¹ The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter (Blooms-bury: Nonesuch Press, 1938), iii, 282.

² Grant Knight, The Novel in English (New York, 1931), p. 176; G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (New York, 1906), p. 125; Charles Dickens (New York, 1946), p. 153; Critical Studies of the Works of Charles Dickens (New York, 1924), p. 107.

³ Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (New York, 1898), p. 59.

⁴ “Charles Dickens,” Works (London and Philadelphia, 1895), iii, 67-68 et passim; repr. from Graham's Mag. (Feb. 1842).

⁵ It is not, however, a miracle of detection, for Dickens scatters hints abundantly, and gives a sharp-eyed reader reason to guess that the mysterious lurking stranger is Rudge even before Haredale guesses it; the reader is given the clue (in Daisy's story of seeing the ghost of Rudge, Ch. xxxiii) several chapters before it is reported to Haredale and he starts his pursuit.

⁶ Ed. Barnaby Rudge, New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (1954), Introd., p. xi. All subsequent references are to this edition.

⁷ Citarles Dickens: The Progress of a Radical (New York, 1938), p. 202.

⁸ Kathleen Tillotson, in her introduction to Barnaby Rudge and in Novels of the 1840's (Oxford, 1954), details some of the events to which a contemporary reader may have found allusion in Barnaby Rudge. These topical parallels, however, seem to be peripheral and contributory, and they emphasize Dickens' fear and distrust of mob action, rather than his concern with its social roots.

⁹ For instance, the crowd attacking Newgate prison contained “not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned villains in London, but some who were comparatively innocent”; some of these joined the mob for personal reasons, such as the desire to set free a “child or brother” (p. 480).

¹⁰ Morton D. Zabel, Craft and Character in Modern Fiction (New York, 1957), p. 27. Edgar Johnson also interprets Barnaby Rudge as principally a novel of social protest in Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (New York, 1952), pp. 332-337.

¹¹ Pages 268, 271, 392, 422 (“as though … they became fiends”), et passim.

¹² Page 490, for instance. The spread of violence is also likened to a “moral plague” and a “dread fever” (p. 403); and at the burning of the Warren, “The more the fire crackled and raged, the wilder and more cruel the men grew” (p. 422).

¹³ The coarseness and lack of purpose of those attracted to the mob are deftly suggested in a brief scene; “Many of those who banded together to support the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were. Many of these voluntaries were sung under the very nose of Lord George Gordon ...” (p. 368).

¹⁴ The Life of Charles Dickens (London: J. M. Dent, 1927), i, 142.

¹⁵ Sylvère Monod, Dickens Romancier (Paris, 1953), pp. 175-176.

¹⁶ “I'd sooner kill a man than a dog any day. I've never been sorry for a man's death in all my life, and I have for a dog's” (p. 160).

¹⁷ There is no point in objecting, as some have done, that he is a libel on Lord Chesterfield. He is not supposed to be a portrait of Lord Chesterfield, though he is certainly a distillation of certain aspects of Chesterfield that Dickens disliked. But Chester is a fictional essence, not a biographical sketch. What Dickens is getting at, I think, is less like Lord Chesterfield than it is like Conrad's gentlemanly Mr. Jones in Victory, who likewise denies all human ties and acts through a bestial servant; both are sketches of a suave prince of darkness, a spirit that denies. Both are the sort of gentleman who, as the saying goes, would not hurt anyone unintentionally. And both are depicted with almost allegorical heightening.

¹⁸ Dickens sums it up in introducing Ch. XLV: “the worst passions of the worst men were . . . working in the dark” (p. 339). And when Gashford publicly joins the anti-Catholic party, Haredale says that he has “left the darkness for the light” (p. 326). Such phrasing occurs frequently.

¹⁹ “I have only done as you ordered” [says Hugh].

“As I what?” returned Sir John.

“Well then,” said Hugh uneasily, “as you advised, or said I ought, or said I might, or said that you would do, if you was me.” (p. 303)

²⁰ When Hugh comes to Chester's chambers, he must clean his shoes before entering; after he leaves, “Bring me some scent,” calls Chester, “and sprinkle the floor; and take away the chair he sat upon, and air it” (pp. 181-182). Even Sim Tappertit, who allies himself with Chester and is willing to “command” Hugh in the riots, is reluctant to touch his dirty hand when it is offered: “Is your other hand at all cleaner? Much the same. Well, I'll owe you another shake. We'll suppose it done, if you've no objection” (p. 294).

²¹ Other aspects of honest responsibility are seen in a number of parallel characters in subsidiary actions, like Varden and Mrs. Rudge; some of the abundant variants of disguised evil we have already seen. The reader can generally tell which side a character is on from his manner and speech: Chester and Gashford both speak in cold, sly irony, and their public manners are suave; Gashford is also, like Uriah Heep, conspicuously humble and given to hand-rubbing. The vicious blind man, Stagg, commands at will a sanctimonious, humble style. Haredale and Varden, on the other hand, speak out frankly and even gruffly. Varden is one of the most obvious foils to Chester: he is jolly, honest, and a little slow-witted, but his heart is in the right place and he stands firmly behind his principles even in the face of the raging mob.

²² Kathleen Tillotson, Introd., p. xi. She notes also that this irony is effectively pointed up by the contrast between the snugness of the Maypole, as it provides shelter against the storm and highwaymen that ride in the dark, and the devastation of the Maypole after the mob has stormed through it.

²³ As Edmund Wilson observes in regard to Bleak House (“The Two Scrooges,” The Wound and the Bow, Cambridge, 1941, p. 36), Dickens created the “detective story that is also a social fable,” in which “the solution of the mystery is also the moral of the story.” This remark is pertinent also to the much earlier Rudge.

²⁴ This is still a workable device in current detective fiction, in which not infrequently a murderer exchanges his identity with that of his victim in order to mislead the police; the private eye's first great coup is, then, the discovery of the switch. A recent example that comes to mind is John Bingham's Inspector Morgan's Dilemma (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956).

²⁵ Just as he had disowned his murder, he disowned the compulsive action that led to his arrest by Haredale: “The act was not mine. I did it, but it was not mine” (p. 474).