psmv5: Oliver Twist

From reference 1, I got to reference 2. From reference 2 I got to reference 3, where I come across the hypnagogia of reference 4.

It turns out that Charles Dickens inserted a good description of this interesting condition, between waking and sleeping, at the end of Chapter XXXIV of Oliver Twist. A few minutes with Bing and I have a pdf of the book in question, Dickens’s second novel, and I quickly find the description in question.

Then yesterday evening, dining in the Bugle of reference 6, we notice an ancient copy of ‘Oliver Twist’ on a shelf and, by permission, I take it away for further perusal.

Published by Chapman & Hall of Piccadilly, a once proud independent founded in 1834, now just a brand name in some consolidated operation. Printed by Virtue & Co. of the City Road, London. A slim volume in their Household Edition of the works of Charles Dickens. Not to be confused with ‘Household Words’ published rather earlier by Dickens himself.

Thick boards covered in green cloth, embossed in black with further decoration in gold. A centenary stamp for Dickens of 1912. Frontispiece, title page, a preface of two pages (probably written in 1867, three years before Dickens’s death in 1870) and then just over 200 pages of two column text, including near thirty half page illustrations, nearly all, for some reason, in the middle of a right hand page. None of the additional wrapping material usually to be found in more recent books.

The centenary stamp has no monarch’s head, mandatory at that time, so a fake. Presumably intended as a souvenir or for purposes such as the present. Stuck in, possibly after the original sale.

The spine is stiffened by some thick printed paper, so something recycled, rather than new, as would the case in such a book now.

We get no contents page, but the chapters are headed by a few introductory words. The reader gets that much support.

The pages are quite wide by modern standards, certainly a good deal wider than the average paperback, so the two column format was needed for comfort in reading – perhaps with poorly corrected or uncorrected eyes in bad light. I associate to an edition of Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ in a broadsheet newspaper which I came across in Hardy’s house in Dorset. Not much reader comfort there. Noticed near a decade ago at reference 11.

Most of the preface is given over to justifying a portrait of low-life in the raw, stripped of the pleasant and romantic glow which usually wrapped such portraits. We are particularly referred to John Gay’s ‘Beggar’s Opera’ of the previous century. We are also told of the delicate ears of respectable ladies, too delicate for the language which comes with such low-life. Dickens makes a stand for the stern truth.

I thought that the illustrations had been recycled from some previous edition, and at least some of them carry the signature of a Dalziel, and reference 8 confirms that they were all produced by the Dalziel brothers, especially for the Chapman & Hall edition of 1870 or so. For the brothers see also reference 9. The original drawings were made by one J. Mahoney, well known in his day for his drawings from the Irish Famine, an important part of pushing the government in London to action.

Many of the chapters include a conventionally decorated and enlarged initial letter. A pale imitation of the sort of thing you used to get in illuminated manuscripts of old. The print is quite pale too, but I am not sure whether that is cheap printing in the first place or cheap ink fading with age.

In the end, I plump for the ‘The 1910-12 "Centenary" thirty-six volume edition published jointly by Chapman and Hall, London, and Charles Scribner's Sons, New York’ of reference 10, so a book something over a hundred years old.

And we do indeed have a good description of a transition from a waking to a dreaming state, with the real world being moulded, transformed into the dream world. It takes a good part of the chapter following to convince Oliver that the villains which appeared in his dream were not lurking in the vicinity, looking to kidnap him or worse. Most of it is snapped above.

PS 1: in the course of all this, I was reminded of the anti-Semitism endemic in nineteenth century England, and, no doubt, in most of the rest of Europe. Endemic to the point of appearing in print in the work of National Treasures.

PS 2: Dickens might be a National Treasure, but he is not an author that I have spent much time with. The foray into Bleak House last year, noticed, for example, at reference 12, notwithstanding. I might add that I am impressed that Dickens should know about such a phenomenon as hypnagogia and take the trouble to write about it. Must have been an observant sort of chap.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/mourning-form-and-content.html.

Reference 2: Freud: The mind of the moralist - Philip Rieff – 1959.

Reference 3: The interpretation of dreams – Sigmund Freud – 1899/1954.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia.

Reference 5: Oliver Twist (or The Parish Boy's Progress) – Charles Dickens – 1837-1839.

Reference 6: The Bugle Inn, Brading, Isle of Wight. At the time of writing, the website has gone offline for maintenance work.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_Words.

Reference 8: https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/dalziel/pva81.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/fake-127.html.

Reference 10: https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/mahoney/.

Reference 11: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/07/matters-hardy.html.