"Our Mutual Friend" has made me succumb to the general Dickens hysteria

I've generally been determined to resist the universal hysteria surrounding Dickens this year, because I’ve never been a big fan.

Of course I love the David Lean movie adaptations, and I was unexpectedly thrilled by the stage show of Oliver! when I saw it as a teenager (I even enjoyed the amateur production we attended in a big tent on Bodmin Moor two years ago). I’ve even read some of the books all the way through – Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol – i.e. the shorter stuff – and admired them all.

But I’ve always failed to complete any of the 700-page plus doorstop specials – Little Dorrit, Dombey & Son, Nicholas Nickelby etc. As for Bleak House, I’ve been locked in battle with it since buying an ancient two-volume edition in Lloyds Bookshop on Wimbledon High Street when I was eleven (I have no idea what made me do it – it may have been the illustrations, or perhaps I’d had an inklingthat even DC comics could eventually begin to pall). In any case, I managed about 20 pages before admitting the task was utterly beyond me, and headed down to the Popular Book Centre in Tooting on the hunt for more issues of The Atom and Green Lantern.

I must have tried to get through Bleak House on at least five occasions since then, starting in my mid-twenties, after I’d read three of the shorter novels on the trot. The last time was about a decade ago and I got about half way through before vowing never to open another Dickens novel ever again, and headed down to Waterstone’s on the hunt for more detective novels. That vow encompassed televised versions of the novels – I’ve successfully avoided them for a decade.

Well, I’ve broken my vow. Two weeks ago I heard an episode of an old adaptation of Our Mutual Friend (a title which both Kingsley Amis and Ambrose Bierce denounced as nonsensical – you can have a mutual understanding, but not a mutual friend, apparently) on that excellent station, Radio Four Extra. I listened to it while doing the ironing, and, when it was over, I realised I’d been so enthralled I’d got through half the pile without noticing. So I went straight upstairs and downloaded OMF onto my Kindle. I started reading it last week and the end is in sight.

It is superb. Yes, it’s full of Dickensian grotesques (in particular, Jenny Wren and Sloppy - they haven't met yet, but I presume they marry), impossibly selfless heroines, dastardly villains (I rather fancy being called "Rogue" Riderhood), ludicrously far-fetched coincidences (Lizzie Hexam just happening to be the person who discovers the dying Betty Higden – I mean!), golden-curled children dropping like flies, good-hearted morons, London pea-soupers, bodies being fished out of the Thames, Jewish money-lenders (I presume the saintly Mr Riah is meant to make up for Fagin), respectable schoolmasters turning into homicidal maniacs because of unrequited love (Bradley Headstone - another great name), worthless young men being saved by the love of a good woman (at least, I presume he's going to be saved) everybody - even cripples and 80 year-olds - walking distances that would have landed most of us in intensive care – and everywhere the terrible, corrosive effects of too much or too little money. 

Yes, the characters do tend to only have one defining feature (I can’t remember who originally made this point – Orwell?) which gets hammered home relentlessly, and, yes, there’s a fair amount of gooey sentimentality, especially where children and the simple-minded are concerned. But in return, we get some of the best comic writing I’ve ever come across – and I don’t just mean that kind of arch jollity which I always associate with Pickwick Papers, and which proves very wearing very quickly: I mean pin-point accurate satire which displays such a deep understanding of our myriad foibles, and is so well written and so brilliantly observed that it makes one laugh out loud again and again (something novels rarely make me do):

"Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror. For it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came over with Anybody else." 

"So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside, might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot." 

There's an allusion to "the Society for Granting Annuities to Unassuming Members of the Middle Classes" (Civil Service pensions, perhaps?)

"Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall every one of us be murdered in our beds." 

"Mr Podsnap's world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, 'Not English!' when, PRESTO! with a flourish of the arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept away. Elsewhere, the world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined at seven. Mr Podsnap's notions of the Arts in their integrity might have been stated thus. Literature; large print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Painting and Sculpture; models and portraits representing Professors of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Music; a respectable performance (without variations) on stringed and wind instruments, sedately expressive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excommunication. Nothing else To Be —anywhere!" 

And, of course, much of the satire is still apposite: 

"As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to cry out, night and day, 'Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us'"!

Spooky!

Whenever I used to notice the collected works of Dickens on our bookshelves, I’d always feel vaguely guilty: that row of dirty great slabby books were a testament to my flibbertigibbet nature, my lack of resolve, and to all the second-rate rubbish I’d read instead over the years. I also used to wonder if you had to be English to truly “get” Dickens. Well, the answer to that is evidently: no, you don’t. But I suspect that, if you’re a magpie reader like me, when it comes to the great man’s more massive works, a lot comes down to which one you happen to pick off the shelf. This time I chose right.

I have to put Our Mutual Friend aside for a few days and get on with something for our book group – but I can’t wait to read the rest of it. And I’m already wondering which one to go for next. The only thing I’m certain of is it won’t be Bleak House.