Barnaby Rudge - Dickens' Least Read Novel

Barnaby Rudge and his pet raven, Grip

I finally got around to reading Barnaby Rudge in February and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Of course, I do like historical novels, and this is one of only two historical novels by Dickens, the other being A Tale of Two Cities. 

The full title is Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty, and its focus is on the buildup to the Gordon Riots of 1780 and the immediate aftermath. The Gordon Riots were several days of riots sparked by Lord George Gordon's rallying a mob to violence in opposition to the Papists Act of 1778, which was intended to reduce discrimination against Roman Catholics in Britain. In other words, a set of Londoners were rioting because they wanted Catholics to continue being discriminated against. As Dickens portrays it, the rioters were downtrodden people who were manipulated into rioting by being shown a set of people they could despise even though rioting wouldn't actually help them to a better life.

Most of the characters in the book live in the village of Chigwell, which is now a suburb of London. 

• There is the proprietor of the local pub, the Maypole Inn, and his son, John and Joe Willet, respectively, and his stable boy, Hugh;
•  The rich man and his niece, Mr Haredale and Emma, who also happen to be Catholic; 
• The stalwart locksmith, Gabriel Varden, his wife, daughter (the lovely Dolly Varden), apprentice Simon Tappertit, who I believe is a model for Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, and lady's maid Miggs, whose main role is comic relief. It almost felt like she must have been based on a lady's maid in Dickens' own household who frustrated him to no end.
• Edward Chester is Emma Haredale's beau, and he has a conniving, smarmy father John who makes your skin crawl.
• Finally, there is Barnaby and his mother. Barnaby is a simple young man--none too bright but warm-hearted. His is the role of the Shakespearean fool, and for most of the novel I was wondering why Dickens gave his name to the novel because he is mostly a minor character until the end.

The plot is long and convoluted, after all it was serialized, and Dickens had weekly installments to fill per his contract. There are intrigues, kidnappings, jailings and jailbreaks, highway robbery, betrayals, duels, fires, murder, and a couple of love stories. Despite all these distractions, its heart is a story about propaganda, paranoia, zenophobia, mob rule and mob violence, and misplaced patriotism.

Dickens was a Londoner, and I believe he wanted to really explore how his London grew out of the London in which these riots occurred seventy years earlier. When you think about it, the 1950's were seventy years ago--I'm currently reading The Lincoln Highway, which takes place in 1954, so Amor Towles is today doing what Dickens did in the early 1840s, looking at today's world through a 70-year-old lens. But I digress--Dickens writes of London with a familiarity, an intimacy, that comes from having repeatedly tramped it streets and alleys, byways and highways. It is navel-gazing at its finest--what is this London and how did we come to this?

The 1840s were a decade marked by revolutions throughout Europe, and Barnaby Rudge was published from February through November of 1841, which to me indicates that former court reporter Dickens definitely still had his finger on the pulse of his countrymen and knew what civic perils lay ahead.

So why is this novel so infrequently read? I think the title has a lot to do with it--I found the word Rudge very off-putting--sounded like dullsville to me! And Barnaby really is not much of a character for three-fourths of the book. Calling it The Maypole Inn would have been a far better title, in my opinion. 

Fun fact: in the novel, Barnaby has a pet raven named Grip, who talks like a parrot and is the perfect pet and companion for Barnaby. Dickens modeled Grip after two ravens he kept as pets (sequentially). According to legend, Edgar Allan Poe was so taken with the idea of a talking raven after having read Barnaby that he was inspired to write The Raven.

Now all I have left to read is The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and I will have read all the Dickens novels at least once..and that is a very good reading goal!