Supplement to Our Mutual Friend

4 Comments

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Many people would now in fact regard it as the greatest of his works . . . Dickens was writing ahead of his time. (169)

It is the strangest of Dickens’s novels, but in many ways it is also the most poignant and most beautiful. (170)

Again Ackroyd gives us background and sources of inspiration for Dickens’s work while also explains some of the difficulties and struggles Dickens experienced while writing.

ackroyd-omfDownload

The best things in the book are in the old best manner of the author. They have that great Dickens quality of being something which is pure farce and yet which is not superficial; an unfathomable farce—a farce that goes down to the roots of the universe.

For Chesterton this novel “marks a happy return to the earlier manner of Dickens”, harkening back to the humorous style of the Pickwick Papers and Martin Chuzzlewit but with the insight, power, direction, and control gained over his long (short?) career.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22362/pg22362-images.html#MUTUAL

Also of Interest

`Dust; or Ugliness Redeemed’ by Richard H. Horne
Household Words, Volume I, Magazine No. 16, 13 July 1850, Pages: 379-384

Mentioned in Ackroyd (above) as one of the essays which inspired and informed Dickens of “many of the subjects which would animate [his] novel” (165), Horne’s essay is enlightening for its description of just what “dust” is:

“The principal ingredient of all these Dust-heaps is find cinders and ashes; but as they are accumulated from the contents of all the dust-holes and bins of the vicinity, and as many more as possible, the fresh arrivals in their original state present very heterogeneous materials.” (2 of 13)

Besides coal, ash, bones, rags, “all vegetable find [and] animal matter”, metals (tin, brass, lead, etc), glass, valuables such as silver cutlery or jewelry, and unburned papers – oftentimes important papers – inadvertently (or not) tossed into dustbins or fires.

dust-horneDownload

4 Comments

  1. One other selection of interest, especially in light of the upcoming Mystery of Edwin Drood, is this from Dan Simmons’s novel, Drood. This historical novel is written from the point of view of Wilkie Collins treats the last five years of Dickens’s life and the writing of his last novel. Of interest is this selection (pages 205-212) in which the fictional Collins gives his opinion of Our Mutual Friend:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KvKa_5c4ijC2vxDENSZhOlkc8KWPznDyZMxVOu2KmkM/edit?usp=sharing

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. Greetings!

    Chris, heartfelt thanks for these wonderful enrichments of our reading.

    I’m eager to delve into them.  Just a quick scan on the opening of Chesterton’s essay awakens thoughts and perspectives on the very title, “Our Mutual Friend.”

    I have long since contended that an institution of higher learning (or two or three) should confer an honorary doctorate on you!

    Many thanks, as we continue our exploration of the dust heaps and other characters in “Our Mutual Friend”!

    Daniel

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

Leave a comment