The Big Read III: A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 1-5

Book the Second, Chapter One:  Five Years Later
In which a boot is thrown, a young boy is curious, and not much else happens.

• I know someone who would fit right in at Tellson's Bank:

This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business.  Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment.  Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thanks Heaven!--

• Fab:

When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.  They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him.

• I realize that Chas. Dickens didn't technically get paid by the word, but by spelling out the year every two pages, he does add significantly to his 32-page goal...  then again, the rhythm of it is nice.
• "Anna Dominoes".  Ha.
• Because he runs errands at night, I assume?:

It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy. that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up the next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.

Or, judging by the speech that follows the boot bit, he might just be bananas.

• Iron rust, hmmmm?

Book the Second, Chapter Two:  A Sight
In which I learn that the precursor to razzle-dazzle was jingle and jangle.

• Jerry's conversation with the clerk is a brief reiteration of the death penalty passage from the previous chapter.  ("But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's.  Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? ... Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after.") I rather think the clerk in this scene would be very satisfied with the idea of a clean desk, as it were. 
• It had never occurred to me that the prisoners might pass on their horrible prison diseases to the judges (or anyone else in the courtroom).  Yikes.
• "...the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action..."  I know I've already said this, but WOW.  Before reading this book, I never associated sarcasm with Dickens.  He follows that up with:

Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept that "Whatever is, is right"; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

• "As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun."  He sounds DREAMY.  I hope he doesn't get drawn and quartered.
• Wait, Miss Manette and her father are witnesses for the prosecution?  NO!  That can't be, can it?  But Charles Darnay can't really be a bad guy... right?

Book the Second, Chapter Three:  A Disappointment
In which the chapter title totally gives away the verdict of the trial.

• Mr. Attorney-General is quite dramatic:

That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off.

• Ah HA!:

Ever borrow money of the prisoner?  Yes.  Ever pay him?  No.

I loved that paragraph.

• And the next witness is just as fantastically unreliable:

He had never been suspected of stealing a silver teapot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one.  He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence.

• Oh, poor Charles Darney and Miss Manette!  They're clearly in luuurve and the judge is so very harsh!  I may swoon!
• So Mr. Carton is all slouch-y and awesome, huh?
• I especially liked the comparison of the onlookers to blue-bottles.  The buzzing is right, as is the mindlessness.  And the swarming.  And the attraction to decay and rot.

Book the Second, Chapter Four:  Congratulatory
In which Carton and Darney go out do dinner and Carton gets wasted.

• Huh.  Carton has had his moments, but he is rather tortured:

"As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it.  It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it.  So we are not much alike in that particular.  Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I."

• But then he threw his empty glass over his shoulder at the wall (Why?  Why not!) and that made me like him again.  (As long as I avoid thinking about whoever's going to have to clean it up.)
• Oh, hell.  I don't know how I feel about Carton. 

Book the Second, Chapter Five:  The Jackal
In which we get much more of Sydney Carton and his tortured self.

• Good lord.  I can't even follow a movie in that state, let alone legal papers.  Sydney Carton, at the very least, has a very impressive brain.  And l like his taste in head-wear.
• Poor old Carton, in doomed (That's my guess -- I can't imagine her getting with a sarcastic, bitter guy like Sydney.) luuurve with Miss Manette.
• Sad!:

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

Previously:

Book the First, Chapters 1-3
Book the First, Chapters 4-6

Other reader/bloggers:

TadMack @ Finding Wonderland
Adventures in Multiplicity

Free copies of A Tale of Two Cities are available at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

Comments

[Laura]

I am LOVING your comments on TOTC! I wanted to take part this time but just have too much going on...luckily, I feel like I'm reading vicariously through you. What's going to happen with Carton and Miss Manette???? You're leaving me hanging!!!

[TadMack]

Oh, dear. Poor Carton. I find I want to save him from himself. Or at least a massive hangover. Ye merciful livers.

[Julie Carter]

Dickens LOVED sarcasm. The whole middle section of Martin Chuzzlewit is one big sarcastic fandango (funny at first, but it goes on waaaaay too long).

[Angie]

Man, I love this book. And Sydney Carton. It's great to experience it unfold through your eyes. Keep it comin'!

[Naomi]

I loved Dickens' description of the charges. "Wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously..." Hee.

[Heidi]

I love how you 'may swoon.'

At first I didn't like Carton, but the second look when blogging about it gave me a glimpse of the tortured bad boy, and made me wonder about the innocent Darnay.

The way you write about it makes it so easy to see this as a teen/20 something movie.

[Leila]

Laura, hopefully you'll be up for it next time! I'm thinking maybe Ivanhoe, but that would be a re-read for me, and it's so much fun reading when I don't know the outcome! Ah, decisions...

TadMack: I'm surprised that I'm not taking to Carton immediately -- he seems like the sort of character that would I would usually adore. I think it's that he's very aware of what a disaster he is, and that he's miserable about it, but that he still doesn't take any sort of action (so far) to change that. If he was a disaster and comfortable with that, I'd probably adore him already. But it's early yet, so I'm sure my feelings will change 47 times over.

Yeah, Julie -- more than anything else, reading this has made me realize that I've really missed out by avoiding Dickens all this time.

Will do, Angie -- I'm REALLY enjoying it.

[Laura]

Naomi, that is RAD. Okay, I've officially missed out by never reading any Dickens.