Voorjaar 2009 no.66
The Dutch Diekensian Volume XXIX
10
Bill Sikes (by the way, Dickens describes him
upside down or should I say downside up?)
had:
"a brown hat on his head and a dirty belcher
handkerchief round his neck; with the long
frayed (rafelige) ends of which he smeared
the beer from his face as he spoke..."
Here again a dirty neckerchief for a dirty char
acter!
Not only for the mean or dirty characters
Dickens uses the neckerchief as a symbol of
the soul of a personage. Look for instance at
the easy going, never despairing Mark Tapley,
the Jolly Tapler:
he walked with a light quick stepand sang
as he went for certain in a very loud voice,
but not unmusically, he was a young fellow of
some five or six-and-twenty perhaps and was
dressed in such a free and fly-away fashion,
that the long ends of his loose red neck-cloth
were streaming out behind him quite as often
as before."
Again, Mark is personified in his loose red
neck-cloth, streaming out around him. He
wears the same neck-cloth as his counterpart
Sam Weller, who:
"was habited in a coarse-striped waistcoat,
with black calico sleeves, and blue glass but
tons; drab breeches and leggings. A bright
red handkerchief was wound in a very loose
and unstudied style around his neck..."
Not only in the description of Dickens's char
acters, the neck-cloth is used, it even plays a
far more important role in one of his novels,
in which the neckerchief us the key to the
solution of a murder-case. I refer of course, as
you all know, to Our Mutual Friend.
Everyone remembers of course Bradley
Headstone, the headmaster, who is desperate
ly in love with Lizzy Hexam, But she does not
answer his feelings. On the contrary, she loves
Eugene Wrayburn.
Breadley Headstone always can be seen:
"in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and
decent white shirt, and decent formal black
tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt,
with his decent silver watch in his pocket and
his decent hair-guard round his neck looked a
thoroughly decent young man of sic-and-
twenty. He was never seen in any other
dress..."
The lock-keeper Rogue Riderhood is crying at
the stranger, whom he thinks is a bargeman:
The bargeman turned back. Approaching
nearer and nearer, the bargeman became
Bradley Headstone, in rough waterside sec
ond hand clothing."
"Wish I may die, said Riderhood, smiting his
right leg, and laughing as he sat on the grass,
'if you ain't ha' been a-imitating me,
T'other est governor! Never thought myself so
good looking for!'
Truly, Bradley Headstone had taken careful
note of the honest man's dress in the coarse of
that night-walk they had had together."
"Was it done by accident?"
"Sitting on the grass he (Riderhood)
turned out, one by one, [his clothes], until he
came to a conspicuous bright-red neckerchief
stained black here and there by wear, it
arrested his attention, and he sat pausing
over it, until he took off the rusty colourless
wisp that he wore round his throat, and sub
stituted the red neckerchief, leaving the long
ands flowing. 'Now', said the Rogue, 'if arter
he sees me in this neckerchief I see him in a
sim'lar neckerchief, it won't be accident!"
Headstone comes back in order to kill Eugene
Wrayburn, but before doing so, waering his
coat buttoned up, he goes to sleep at Roque
Riderhoods place, who is watching him in his
sleep. Please do notice the way which Dickens
is increasing the tension by describing the
slowly unbuttoning of Bradley Headstone's
Coat: it is like a close up in a film!
'Poor man!' [Riderhood] murmured in a low
tone, with a crafty face, and a very watchful
eye and ready foot, lest he should start up;
'this here coat of his must make him uneasy
in his sleep. Shall I loosen it for him, and
make him more comfortable? Ah! I think I
