Our Mutual Friend has won the vote and will be our Charles Dickens book for June. And it’s a big one.
The 14th and final complete novel that Dickens wrote was originally released in 20 monthly volumes between May 1864 and November 1865. My edition is more than 800 pages long. It contains 50 or so lavishly described characters – not to mention endless rich descriptions of 1860s London, its poverty and corruption, its complex financial structures, its fashions and absurdities. Judging by what I’ve read so far, it’s also funny, angry and brilliant. It’s going to be well worth our time – even if it takes up quite a bit of it.
But it’s also a challenge. Dickens himself was daunted by the book’s size and ambition, noting when he started out that “I felt at first quite dazed in getting back to the large canvas and the big brushes.”
The public, too, had doubts. In May 1864, the Guardian greeted the first instalment with cautious optimism:
We recognise the beginnings of original ideas which have not had their development in any previous novel. Especially we recognise the easy mastery of language and fanciful style which distinguishes all Mr Dickens’s writing … For some time to come there will be a new interest in the first of every month, for a new novel by Dickens is a literary event.
There was indeed plenty of interest, although sales fell sharply after the first month. It inspired as many debates about the grammatical propriety of the title, with Dickens called on to explain why his book was not called “our friend in common”. He gave that idea short shrift, then faced a far more serious problem when he was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in June 1865 while carrying the manuscript of the 16th instalment. He described the event in a postscript to the completed book:
“On Friday the Ninth of June in the present year, Mr and Mrs Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr and Mrs Lammle at breakfast) were on the South-Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed back into my carriage – nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon the turn – to extricate the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt.”
Dickens was more deeply injured. He couldn’t speak for two weeks after the accident and his son said he never fully recovered. Because of this, the 16th instalment was shorter, but Dickens soldiered on and the final chapters hit the newsstands in November 1865.
Reviewing the complete book in the Guardian in December, the nameless critic seemed exhausted by the sheer the scale of Our Mutual Friend:
The quantity of matter put into real words is immense, the quantity of suggested personages, places, circumstances and things even greater … What crowds of people have been brought before our minds in the panorama. Whether it be a compliment or otherwise, we confess that a panoramic impression has been left; very vivid, very lifelike, very exciting in many points, but on the whole confusing, if not bewildering … no space at our disposal would permit an epitome of the story.
This critic also warned that reading the book will require “skill and patience on the part of the reader” and accused Dickens of overwriting and “sentimentality”.
Other reviewers were even harsher. Henry James called it “the poorest of Dickens’s works … Seldom, we reflected, had we read a book so intensely written, so little seen, known, or felt.” James deemed Bleak House “forced” and Little Dorrit “laboured”, so anyone who has read those wonderful books will know how much salt to pour on his opinion. Even so, the consensus on Our Mutual Friend sided him to the end of 19th century.
In the early 20th century, critics began to enjoy the book’s ambition and linguistic treasures and it has retained a high standing ever since. Last year, it even made the BBC’s oddball list of “100 novels that shaped our world”, while Philip Hensher eloquently sung its praises here in 2011, writing: “It’s so full of the river, and the sense of the city, and a huge stretch of London society, and so grand in its vision that perhaps we forget how gloriously funny it is.”
Hensher’s advice is to “swallow this magnificent novel whole”. I’m certainly up for it – but we’ll make sure to pace things gently over the next few weeks so we can all contribute ideas as the book unfolds before us, without having to know what happens in the end.
But first, the beginning. Here’s the intriguing first sentence:
“In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.”
From there, we are plunged into adventure and mystery. I can’t wait to read more. I hope you’ll join me – if you are having any trouble sourcing books in the lockdown, you can read Our Mutual Friend for free online on Project Gutenberg.
