A Tale of Two Cities: Part the Third

Forward

In the course of reading this book, I find myself stopping every few pages to look up a word, phrase, or just to place the meaning in a historical context. I discovered a site called Discovering Dickens: A Community Reading Project that does just that, and have found it immensely helpful. If you are reading the book for realsies (not just these reviews) I highly recommend it, but I will be inserting key things I have learned from it as I go. The biggest takeaway that I have gathered so far is that almost all of the events, characters, and settings are historically accurate and based on real people and events. What you might think are exaggerations are not. Probably. In fact it has been a bit hard to satirize this as the whole time period is already pretty extra. That being said, follow along as we explore the deepest depths of sorrows this time period has to offer and then discover an even deeper layer.

Chapter 6
Hundreds of People

Dr. Manette’s house is a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy ’cause of Lucie (his daughter).

Mr. Lorry likes to come round and enjoy the house, which is on a quiet street, It has shade, fruit trees, fresh breeze, and probably Mr. Rogers as a neighbor. A peculiar acoustic property of the street means some footsteps seem near but are actually quite far. Inside the house is just as pleasing in a simple yet pretty French kind of way, thanks to Miss Manette.

Remember when Mr. Lorry first met Miss Manette and was very confused when she fainted after being told her father was alive and probably crazy? Well the maid who came in to tend to her lives here now. She is named Miss Pross, has been Miss Manette’s caregiver since age ten, and is fiercely protective.

Pross: How do you do?

Lorry: Capital! And you?

Pross: Well enough I suppose.

L: Indeed?

P: Indeed. Rather put out about Miss. Manette though.

L: Indeed?

P: Yes, and stop saying indeed.

L: Really?

P: Really, she is like Odysseus’ wife when it comes to attracting suitors. Dozens come round.

L: Really?

P: Hundreds is more like it.

L: Really?

P: Yeah, and it’s all your fault.

L: Really?

P: Really, and stop saying really.

L: Quite so?

P: Quite so, ever since you returned her father to life.

L: Quite so?

P: Quite, and none of them are worthy of her. None have ever been worthy of her save my brother Solomon.

Solomon, we learn, is considered by Mr. Lorry to be a scoundrel who stole everything Miss Pross owned, lost it in speculation, then abandoned her. Miss Pross, however, seems to hold a different opinion. Will this become important later in the book? The answer to that question, like a glass coffin, remains to be seen. At this point Mr. Lorry’s attention is drawn to Mr. Manette’s shoemaking setup in the corner.

L: Does he ever speak of his shoemaking time?

P: Never.

L: Do you believe he thinks of it much?

P: I do.

L: Do you imagine –

P: Don’t ever imagine anything!

L: Sorry. Do you…suppose he has a theory why he was locked up?

P: As a household servant I hold no opinions that are not given me by Miss Manette. That is except, of course, when it comes to minor semantic points such as whether to say imagine or believe, which I am weirdly emphatic about, as you have no doubt gathered.

L: Quite so. Considering that he is undoubtedly 100% innocent, and that that innocence will in no way be brought into question later in this book, does Miss Manette think he has a theory about why he was imprisoned?

P: She does, but she thinks he is afraid to talk about it. Any mention of the subject throws him into a fit.

L: Quite so.

At this point we hear the father and daughter approach, and Miss Pross proclaims that the hundreds of suitors will be following soon. I am sure this is not at all an exaggeration. Dickens then spends a full page describing the culinary prowess of our governess, and they sit down to eat. Afterwards they sit in the courtyard drinking wine and are joined by Mr. Darnay. You know who doesn’t show up? Hundreds of suitors. Shocking, right?

Darnay: Ever been to the Tower of London?

Lucie (Miss Mannete): Near enough.

D: Well I took the tour and in one old cell they found the initials DIG, only, no one on record had those initials, so I thought maybe it was a word. Dug underneath it and sure enough there were some burnt papers in a leather satchel. No idea what they said but sure is creepy eh?

Mr. Manette: Oh look, I am out of sorts because it is now raining and not at all because you are recounting a story about a prison.

They all go in because it is raining. I should also note that at this point in history, according to Discovering Dickens,  the tower is not a prison but more a combination museum, menagerie (zoo), and neighborhood.

Mr. Carton shows up and they sit around talking about the storm: waiting for the thunder, hearing footsteps coming and going, seeming to be all over, but unseen in the shadows. They brood about how the footsteps, like the rain, will all come at once in a flood. The whole conversation is clearly about the storm and not at all obvious foreshadowing of events to come.

Chapter 7
Monseigneur in Town

We now find ourselves in Paris, where we are introduced to Monseigneur, which is the French equivalent of the English honorific “My Lord.” He is a rather extravagant fellow, whose chambers are referred to as the holiest of holiest, and who had his morning hot chocolate served to him by no fewer than four servants: one for every step of the process, including one to provide him his napkin. Any fewer than this would be a blight and an abomination. Monseigneur lives by two rules: Don’t interfere in anything when it comes to governing (people should fend for themselves) and do everything possible to increase his own wealth. Upright dude, right?

Only problem is that his extravagant lifestyle is gradually making him less rich. What to do, what to do? Oh, I know! Take his sister out of the convent before she puts on the veil (takes an oath of celibacy and all that) and marry her off to a rich tax man. Not just any tax man, but one so rich the it necessitates an itemized list of his horses, servants, household property, et cetera. Ever read the book of Numbers in the Old Testament/Torah? Basically that snooze fest of a list. TL;DR: Tax man is rich.

This is symptomatic of nearly every profession: people are put in positions of power for political reasons or because they bought those positions, but they have zero training. Naval officers who are only vaguely aware of the concept of a boat, Military generals who may or may not know which end of the musket the shot comes out of, doctors who charmingly sell snake oil. You get the idea. While lacking any skill pertaining to their profession, they ARE quite skilled at amassing more wealth for themselves.

A whole group of such self important people are at Monseigneur’s hotel, awaiting his presence. We are treated to a description of their fancy hair and their Mr. T level gold jewelry. Fashion is of such supreme importance even the executioner is required to be “powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged.” In our modern parlance, they are all crazy ’bout the pumped-up kicks. I actually winded up diving into a rabbit hole on hair fashion at this point, so to learn more, see the end of this post.

After finishing his hot chocolate, Monseigneur pops out of the Holiest of Holies long enough to soak up the fawning admiration of the fashionable sycophants before retiring to his chambers, which is described thusly:

Sport of Tycoons by Carl Barks, courtesy of Tom Simpson
https://www.flickr.com/photos/randar/12772571353/in/album-72157637696315804/

I guess this is the best of times? Kind of macabre best of times if so. Anyway, one sycophant remains long enough to curse him, only after the room is safely empty, of course, then leaves. He is a marquis but is yet to be identified by name, and his face as described by Dickens, is basically the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta:

Guy Fawkes Mask Atop Samuel Adams Grave by Ben Schumin

The Marquis goes down to his carriage, and proceeds to drive through the Paris streets Mad Max style, and watches with great pleasure as the peasants dive out of his way and occasionally get maimed. (From what I read this was actually kind of a common occurrence back then.) The carriage runs over a child, and the driver stops, to the great annoyance of Guy Fawkes, who would just have soon kept driving. He climbs out, can’t fathom why the parent is upset, tosses them a gold coin, and starts to drive away when the coin is flung back at him. He gives a rant about how meaningless they are in proper aristocratic gravitas, then drives on.

Chapter 8
Monseigneur In the Country

The Marquis drives through the country side, which is full of scraggly crops struggling to get by tended by scraggly peasants struggling to get by. They are poor mostly due to taxes, of which they pay general, state, local, church, and lordship taxes. Historically, the farmer-general (name for the tax man) had a set amount to be paid per capita for each of these taxes, but no limit as to what they could actually charge. In other words they extorted whatever they wanted and pocketed the difference. I guess Monseigneur Hot Chocolate had the right idea with marrying his sister off to one. Well, right idea when you have the no morals.

Marquis comes across a poor village full of poor people doing poor people things. He singles out a road mender who was staring at the carriage, and demands to know the cut of his jib, or some equally old timey phrase. Road mender tells Marquis that someone was clinging to the underside of his carriage but dove off a cliff at the top of the hill on the way. They go investigate the top of the hill and find a mourning woman:

Woman: Monseigneur! A petition!

M: Ugh, always with the petition

W: Under this little mound of grass lies my husband. He starved to death.

M: And?

W: Well, a lot of us starve to death to death you see.

M: Oh, and you think I could feed them?

W: Quite easily, but that’s not my point. I was just wondering if you could maybe spare a little headstone for him. Once I starve to death too no one will remember his grave, what with all the other starved people.

M: Yeah, that’s the point.

He drives up to his château outside the village, where he is expecting Lord Charles from England. They are probably gonna have a play date persecuting the less fortunate if the theme of the book holds its course.

BONUS SECTION ON HAIR

In reading up on hair fashions of the time, I learned that it was believed hair was “a vapour or excrement of the brain, arising from the digestion performed by it at the instant of its nourishment.” That article also had these pretty great illustrations from the time:

From Fairholt’s Costume in England (published in 1860, and thus roughly contemporary with A Tale of Two Cities), we learn:

The head-dress of the ladies still continued as monstrous as ever, until in 1782 it reached the extraordinary size depicted in our engraving [see below]. It consisted of a heap of tow and pads, over which false hair was arranged, and hung with ropes of pearls, gauze-trimming, ribbons, feathers, and artificial flowers; until it added two or three feet to the stature of the fair wearers.

Heads thus carefully and expensively dressed were, of course, not dressed frequently. The whole process is given in the London Magazine of 1768: “False locks to supply deficiency of native hair, pomatum in profusion, greasy wool to bolster up the adopted locks, and grey powder to conceal dust.” A hairdresser is described as asking a lady “how long it was since her head had been opened and repaired; she answered, not above nine weeks; to which he replied, that that was as long as a head could well go in summer; and that therefore it was proper to deliver it now, as it began to be a little hasardé.” The description of the opening of the hair, and the disturbance thereby occasioned to its numerous inhabitants, is too revolting for modern readers; but the various advertisements of poisonous compounds for their destruction, and the constant notice of these facts, prove that it is no exaggeration. (313)

Of course after reading this, I had to know the revolting details, so I should warn you at this point it gets kinda gross, in case you want to stop reading now. This is actually where we get the term “hairdressers” as they “dressed the hair” with such ornamentation as described above.  In order to bolster up the natural hair and increase volume, they added wool and false hair. To add stiffness and hold, they used a combination of flour and grease to make a stiff, starchy frame. This was extra tasty to bugs, so the hair got to be “lousy”, or, full of lice. Hence, opening the hair involved decanting this steamy, greasy bundle and discovering all kinds of lice and other bugs crawling around. The hairdresser would “nitpick”, nits being the eggs of lice. So that is where we get both the terms lousy and nit-picking.

The pest problem was so bad that the hair was embedded with poisons and honey-covered spikey bug traps. Apparently they were even known to harbor rodents. I guess the upper class had to put up with this, because not having ostentatious headdressings made one a pariah in polite society. Wigs were preferable to natural hair since they could be taken off, but even these got gross. They even had handbooks on the etiquette of dealing with bugs. If you were in public and saw a bug crawling on you, it was not polite to flick it off yourself, so you had to try to shift to hide it. It was acceptable to flick it off someone else though, and a thanks was expected. Scratching ones scalp should only be done in private, and they made special scratching wands to get down in there without disturbing the starchy grease frame.

This last bit came from a blog called “Lives and Legacies,” and for more details, check it out From Servants to Sovereigns, Lousy Hair Days.