The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Barnaby Rudge

By the end of Chapter 32 the romantic, marital prospects of the two young men, Joe Willet and Ned Chester, and of the objects of their respective loves, Dolly Varden and Emma Haredale, are in ruins, brought about by lies told to fools by one of their fathers, Sir John Chester.

With Chapter 33 the narrative leaps forward 5 years.

In the next few chapters, D introduces us to George Gordon, not Lord Byron, and the movement of Protestant reaction he led, whose disquiet eventually led to the Gordon Riots.

Readers of D always find new occasions to pause and consider whether he might agree with J. S. Mill's public declaration, "The poor, in the lump, are bad," though perhaps tempted to extend the observation beyond that class without a specified limit.

And how near a man can come to combining personal misanthropy and personal humanitarianism.

Contempt for the rabble and support for democratic reform.

And the like.

D's Gordon seems a gentleman more than half sincere, but partly a crank not entirely taken in by himself.

His El Segundo, Gashford, seems a better educated and even more fraudulent Gantry playing Rasputin to Gordon's Czar.

No comments:

Post a Comment