Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens — novel #262

All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone. ~ Mr. Haredale in retort to the idea: “the end justifies the means”

The novel Barnaby Rudge is perhaps Dickens’ evidence supporting Mr. Haredale’s surmise. Though the mob of characters, literal mob, is as deluded about the virtue of their intended end as they are about their means.

 

• Full Title: Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty
• Author: Charles Dickens
• Genre: British lit, historical fiction
• First Published: 1841
• My edition: The Project Gutenberg, eBook, freebook
• Setting: London, England and surrounding countryside, 1775-1780
• Also by Dickens (that I’ve read): The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations

 

I seldom see this novel listed with the full title: Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty. That is the Gordon Riots of 1780: A week-long period of violence, arson, and looting in London, that was initially intended as protest against the Papist Act of 1778, which eased official discrimination against British Catholics. Lord George Gordon intended to introduce a petition repealing the Papist act while 40,000 or more supporters escorted him to parliament and to protest outside as he introduced the petition. But the crowd, soon became a mob, and lawlessness and destruction ensued. The ostensibly protestant throng, was according to Dickens…

...sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison regulations, and the worst conceivable police.

But the riots are really just the historical backdrop to Dickens’ human drama. There are not one, but two beautiful maidens. Dolly Varden is the daughter of an honest and brave locksmith and a zealously protestant mother. She is not a bad soul, but rather vain and immature. Her friend Emma Haredale is the orphaned ward of her Catholic uncle Mr. Geoffrey Haredale. Both girls have multiple admirers, villains and true hearts. Dolly is too foolish to recognize hers; Emma is kept from hers by a bitter family rivalry. Both will be caught up in the dangerous events of the riots.

 

And of course, there is Barnaby Rudge: physically an adult, but intellectually a child. If you’ve read any Dickens you already know that Barnaby has a heart of gold. But he is dangerously suggestible and turns out as a champion of the rioting mob.

 

There are many other characters, all perfect Dickens’ caricatures: villains, cowards, heroes,
innocents, fops, and buffoons. But there is only one more that I will mention. Barnaby has a loyal pet raven, Grip. Grip can speak many phrases: "I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil"; "never say die"; and "put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea". But Grip seems to comprehend the meaning of his phrases more than most talking birds who simply mimic human speech. Grip, in Barnaby Rudge, is modeled after Dickens’ own pet Raven named Grip. In fact, Dickens had Grip I, Grip II, and Grip III. And Barnaby's Grip, or was it Dickens' Grip? was the inspiration for Edgar Alan Poe’s famous poem, The Raven.

 

Barnaby Rudge is a thought provoking and unsettling depiction of how quickly righteous causes can be corrupted. It provides a sharp contrast between personal integrity and mob rule. It is nonetheless, one of Dickens less popular novels. I can see that. I found it captivating, and educational (more on that in a moment), but it just didn’t quite break my heart and then miraculously mend it. Maybe I’m just too familiar with Dickens’ trope.

 

My rating 4/5 stars

 

 

Title #30 of 50 for The Classics Club Challenge – Round IV

Title #12 of 15 for The Complete Dickens novels

 

I had never heard of the Gordon Riots, so this novel taught me of something I was ignorant. But although the riots are without a doubt historical, most of Dickens’ narrative is embellishment. I know of the riots now, but would need much more study to know about them.

 

I’ve only two Dickens novels left: Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend. My favorite remains A Tale of Two Cites. Second is too close to call between David Copperfield and Bleak House. What is your favorite Dickens? What did you think of Barnaby Rudge?

 

I really want a pet raven now! 

 

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Classics Club Spin #45

UPDATE 

 

It is time for the 45th edition of the Classics Club Spin – List 20 books from my Classics Club “to be read” list, and post it to my blog by Sunday, August 16, 2026; the mods will then pick a random number, and I have until October 4 to read the corresponding book. 

 

And I just so happen to have exactly 20 books left on my current classic club list.

And the winner is #18, Little Dorrit which will make two Dickens in a row for me. I haven't even written my review of Barnaby Rudge yet.

My spin list: 

 

1. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

2. The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers

3. The Godfather by Mario Puzo

4. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke

6. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

7. Grendel by John Gardner

8. Tess of d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

9. A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin

10. The Long Winter (Little House #6) by Laura Ingalls Wilder

11. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

12. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

13. Post Office by Charles Bukowski

14. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

15. The Deer Slayer by James Fenimore Cooper

16. The Silver Sword (Escape from Warsaw) by Ian Serrallier

17. Cool Hand Luke by Don Pearce

18. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

19. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

20. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

 

I’d most like one of the three Sci-Fi classics by Clarke or Asimov. I don’t want Dickens, because I’m currently reading Barnaby Rudge. I love Dickens, but I don’t want him back to back.

 

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11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King — novel #261

  

What is the most devastating watershed moment of your lifetime? Would you change it if you could? Can you be certain the world would be better today if you did?

 

Stephen King’s 11/22/63 grapples with these questions in a mesmerizing thriller.

 

• Author: Stephen King
• American Lit, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Fantasy
• Published: 2011
• My edition: Scribner (eBook)
• Setting: Maine, 2011 and Texas early 1960s
• Awards: 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel
• Also by this author (that I’ve read): The Stand; Dark Tower Series

 

In 2011, Jake Epping, a divorced high school English teacher from Maine, discovers a time portal, that always takes him back to 1958. No matter how long he stays in the past, when he reverses his path through the portal, he returns two minutes later than the moment in 2011 when he left.

 

And Jake has the chance to re-write history. He just has to hang out in the past for five years or so, until the title date of November 22, 1963, the date of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Stopping that would be a good thing, right? He can’t go back far enough to stop Hitler. He probably wouldn’t live long enough in the past to stop 9/11, but getting Lee Harvey Oswald, that would be well within his sights (pardon the macabre pun).

 

No brainer, right? It’s almost his duty.

 

But Jake learns several nuances of time-travel. Some of these nuances even have real-world names, like the “butterfly effect”: (in chaos theory) whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

 

If you mix the butterfly effect with time travel, well just buckle up. There is no possible way to predict the outcome. And under no circumstances fall in love whilst redirecting the course of human history.

 

Throughout the story, Jake observes that the past is obdurate. It is almost a consciousness that resists Jake. The bigger changes he attempts to make, the more the past resists. I believe this was King’s main point. The past is obdurate. Some people say everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe the past has a conscience, but I do believe it has a sentient director, and he doesn’t need our help.

 

That’s my point, not King’s, but I don’t think his was far off. He makes a strong case, that even if we have the capability, we shouldn’t go messing with the past.

 

My rating 4 ½ / 5 stars

 

 

 

You probably know that King’s novels are all interconnected; some very bluntly, others more subtle. There’s a fairly blunt allusion in this novel. Jake makes a stop in Derry, Maine, the setting for IT, for some lesser time altering, and he learns there was a string of murders, children mostly, some years back. One of the locals tells him…

 

Other folks say he [the murderer] was a local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized.

I love it when I catch those allusions. I’m certain I miss many.

 

King often references other writers. When Jake was describing the town of Derry, and the despairing malaise he sensed, he compared it to Ray Bradbury’s fictional town of Greentown, from the Green Town Trilogy, which includes Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jake states…

 

But there had been hidden horrors in Bradbury’s Greentown too.

Love that. Jake, the fictional character, had read real life Bradbury’s fiction.

 

Elsewhere, Jake’s love interest in the past, Sadie Dunhill, mentions a short story by Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, that is entirely about time-travel and the butterfly effect.

 

And in the course of the novel Jake reads Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, and Oswald reads Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

 

Finally two quotations:

 

Sadie reminiscing with Jake about their past…

 

How we danced!

And Jake sometime later to someone else…

 

Dancing is life.

This was an absolutely riveting read. I don’t think I’ve ever read an 800+ page novel so quickly. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by King. I’d welcome your views on Stephen King, and recommendations for what to read next by this prolific author.

 

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Recap of Novels 251 - 260

  

Average rating of novels 251 – 260:  3.7 stars (out of 5)

 

251.  ★★★★              The Magus

252.  ★★★½              A High Wind in Jamaica

253.  ★★★★              The Remains of the Day

254.  ★★★                 TheAscent of Rum Doodle

255   ★★★★              LordJim
256.  ★★★½              Things Fall Apart
257.  ★★★½              Scoop

258.  ★★★½              Kim

259.  ★★★★             The Power and the Glory

280.  ★★★★             The Code of the Woosters

 

 

Favorite: Lord Jim

 

Least Favorite: The Ascent of Rum Doodle

 

Best Hero: Jim, the title character from Lord Jim

 

Best Heroine: Emily Thornton from A High Wind in Jamaica

 

Best Villain: Maurice Conchis or the magus. Very creepy, and even at the end it isn’t perfectly clear that he is a villain. He is.

 

Most interesting/Complex character: Unnamed priest from The Power and the Glory

 

Best Quotation: You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One or the other, not both. ~ Bertie Wooster

 

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The Code of the Woosters (1938) by P. G. Wodehouse — novel #260

You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. ~ a musing of Bertram Wooster; just a glimpse at the depths of his profundity
 

·      Author: P. G. Wodehouse (pronounced wood-house)

·      Comic novel, British lit

·      Published: 1938

·      My edition: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011 (eBook)

·      Setting: Totleigh Towers a fictional country estate in Gloucestershire, England, pre-WWII

 

Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, Bertie to friends and family, is twenty something, a bachelor, and idle rich, residing in London with his resourceful valet Jeeves. The Code of the Woosters is "Jeeves #7": stories that were serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and The Strand magazines. They can be read in any order. Wooster has a talent for getting in trouble; Jeeves has a talent for getting him out.

 

In this story, a desperate telegram from Bertie’s old chum Augustus “Gussie” Fink-Nottle pulls him into the fray. Gussie has fouled things with his fiancé, Madeline Bassett, and now the engagement is off, threatening Wooster’s happy bachelorhood, as Madeline was previously, rather irrepressibly inclined for Bertie, and is likely to re-engage, literally!

 

According to Wooster, she is a ghastly girl.

I call her a ghastly girl because she was a ghastly girl. The Woosters are chivalrous, but they can speak their minds.

 

He admits…

…Madeline Basset was undeniably of attractive exterior—slim, svelte, if that’s the word, and bountifully equipped with golden hair and all the fixings.

 

But…

She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says” ‘Guess who!’

 

Bertie is called to the scene, ostensibly to clear things up. The reader who is familiar with Bertie’s tact and delicacy cannot be hopeful, but for the knowledge that Jeeves will accompany. There are other complications, involving blackmail, theft, arrest, assault, and a second imperiled engagement of another Wooster chum.

 

It is all quite ridiculous, preposterous, and yet—in Bertie’s world—somehow perfectly plausible.

 

It is great fun, a great read, a laugh-out-loud read, with one minor detractor: I’ve seen it all portrayed flawlessly by Stephen Fry (Jeeves) and Hugh Laurie (Bertie) in the wonderful television adaptation Jeeves & Wooster. I wholeheartedly recommend both the written format and the TV series. If you read first, picture Fry and Laurie in their respective roles.

 

My rating 4/5 stars

 

This was title #29 of 50 for The Classics Club Challenge –Round IV

 

Much of the charm is Wooster’s first-person narrative. A female acquaintance compares Wooster to Sydney Carton, the self-sacrificing hero of A Tale of Two Cities. Wooster is unimpressed.

 

Stiffy Byng thought me like Sidney Carton. I had never met the chap, but I gather that he was somebody who had taken it on the chin to oblige a girl, and to my mind this was enough to stamp him as a priceless ass.

 

Or this bit of dialogue, when Bertie discusses a hostile brute he had to blackmail. This brute was the leader of an intimidating fascist group making noise in England. Bertie, through Jeeves, learned he was also secretly the prorietor of a women’s lingerie boutique. (Bertie speaking first, then Jeeves)

‘You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing.’

‘No, sir.’

‘One or the other. Not both.’

‘Precisely, sir.’

For the record, the “code” of the Woosters is…

"Never let a pal down"

 

Have you read The Code of the Woosters, or other stories in the series? What did you think? I bet you are not neutral.

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The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America by Thomas S. Kidd

Author: Thomas S. Kidd

Genre: History; Religion

Published: 2007

My edition: Yale University Press, paperback

 

I consider myself an evangelical, though I’d never considered, that at some point, it was a new term, and I’ve heard of The Great Awakening, and could even name two principals figures: George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, but I couldn’t name the dozens more who were involved, nor pinpoint precisely when it occurred.

 

Thomas S. Kidd’s The Great Awakening sheds light on the two mysterious terms. Indeed the first question he addresses is whether there even was such a thing as The Great Awakening. He saves the conclusion till the end, but yes, there was such an event. It began in the 1730s with ebb and flow throughout most of the remaining 18th century. It was primarily an American-Colonial phenomenon, though it had traces to the old world. As I’ve mentioned, one of its most prominent figures was English itinerant preacher George Whitefield.

 

Kidd identifies three main camps that shaped the movement:

 

• Moderate revivalists—the mainstream evangelical core that emphasized order, but accepted some level of fervor or enthusiasm. Whitefield and Edwards were in this camp.
• Radical revivalists—whose meetings were often characterized by chaotic frenzy of the congregation who could simultaneously experience, terror, repentance, joy, evidenced by cries of despair, laughing, singing, fainting, praying, exhorting, and seeing visions.
• Anti-revivalists who staunchly opposed the movement, and its challenge to convention and authority.

 

Kidd portrays all in the historical context, without making heroes or villains.

 

The tenets of this new brand of Protestant Christianity—evangelicalism—include emphasis on personal conversion, or new birth, the irresistible work of the Holy Spirit in conversion, assurance of salvation, and a spiritual equality before God of converts, which in this American story included women, children, African-American slaves and free, and native-Americans.

 

Kidd concludes The Great Awakening was a real historical event. He also offers his own view, which I think may be the popular opinion, that this period, 1730s to 1780s or 90s, is the FIRST Great Awakening, but that there is only an ambiguous break between the First and Second Awakening—and probably continuing with the third as well.

 

Finally, Kidd addresses the Awakening’s relationship to the American Revolution. He sees real cultural and rhetorical connections—ideas of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and individual conscience—without asserting direct cause and effect. He cites numerous examples of moderates, radicals, and anti-revivalists in both the patriot and loyalist causes.

 

I felt the title and subtitle were reversed from the emphasis that I inferred. It seems more about the genesis of evangelicalism in America as it was shaped by the widespread, phenomenal spiritual experiences, known as The Great Awakening. Either way, it was not quite what I was expecting—a Christian perspective celebration. The book is much more historical and documentary. I thought it was very thorough and enlightening.

 

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Henry VI part 1 (1591) by William Shakespeare

• 
  by William Shakespeare (possibly with Thomas Nashe)
  
• Genre: Play, Historical play
• Written: 1591
• My edition: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, J.W. Edwards Inc., 2009
• Setting: 1422, England and France, opens at the funeral of Henry V

 

This play is part of the Henriad that is made up of 2 tetralogies, or 2 sets of four plays. The first tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, and Henry V, is sometimes considered the Henriad by itself. In a broader definition, the Henriad includes the second tetralogy: Henry VI part 1, Henry VI part 2, Henry VI part 3, and Richard III. And to confuse things just a bit more, the second tetralogy was written earlier than the first, but chronologically takes place later.

 

So, this is the 5th play in the full Henriad, and the 1st play in the second tetralogy of the Henriad.

 

Enough of that!

 

The play opens on the funeral of Henry V. It gets a little depressing after that.  

 

As with any play, it is meant to be enacted. Much is lost when reading a play; reading Shakespeare’s plays is particularly challenging. However, I had a split decision of both the pleasure and the ease of reading this play. I found the action—what was happening—rather easy to follow in this play. But exactly who was doing what, that was a bit confusing due to a dizzying cast of characters. There is a host of English dukes, earls, knights, soldiers, and of course the King, and then there is the same on the French side. There are a few ladies, maidens, and one Joan of Arc.

 

The French were pretty easy to keep track of, but the English? There’s a lot of duplicity going on, and it is difficult to remember who is loyal to whom, and why and when. Some of them even change titles mid-play. I made myself a cheat sheet, and added notes for each English peer as some new intrigue was added to their account. And with that, everything came up roses.

 

Little pun there. This part of the Henriad covers the historical period known as the War of the Roses: a period of the English monarchy, 1455 - 1487 with various houses vying for control, through intrigue, betrayal, covert and overt battles.

 

I am working my way through the Henriad, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. This was no exception. It is one of Shakespeare’s earliest history plays, and it shows. It’s a bit less extravagant. As I said, it was fairly easy to follow the action—not always my experience with Shakespeare.

 

Spoiler alert: As is often the case, the one true, noble, and admirable character doesn’t survive the play: Lord Talbot. He is overpowered by the French because suspicious groups on the English side fail to come to his aid. There is a powerful scene when Lord Talbot urges his own son Jonathan to flee the field, for if he stays they both shall die. Jonathan responds:

Then let me stay; and, father do you fly:

Your loss is great, so your regard should be;

My worth unknown, no loss is known in me.

Upon my death the French can little boast;

In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost.

Flight cannot stain the honour you have won;

But mine it will, that no exploit have done;

You fled for vantage, every one will swear;

But if I bow, they’ll say it was for fear,

There is no hope that ever I will stay,

If the first hour I shrink and run away.

Here, on my knee, I beg mortality,

Rather than life preserv’d with infamy.

Besides Lord Talbot, the most interesting character is Joan of Arc. Spoiler alert: She will not survive the play either. She is battling the Duke of York, who thinks she will use witchcraft to change him into some other form. She retorts: 

Chang’d to a worser shape thou canst not be.

Great line, great play! Historically, it marks the beginning of the end of English rule of France; the beginning of the War of the Roses; the beginning of the end of the House of Lancaster; and the rise of the House of York.

 

It is also the start of Shakespeare’s history plays.

 

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