Voorjaar 2009 no.66
17
The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXIX
me of love!" she says, and you "talk to me of
fiery dragons" out of fairy tales; "But talk to
me of poverty, and wealth, and there indeed
we touch upon realities." Thanks, however, to
Mr. Boffin's acting the mean and cruel miser -
and thanks to her friendship with Lizzie -
Bella changes. Mr. and Mrs. Boffin knew all
along that she could change, and that she was
"true golden gold at heart" (4,13), and Noddy
sets out to prove it. We also knew that she
could change: we knew it from her loving and
fanciful relationship with Pa, and from her
confession of her shameful truth to him.
When she has changed, Bella has a different
attitude toward fancy and reality. Wanting to
"marry for money," she says she "was inca
pable of marrying for love" (4,5); but now, as
she tells John, "I am rich beyond all wealth in
having you,your wishes are as real to me as
the wishes in the Fairy story."
Bella's friendship with Lizzie is important to
her changing. Lizzie's serious friendship
makes Bella serious. Eugene and Mortimer
are supposedly friends,too. When they were
schoolboys, Mortimer had "founded himself
upon Eugene" (2,6), but for most of the novel
Eugene refuses to be serious about himself,
and Mortimer's friendship has little or no
influence on him. In the end, Mortimer's
friendship is necessary to Eugene's loving
Lizzie; and as Mortimer leaves to fetch Lizzie
to his bedside, Eugene says, "Touch my face
with yours I love you, Mortimer" (4,10).
Rogue Riderhood is a notorious friend whose
friendship nobody wants. The novel opens
with Gaffer Hexam refusing Rogue as his
"pardner." Miss Abbey refuses him access to
the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters. But Rogue
attaches himself, deviously, to Rogue. They
aren't, of course, friends. Bradley disguises
himself as Rogue in his attempt to murder
Eugene, and Rogue attaches himself to
Bradley to blackmail him.
Although they are put together - and die
together - they are not alike, as characters.
Rogue has no redeeming characteristics; and
when he is plucked from the river, almost
drowned, that crises of adversity has no effect
on him at all. While he lies seemingly dead,
Pleasant Riderhood hopes that he may yet
breathe again, and that "the old evil is
drowned out of him," that "his spirit will be
altered" (3,3). The doctor wishes "that this
escape may have a good effect" on Rogue, and
one of his rescuers says "It's to be hoped he'll
make a better use of his life." But nobody real
ly expects that anything - even a visit to the
realm of death - will change him. And they
are correct.
Bradley disguises himself as Rogue, and ties to
frame him. One might also - or better - say
that Bradley is in disguise as Bradley, the man
who represses himself into decency in every
thing he does or says, and in the way he dress
es. He is introduced as "a thoroughly decent
young man" in his "decent black coat and
waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent
formal black tie, and decent pantaloons....with
his decent silver watch....and its decent hair
guard" (2,1). This decency is a cover for some
thing, and the "suppression of so much" has
given him a "constrained manner." He is
"uneasy," "never....quite al his ease."
Bradley hides his upbringing as a "pauper
lad": concerning his origin he is "proud,
moody, and sullen, desiring it to be forgotten."
"I don't show what I feel, he tells Lizzie;
"some of us are obliged habitually to keep it
down. To keep it down" (2,11). Thinking of the
"careless and contemptuous" Eugene, Bradley
"keep(s) himself down with infinite pains of
repression" (2,14). He tells Lizzie, in their
churchyard interview, "I can restrain myself,
and I will," but his hands betray his passion
(2,15). Goaded by he "reckless and insolent"
Eugene Bradley's state of mind becomes
"murderous"; and though "tied up" and "sub
dued" under the "restraint" of the schoolroom,
he feels his hidden wrath with "self-justifica
tion" (3,11).
Dickens's narrative doesn't sympathise with
Bradley's madness, but it does insist that we
understand it. And though his obsession with
Lizzie is more unwelcome to her than is
Eugene's, it seems - because it is so wilfully
provoked and aggravated by Eugene - to be
the less culpable.
Jenny Wren, always accurately observant, is
sure that Bradley will someday "take fire and
blow up" (2,11). His fits, when they occur, are
much like Krook's "spontaneous combustion"
in Bleak House - and like the consuming fit of
