appointment enables John to gain a closer acquaintance with Bella, to become recognized by the Boffins, and to receive their help, through the pretended degeneration of Noddy, in reforming Bella—or, at least, in leading her to discover and reveal her true self.

In addition, the motif of reading, or literacy, serves very important purposes in the other major strand of Dickens' narrative, the story of Lizzie and Eugene. Since Gaffer Hexam is opposed to literacy, Lizzie sends her brother, Charley, away to acquire his education. The boy's isolation and ability lead to his becoming the protégé of Bradley Headstone, who then enters the Lizzie-Eugene story as the primary villain.

Lizzie's illiteracy helps to increase Wrayburn's involvement with her, since he offers to arrange for lessons for both Lizzie and Jenny Wren. Subsequently, the educational pursuits of these two young women lead them to closer acquaintance with Mr. Riah, who invites them to study their books in the garden he has planted on the roof of Fledgeby's Pubsey and Co. (II.v.290-91). Later, Lizzie, having learned to read and write, can comprehend Betty Higden's letter of identification and can send a note to the Boffins, Rokesmith, and Bella; this communication in turn leads to the friendship between the heroines that is one of the devices Dickens uses to connect the two plots (III.viii.533-34).

The motif of reading, moreover, is also linked with Betty Higden in another way, since her flight is largely attributable to fear caused by her reading of newspaper reports describing the Poor House (I.xvi.206). For Betty, although she has difficulty understanding handwriting, can comprehend “most print” and also enjoys listening to Sloppy's reading of the police news, a pastime that has led him to develop a talent for using different voices (I.xvi.204-5).²⁶

Dickens uses the motif of literacy not only to assist developments in his narrative, but also to reveal character, such disclosure frequently being made through the attitudes various figures express towards reading. Lizzie Hexam, whose illiterate father, Gaffer, wishes to keep his children uneducated, remarks, “I can't so much as read a book, because, if I had learned, father would have thought I was deserting him. …” (I.iii.30).²⁷ Even though Gaffer is willing to use Charley's furtively acquired literacy in summoning Lightwood, the bird of prey is pleased when his son pretends to be writing in a slow, slovenly manner (I.iii.28). Nevertheless, Gaffer himself employs a substitute for reading, a strong memory, evidently developed as a compensation for illiteracy. Indeed, this antiliterate man, ironically, is interested in print, for he memorizes handbills announcing drownings and keeps these as souvenirs adorning his walls (I.iii.23).

In this novel, however, literacy is not a moral gauge. For Gaffer, despite his occupation, is not presented as an evil figure, his kindness to Lizzie contrasting with Rogue Riderhood's treatment of Pleasant. While Hexam may be seen, in part, as a victim, a man whose lack of education debases him, Riderhood emerges as so extreme a villain that we may wonder whether schooling would have made him more adept in wrongdoing. His illiteracy is emphasized when Betty Higden faints near Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, where he is Deputy Lock-keeper. Had Riderhood been able to comprehend Betty's letter of identification, he might perhaps have devised plans for extorting money from her friends: “The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which underwent no change as he eyed its contents. But it might have done, if he could have read them” (III.viii.530). Later, Riderhood's illiteracy is again stressed when he invades Headstone's classroom, asks the schoolmaster to write his name on the blackboard, and then requests that the class read the name: “I ain't a learned character myself … but I do admire learning in others. I should dearly like to hear these here young folks read that there name off, from the writing” (IV.xv.818). Of course, his interest is purely practical, as when he previously had Pleasant write a letter for him requesting various favors of Lightwood (III.xi.568, 570). Before Riderhood's visit to the school, Headstone, apprehensive about being revealed as Eugene's assailant, had hoped not to be found; knowing Riderhood “to be a very ignorant man who could not write, he [Headstone] began to doubt whether he was to be feared at all. …” (IV.xv.816-17). But Riderhood, the illiterate, proves in some ways more shrewd than the schoolmaster.

Indeed, Headstone, although educated, is not intelligent, his face revealing “a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won …” (II.i.225). Literacy has enabled him to rise from his origins as “a pauper lad” (II.i.226), just as literacy will help Charley Hexam to rise. Charley, however, while not guilty of a crime like Headstome's assault on Eugene, is in some ways even less appealing than the schoolmaster. For the latter, despite his villainy, commands some sympathy because of his intense suffering and his capacity for kindness, as indicated by the bequest of his watch to Miss Peecher (IV.xv.820). Unlike the passion-driven Headstone, Charley is coolly rational, an entirely selfish boy who ungratefully denounces Lizzie after her refusal of the schoolmaster (II.xv.419) and then spurns both benefactors. When we first meet Charley, in the Veneering library, the narrator comments: “There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and uncompleted civilisation … he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on the shelf, like one who cannot” (I.iii.19). Charley's literary interest is shown by his ready comparison of the drowned body to “Pharoah's multitude, that were drowned in the Red Sea,” and his reference to Lazarus (I.iii.19). But he immediately incurs Eugene's anger by a slighting reference to Lizzie, whom Wrayburn has not yet met: “She ain't half bad … but if she knows her letters it's the most she does—and them I learned her” (I.iii.20).

Lizzie differs in many ways from her brother. An extremely sensitive girl, she strongly regrets her illiteracy: “I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning very much, Charley” (I.iii.31). Just before this, her brother has remarked, in one of his few tender moments, “You said you couldn't read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the hollow down by the flare, I think” (I.iii.31). Lizzie has developed a substitute for reading, the ability to see pictures in the fire.²⁸ Just as Gaffer's memory compensates to an extent for his illiteracy, so Lizzie uses her imagination to visualize scenes from the past and express hopes for the future. Even after she has actually learned to read print, her reading in the fire still provides encouragement and inspiration. In the village where Betty Higden has died, Lizzie gazes at the fire to describe her intuitions about Bella's true self: “A heart well worth winning, and well won” (III.ix.549); later, after marrying Rokesmith, Bella writes to tell Lizzie “how right she was when she pretended to read in the live coals” (IV.v.709).

During the course of the novel, Bella herself is frequently seen reading, her motives and tastes varying. At one point early in the narrative, Rokesmith observes her engrossed in a book and asks whether the volume is a love story. She replies, “Oh dear no, or I shouldn't be reading it. It's more about money than anything else” (I.xvi.212). Although this remark indicates that Bella is at the time obsessed with money, her subsequent comment, “… I forget what it says, but you can find out for yourself. … I don't want it any more” (I.xvi.212), suggests a frivolous, capricious attitude. Later, when the narrator, mentioning Bella, refers at times to “her book,” but gives no further details, we may infer that she is merely reading for recreation (II.xiii.389, 393; III.v.480, 482). Occasionally, Bella pretends to be absorbed in reading so that Boffin or Rokesmith will not notice how intently she is listening (III.v.482, 484, 491).

After her marriage to Rokesmith, Bella's literary inclinations become extremely practical. She frequently goes “for advice and support to a sage volume entitled The Complete British Family Housewife” (IV.v.705), a book she finds so difficult that she is forced to read with an “expression of profound research” (IV.v.705).²⁹ In addition, she devotes herself to “the mastering of the newspaper, so that she might be close up with John on general topics when John came home” (IV.v.705). Marriage evidently has made Bella more serious, a transformation reflected by the change in her reading habits and also, perhaps, by the fact that John gives her a book as a birthday present (IV.xii.784).

Rokesmith himself is, of course, thoroughly literate. He wins a position as a secretary, before the Boffins recognize him, by his ability to prepare abstracts of some business papers he has quickly read through (I.xv.186). In this same chapter, we learn from the Boffins that the young child John Harmon was frequently found “sitting with his little book” (I.xv.191). And when Bella inspects the room that John is renting from her parents, she sees “shelves and stands of books, English, French, and Italian” (III.iv.469). Earlier, in reply to a question by Wilfer, John reveals that he has read several travel books about Africa (II.xiv.395); in his extended soliloquy, he refers to his reading “in narratives of escape from prison” (II.xiii.380); and, in a conversation with Boffin, he indicates familiarity with stories about two famous misers, John Elwes and Daniel Dancer (III.v.492-93)—although, of course, Boffin may have prepared John for questions, since the latter knew beforehand of the plot to pretend miserliness (IV.xiii.797). Certainly, however, Dickens wants us to see Rokesmith as an educated, well-read man. Moreover, although the novel's other hero, Eugene Wrayburn, does not seem much given to reading, the barrister is obviously literate and is eager to arrange for Lizzie's education.

As we might anticipate, two of the satiric butts in the novel, Podsnap and Veneering, appear insensitive to reading. The latter, the “bran-new” man, owns “a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded” (I.iii.18), a collection designed for display, while Podsnap's idea of literature is simple and routine: “large print, respectively descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter-past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven” (I.xi.133-34). In general, the appetite for reading shown by many of the novel's admirable figures is lacking in the less attractive characters.

In Our Mutual Friend, the numerous references to books and reading, besides being useful in advancing the plot and developing characterization, also reflect the Victorians' great dedication to print. Dickens' characters often remind us that, for English men and women in the mid-nineteenth century, reading was a primary source of recreation as well as an indispensable instrument in many matters of government and business.³⁰

The section of the novel in which the motif of reading is most fully developed presents Wegg's rendition of the lives of actual misers. These historical figures paradoxically make Dickens' fictional characters seem more real, for the major figures in Our Mutual Friend are more fully depicted than misers like the Jardines. And when Dickens shows his characters reading, they seem more vivid than the figures they are reading about, an effect comparable to that often achieved by the play-within-the-play device or by interpolated stories.³¹ When Mortimer Lightwood refers, in general terms, to novels (I.ii.15-16), he suggests that he himself is not simply a character in a novel. And, at another point, the narrator comments, “it was not gentle spring ethereally mild, as in Thomson's Seasons, but nipping spring with an easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson's, Dickson's, Smith's, and Jones's Seasons” (I.xii.149), a remark implying that the world of Dickens' novel is more real than that described in “literature.” Moreover, Boffin's pretense at miserliness offers another variety of the “play”-within-the-novel device. When the deception has been explained to Bella, she tells the Golden Dustman that she understands his wish to become “a glaring instance kept before her” (IV.xiii.799), implying that a living negative example is more convincing than a negative example in a book, be the book fictional or historical. And she also intimates to us that the fictional Boffin is a “living” example, especially when she compares him, this time to his advantage, with the misers he has had Wegg read about (IV.xiii.798).

The Victorian interest in literacy was certainly shared by Dickens, even though his personal reading is generally thought to have been neither systematic nor scholarly.³² Moreover, although Our Mutual Friend seems the novel by Dickens in which the idea of reading is most recurrent, this motif does occasionally appear in his other works—for example, in the references to childhood reading by Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (“Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits”) and by David Copperfield (ch. 4); the disclosure in Bleak House of Krook's effort to teach himself to read and write, since he trusts no other instructor (ch. 14); the mention in Hard Times of the fanciful tales Sissy Jupe formerly read to her father (Bk. 1, ch. 7) and of Mr. Gradgrind's concern about the Coketown library (Bk. 1, ch. 8); Arthur Clennam's recollection in Little Dorrit of his mother's gloomy Bible reading on Sundays (Bk. 1, ch. 3); the references in Great Expectations to Mr. Wopsle's readings (chs. 15, 18), to Herbert Pocket's mother's constant devotion to a book about aristocratic titles (chs. 22, 23), to Pip's study with Herbert's father (ch. 25), to Pip's later reading to satisfy his own inclinations (ch. 39), and to his reading in foreign languages to please Magwitch (ch. 40); and the description in Edwin Drood of Miss Twinkleton's censored readings to Rosa (ch. 22).

Nevertheless, the extent to which Dickens' use of the motif of reading in Our Mutual Friend was deliberate is difficult to determine. His Memorandum Book contains the note: “The uneducated father (or uncle?) in fustian, and the educated boy in spectacles. Whom Leech and I saw at Chatham.” Forster, suggesting that Dickens sent him a letter including a similar comment, asserts that this observation led to Gaffer and Charley Hexam.³³ The Memorandum Book, as we have previously remarked, also contains a note on the reading of Gibbon, while some of the working notes bound in with the holograph manuscript of the novel stress the importance of the feigned bibliomania and the scene in which Wegg reads the accounts of misers: “Work in The Misers—to bring out his pretended love of money,” and “More books, and the misers, and about hidden wills / relieve by making Wegg as comic as possible.”³⁴ Then, too, Eugene's digression on the word “reading,” quoted at the beginning of this essay, offers a clue, for this comment would seem to direct our attention to a motif that is frequently introduced but relatively unnoticed, possibly because of its commonplace nature.

In referring to the actress, the dancer, the singer, the painter, and the drummer, Eugene uses “reading” in its figurative senses of acting and interpreting. Like the actress, Boffin “reads” a part, while Wegg, young John Harmon, and Sloppy play other roles. As the dancer, the singer, the painter, and the drummer give “readings,” so Boffin and John “read” Bella and Wegg, while the latter “misreads” Boffin. But Eugene's banter also reminds us of the literal meaning of “reading” and helps us to recognize the significance in this novel of the image and the idea of literacy. For Dickens' use of the motif of reading makes more credible Boffin's feigned degeneration, helps to test Mr. Venus and punish Wegg, and brings Lizzie closer to the patron of her literacy, Eugene. Although most of the virtuous characters seem to appreciate reading, relative illiteracy does not prevent Boffin from being an admirable man, nor does difficulty in reading handwritten script (I.xvi.204 and II.x.346-47) limit the merits of Mrs. Boffin and Mrs. Higden. On the other hand, mere literacy does not improve the moral natures of Wegg, Charley Hexam, Fledgeby, Podsnap, Veneering, and Headstone. Nevertheless, any tendency to romanticize ignorance is countered by the examples of Riderhood and Gaffer. Philip Collins may be justified in noting Dickens' suspicion of “educated and urban man,” but he would seem to overextend that suspicion when he remarks, referring to all of Dickens' novels, “… none of his characters who have received much education, whether or not it has been shown in the book, enjoy a richer quality of life as a result.”³⁵ If this comment is considered in relation to Our Mutual Friend, we may reply that admirable characters like Rokesmith and Lightwood reveal an alertness implicitly attributable to education, the virtuous Lizzie values learning, and worthy figures like Boffin and Mrs. Higden regret their lack of schooling (I.v.52; II.xiv.400) and attract the reader's sympathy with that regret. Moreover, for Lizzie education becomes a way of reducing class barriers and making more feasible her marriage with a barrister.

In dealing with literacy, Dickens avoids easy generalizations but certainly sees its worth. Inability to read is recognized as both a social stigma and an intellectual barrier, even though Dickens invariably considers heart more important than mind. Furthermore, implicit in Our Mutual Friend and in Dickens' other novels is the belief that, through reading, men's hearts as well as their minds may be reached and strengthened. In such betterment rests the reward for both the novelist and his public.

Notes

1. Our Mutual Friend, introd. Monroe Engel (New York: Modern Library, 1960), Bk. 3, ch. 10, p. 562. Citations in the text are to this edition and indicate book, chapter, and page.

2. For examples of illuminating discussions of money, dust, and the river, see Robert Morse, “Our Mutual Friend” in The Dickens Critics, ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 197-213 (reprint of essay originally published in Partisan Review, 16 [1949], 277-89); Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), II, 1028-31, 1043-44; and J. Hillis Miller, Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 294, 312. R. D. McMaster in “Birds of Prey: A Study of Our Mutual Friend,” Dalhousie Review, 40 (1960), 372-81, and Richard A. Lanham in “Our Mutual Friend: The Birds of Prey,” VN [Victorian Newsletter], No. 24 (Fall 1963), pp. 6-12, stress predation, while Masao Miyoshi in “Resolution of Identity in Our Mutual Friend,” VN, No. 26 (Fall 1964), pp. 5-9, emphasizes crises of identity.

3. “A Note to Our Mutual Friend,” introduction to Engel's edition, p. xii. See also Montoe Engel's The Maturity of Dickens (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1959), pp. 135-37, and his “The Novel of Reality: An Illustrative Study of the Genesis, Method, and Intent of Our Mutual Friend,” Diss. Princeton University 1954, pp. 109-10, reproduced by University Microfilms.

4. See, besides Engel, John Manning, Dickens on Education (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1959); Philip Collins, Dickens and Education (New York: St. Martin's Press. 1963); and Arnold Kettle, “Our Mutual Friend” in Dickens and the Twentieth Century, ed. John Gross and Gabriel Pearson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 216-17.

5. Later in the novel, in a variation of a metaphor that traditionally refers to a struggling writer rather than reader, the narrator remarks, “The adverse destinies ordained that one evening Mr. Wegg's labouring bark became beset by polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect archipelago of hard words” (III.xiv.596). Wegg himself subsequently compares his reading to waiting “like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over … by whatever balls—or books—he [Boffin] chose to bring against me” (III.xiv.602) and later remarks that he has had to bear “the Roman yoke” (IV.iii.678), a metaphor associating his role with that of a beast of labor and the book (Gibbon's Decline and Fall) with a plow or cart to be pulled.

6. In Great Expectations, Joe Gargery takes pride in his ability to read the letters J and O (ch. 7).

7. T. W. Hill, “Notes to Our Mutual Friend,” Dickensian, 43 (1947), 85-90, 142-49, 206-12, who is, I believe, the only previous commentator to question Noddy's illiteracy, writes, “Mr. Boffin may have been uneducated but he must have been able to read to choose the books he later brought home for Wegg to read aloud; and it remains a puzzle how he could have known so much about the misers. …” (p. 88). But Boffin reveals that “the bookseller read … out of” one volume (III.vi.504), and we may perhaps assume that the bookseller also provided the rest of Boffin's information.

8. Edgar Johnson, II, 825, 827, cites two letters in which Dickens expresses Russophobia. See The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter, 3 vols. (Bloomsbury [London]: The Nonesuch Press, 1938), II, 615, 603, for these statements, written in 1855 and 1854; in subsequent notes I use Letters for Dexter's edition. Ada Nisbet, however, in her preface to Dickens Centennial Essays (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1971), p. vii. quotes the novelist's angry assertion that “every miserable redtapist” is using the Crimean War as an excuse to ignore the need for “domestic reforms.” Indeed, the war, because of its mismanagement by the English bureaucracy, served as a stimulus for Little Dorrit, as Dickens' preface to the 1857 edition of that novel indicates.

9. Charles Dickens: An Introduction to His Novels (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 38.

10. “Dickens and the Comedy of Humors,” in Experience in the Novel, Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), p. 64.

11. See Letters, III, 787. Dexter includes an appendix, “Dickens's Memorandum Book,” in III, 785-96, but his transcript is incomplete and rearranged, as are those offered earlier by John Forster in The Life of Charles Dickens (Bk. 9, ch. 7: “Hints for Books Written and Unwritten, 1855-65”), II, 298-311, in the edition by A. J. Hoppé (London: Dent, 1966), and by Mrs. J. Comyns Carr in Reminiscences, ed. Eve Adam, 2nd ed. (London: Hutchinson, 1926), pp. 280-95 (ch. 21, “The Dickens Note-Book”). For one helpful description of these three transcripts, see Felix Aylmer, “John Forster and Dickens's Book of Memoranda,” Dickensian, 51 (1954), 19-23; Ada Nisbet notes additional descriptions in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research, ed. Lionel Stevenson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), p. 47, n. 4. The passage about the reading of Gibbon appears on p. 21 of the Memorandum Book, now in the New York Public Library's Berg Collection, to which I am indebted for permission to examine various entries. (Subsequent references to Forster are to Hoppé's edition.) Forster is responsible for considerable confusion, for, as Madeline House and Graham Storey point out in the preface to Volume I of the Pilgrim edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. xv, he “introduced, once more as if quoting letters to himself, early ideas for Our Mutual Friend and Edwin Drood which Dickens had noted down in his ‘Book of Memoranda.’” The edition of the Memorandum Book now being prepared by K. J. Fielding will probably be the first reliable published version.

12. Forster, II, 301.

13. See Miller, p. 296; Engel, The Maturity of Dickens, p. 137; McMaster, p. 374; Earle Davis, The Flint and the Flame: The Artistry of Charles Dickens (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1963), p. 273; and Kenneth Muir, “Image and Structure in Our Mutual Friend” in Essays and Studies Collected for the English Association, N.S., 19 (1966), 92-105 (see p. 101). Doris B. Kelly, “A Check List of Nineteenth-Century English Fiction about the Decline of Rome,” BNYPL, [72 (1968), 400-413, states that many nineteenth-century novels “make use of the decline and fall for their historical background,” partly because this setting “gave writers opportunities to draw parallels between ancient Rome and modern England” (p. 400).

14. T. W. Hill, “Books That Dickens Read,” Dickensian, 45 (1949), 81-90, 201-7, makes such a claim (p. 86), as does Edgar Johnson, II, 1131. Dickens did own a copy of the Decline and Fall, in eight volumes, the size of the edition purchased by Boffin (I.v.54). See J. H. Stonehouse, ed., Catalogues of the Libraries of Charles Dickens and W. M. Thackeray (London: Piccadilly Fountain Press, 1935), p. 50.

15. MP [Modern Philology], 42 (1944), 96-122. See esp. p. 103. I am indebted to the Pierpont Morgan Library, which now owns the holograph manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, for permission to verify Boll's transcript of the working notes bound in with that manuscript.

16. The Dickens World, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 169.

17. See Stonehouse, pp. 7, 19, 68, 80, and 118. The actual title of Caulfield's work is Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, 4 vols. (London: T. H. Whitely, 1819-20); of Henry Wilson's, Wonderful Characters, 3 vols. (London: Albion Press, 1821). Dickens owned 104 volumes of the Annual Register, evidently the complete set of the original series, running from 1758 through 1862 (not from 1748 through 1860, the dates in the catalogue Stonehouse reprints), with volume 27 covering two years (1784-85). Boffin and Bella carry home only about forty-eight volumes, even though Noddy supposedly purchases “a whole set” (III.v.486), and even though Our Mutual Friend is placed in the 1860's—in “these times of ours” (I.i.2). Hill, in “Books That Dickens Read,” p. 201, maintains that all of the texts used by Wegg and Boffin were in Dickens' library, but although three of the books read before the accounts of misers (the works by Gibbon, Plutarch, and Charles Rollin) are listed by Stonehouse (pp. 50, 93, 98), Josephus' Wars of the Jews is not. For descriptions of the books used by Boffin, see Hill, “Notes to Our Mutual Friend,” pp. 147-49. The titles listed by the narrator (III.v.486), “Lives of eccentric personages,” “Anecdotes of strange characters,” “Records of remarkable individuals,” seem generic rather than specific and apparently refer to works like The Lives of Eminent & Remarkable Characters, Born or Long Resident in the Counties of Essex, Suffolk, & Norfolk (London, 1820); although the latter is not listed by Stonehouse, Dickens was, of course, not confined to the volumes he owned. Moreover, the catalogue reprinted by Stonehouse includes only books found in Dickens' library after his death.

18. See F. Somner Merryweather, Lives and Anecdotes of Misers (London, 1850), pp. 8-10, 89, 105, and 109. Another possibility is that Wegg glanced at the chapter titles and headlines on p. 52 or 53 (Overs), 71 (Little), and 86 (Jarret), then skipped to p. 129 or 133 (Elwes), and then went back to pp. 90-91 (“The Rev. Mr. Jones, / The Miser of Blewbury”), 105 (Vulture Hopkins), and 109 or 110 (Dancer).

19. Dickens may have read of Dancer's food-warming technique in Wilson's Wonderful Characters, II, 49. The novelist previously showed interest in Dancer and Elwes in Bleak House (ch. 39).

20. See Merryweather, pp. 109-28, 129-41, 145-48, 154-55, and 165-66, esp. pp. 109, 127-28, and 165-66. Merryweather's sources may have included the Annual Register—see, e.g., the accounts of Elizabeth Wilcocks and the Jardine brothers, found, respectively, in volume 11, … For the Year 1768 (London, 1768), p. 118 in the “Chronicle” section, and volume 10, … For the Year 1767 (London, 1768), pp. 100-101 in the “Chronicle” section. Hill, “Notes to Our Mutual Friend,” pp. 148-49, is, I believe, the only commentator to call attention to the fact that Dickens owned the various works concerning misers and quoted extensively from Merryweather and Kirby. McMaster, p. 381, n. 11, observes that Dickens owned the text by Merryweather, but offers no further comment.

21. See R. S. Kirby, Kirby's Wonderful and Eccentric Museum; or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters … (London: R. S. Kirby, 1820), IV, 99-100.

22. Ibid., IV, 29-37, 97-99.

23. See E. Salter Davies' introduction to the edition of Our Mutual Friend in the New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. viii.

24. See “No Change of Intention in Our Mutual Friend,” Dickensian, 63 (1967), 37-40.

25. Miyoshi, p. 8.

26. This talent and also Sloppy's ability to sleep standing are later used in frustrating Wegg (IV.xiv.809). Cf. Lizzie's rescue of Eugene by the use of skills acquired in earlier days (IV.vi.723-24). T. S. Eliot's manuscript of The Waste Land, only recently discovered, reveals that Mrs. Higden's remark about Sloppy, “He do the Police in different voices,” served as the working title for that poem. See Donald Gallup, “The ‘Lost’ Manuscripts of T. S. Eliot,” BNYPL, 72 (1968), 641-52, a revision of an article appearing in TLS [Times Literary Supplement], 7 Nov. 1968, pp. 1238-40. For comments on the significance intended by Eliot and on Sloppy's intelligence, see the correspondence in TLS by Thomas and Brian Kelly (9 Jan. 1969, p. 38, and 6 Mar. 1969, p. 242), Douglas Hewitt (23 Jan. 1969, p. 86; 13 Feb. 1969, p. 158; and 20 Mar. 1969, p. 299), and D. A. N. Jones (30 Jan. 1969, p. 110).

27. McMaster, p. 381, n. 8, refers to Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vols. (London: Griffin, Bohn, 1861-62), II, 147-50, and suggests “Dickens might have derived Hexam's hatred of learning from Henry Mayhew's description of the defiant ignorance of dredgers.” Harland S. Nelson in “Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor,” NCF [Nineteenth-Century Literature], 20 (1965), 207-22, observes, p. 211, n. 5, that he had independently reached the same view. For an interesting comparison, see Joseph H. Gardner's “Gaffer Hexam and Pap Finn,” MP, 66 (1968), 155-56.

28. Cf. Louisa Gradgrind, another devoted sister, who also looks at the fire and tries to envision the future (Hard Times, Bk. 1, chs. 8, 14; Bk. 3, ch. 9).

29. Hill, “Notes to Our Mutual Friend,” p. 210, suggests that the volume used by Bella may be The British Housewife (London, 1790) or The British Housekeeper (London, 1843), but the former is a very short work (72 pages), while the latter, more accurately called The British Housekeeper's Statement of Cash (compiled by “J. K.”), seems mainly concerned with domestic economy. Dickens was perhaps thinking of some lengthy work, real or imaginary, like E. Smith's 400-page The Complete Housewife (London, 1773) or The Book of Household Management, ed. Isabella Mary Beeton (London: S. O. Beeton, 1861), a very popular 1,112-page guide, recently reissued in a facsimile edition (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969).

30. For material on the Victorians' attitudes towards literacy and their intense responses to private and public reading, see such standard works as Amy Cruse, The Victorians and Their Books (London: Allen and Unwin, 1935); Richard Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1957); R. K. Webb, “The Victorian Reading Public” in From Dickens to Hardy, vol. 6 in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1958); and Louis James, Fiction for the Working Man, 1830-1850 (London/New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963). A useful warning about the difficulty of assessing Victorian literacy appears in G. S. R. Kitson Clark's An Expanding Society: Britain, 1830-1900 (London/New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 88-90. See, too, Guinevere L. Griest, Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1970).

31. J. Hillis Miller, “Three Problems of Fictional Form: First-Person Narration in David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn” in Experience in the Novel, suggests, p. 30, that stories-within-stories and multiple narrators may produce an effect that “parallels the effect of the play within the play in Renaissance drama.” But see, too, Maynard Mack's “Engagement and Detachment in Shakespeare's plays.” in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Richard Hosley (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1962), pp. 275-96, for the idea that a play-within-a-play both increases realism and, paradoxically, reminds us that the work is fictive, “an artful composition” (p. 281).

32. Steven Marcus. Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey (New York: Basic Books, 1965), pp. 20-22, cogently rejects the view, largely attributable to George Henry Lewes, that Dickens lacked real interest in literature. For various other opinions on Dickens' reading, see Kathleen Tillotson, “Writers and Readers in 1851” in Geoffrey and Kathleen Tillotson, Mid-Victorian Studies (London: Athlone Press, 1965), p. 309; Sylvère Monod's “Dickens' Culture” in Dickens the Novelist (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1968), pp. 30-46; Philip Collins, “Dickens's Reading,” Dickensian, 60 (1964), 136-51; and Hill, “Books That Dickens Read.”

33. See Mrs. J. Comyns Carr, p. 290, quoting from p. 6 of the Memorandum Book, and Forster, II, 291 (see n. 11 above for a warning about Forster's reliability).

34. See Boll, p. 113. After examining Dickens' original notes, I have emended Boll's reading from “hidden wiles” to “hidden wills.”

35. Collins, Dickens and Education, pp. 193-94.