Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge opens in 1775 at the Maypole Inn near Epping Forest, the old establishment of stolid, obstinate landlord John Willet and his restless son Joe. On a stormy March evening a mysterious, scarred stranger presses the company for details about the Warren, its owner Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and his niece Emma. Local clerk Solomon Daisy then retells the inn's standing legend: twenty-two years earlier, on this same date, Reuben Haredale (Geoffrey's brother and Emma's father) was murdered in his bedchamber, his steward Mr Rudge found stabbed months later in the grounds, and the gardener vanished and never found, presumed the killer. The stranger departs hastily for London, riding recklessly through the dark and colliding with locksmith Gabriel Varden. Their tense roadside exchange ends with the stranger threatening Varden's life before galloping off. Continuing toward London, Varden finds Barnaby Rudge—the widow Mrs Rudge's simple-minded son, marked from birth by his father's murder, and companion to his pet raven Grip—standing over the wounded Edward Chester, robbed and stabbed on the road. Varden helps carry Edward to Mrs Rudge's house, where the widow reacts with terror upon a night visit from the same disguised man Varden met earlier; she conceals the connection and begs Varden's silence, deepening his suspicion that she harbors some dreadful secret tied to the stranger. Edward recounts his own robbery, strengthening the link between the highwayman and the masked figure at the Maypole. Back at the locksmith's Clerkenwell home, Varden's household is introduced: his querulous, moralizing wife Martha, given to fits of temper eased only by religious tracts; their pretty, flirtatious daughter Dolly; the vain, ambitious apprentice Sim Tappertit, who secretly leads a secret society called the 'Prentice Knights, dedicated to vague schemes of rebellion against masters and devoted, among other grievances, to persecuting Joe Willet; and the sharp-tongued maid Miggs, who spies on Sim and helps trap him after one of his nocturnal escapades. Joe Willet, chafing under his father's belittling treatment, nurses his hopeless love for Dolly Varden, who treats him with careless indifference while dressing for a party. Meanwhile the elegant, cynical Mr Chester—Edward's father—arrives at the Maypole and arranges a meeting with Geoffrey Haredale. The two men, old enemies, coldly agree to cooperate in breaking up the romance between Edward and Emma, each for his own reasons: Chester considers the match financially and socially unsuitable, while Haredale's opposition stems from deeper, unspoken family obligations. That night Edward secretly visits Emma at the Warren, but Haredale intercepts them, forbids the match, and orders Edward away; riding home, Edward is stunned to learn his father has taken lodging at the Maypole and has been closeted with Haredale. The next day finds Mr Chester breakfasting in comfort at his own London home, reflecting on the encounter.

By Charles Dickens · First published 1841 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Drama · 60 chapters · 307,306 words

First lines

In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London -- measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore -- a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.

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historical fiction · London · French Revolution · mob violence · class struggle · family drama · identity · loyalty · betrayal · romance · adventure · social commentary

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