This is certainly not Dickens’s best writing. It’s sometimes a little hard to follow, and there are fewer memorable turns of phrase than in his better work. It does rank, however, among his best social commentary, with timeless insight into how people get enmeshed in populist movements that advocate bigotry and intolerance, as well as insight into those who mistake their own pettiness for genuine morality. The Gordon Riots of 1780 make a fascinating backdrop for the novel, and I found myself wishing that Dickens had written this at the height of his skill, rather than in an early period of his literary development.

**Warning: this text may contain spoilers** Fathers and Sons

Mr. Turgenev can count himself very lucky that Dickens, especially the younger Dickens, had a tendency to name his novels after characters that played major parts in them (or were supposed to be doing so) – Fielding and Smollett, and others, who exercised a certain influence on Dickens were not very creative when it came to finding titles for the novels – because otherwise the Russian writer would have had to recycle this title for one of his most celebrated novels. However, Dickens blandly gave preference to Barnaby Rudge, specifying this with A Tale of the Riots of ‘Eighty, and so “Fathers and Sons” was ready to be picked up by Turgenev.

All in all, though, “Fathers and Sons” would have been a very apt title for Barnaby Rudge – actually, at breakfast today I came up with another suggestion, something along the lines of “Raise Hugh and Cry!” but that was probably just because the coffee was very strong – as Barnaby Rudge does not play bigger role in the novel than many other characters from that book. Instead the novel is a lot about the relationships between fathers and their sons. We have four to five father-and-son-relationships in this novel, and in most cases they are, and remain, dysfunctional. Right from the beginning we can experience how the landlord of the country inn “The Maypole”, John Willet, a morose, self-righteous, pompous ass, tyrannizes and humiliates his adult son Joe, whom he still regards as a child. There is probably more thoughtlessness than malevolence in old Willet’s behaviour but still it proves disastrous as, in consequence, Joe is not taken seriously by any of the Maypole regulars. The paradigm of an egoistic and mean father is John Chester, who has two sons. His legitimate son, Edmund Chester, is regarded by his father as a kind of pawn he can marry off to a rich heiress in order to guarantee his own genteel living standard. In one of his conversations, Mr. Chester makes his attitude towards the bonds between fathers and sons rather clear:

'These family topics are so extremely dry […] It is for that reason, and because they have an appearance of business, that I dislike them so very much. Well! You know the rest. A son, Ned, unless he is old enough to be a companion—that is to say, unless he is some two or three and twenty—is not the kind of thing to have about one. He is a restraint upon his father, his father is a restraint upon him, and they make each other mutually uncomfortable. Therefore, until within the last four years or so—I have a poor memory for dates, and if I mistake, you will correct me in your own mind—you pursued your studies at a distance, and picked up a great variety of accomplishments. Occasionally we passed a week or two together here, and disconcerted each other as only such near relations can. At last you came home. I candidly tell you, my dear boy, that if you had been awkward and overgrown, I should have exported you to some distant part of the world.' (Chapter 15)

His son, to him, is just a means to an end, and there is no natural affection on his side at all. Therefore it will hardly come as a surprise that he has no feelings of responsibility either for his second, illegitimate, son, the ruffian Hugh, who works as an ostler at the Maypole. In the first place, he does not even know that Hugh is his son, but when he learns this, all he thinks is:

’ […]Extremely distressing to be the parent of such an uncouth creature! Still, I gave him very good advice. I told him he would certainly be hanged. I could have done no more if I had known of our relationship; and there are a great many fathers who have never done as much for their natural children. – The hairdresser may come in, Peak!' (Chapter 75)

Not any better than the shining example of this genteel, high-ranking father is that of Mr. Rudge, who is a murderer and a highway-man, and who has no disinterested feelings for his own son, the mentally retarded Barnaby. Only when he thinks that he can get some help from his son in finding his accomplice does he tolerate Barnaby’s presence although the son, at first horrified at the idea of having a criminal for a father by and by relents towards him and looks after his needs. In the case of Barnaby, his mother – and through her possibly the narrator – even goes so far as to put down the son’s mental illness to the crime committed by the father when the mother was pregnant:

’[…] The hand of Him who set His curse on murder, is heavy on us now. You cannot doubt it. Our son, our innocent boy, on whom His anger fell before his birth, is in this place in peril of his life—brought here by your guilt; yes, by that alone, as Heaven sees and knows, for he has been led astray in the darkness of his intellect, and that is the terrible consequence of your crime.' (Chapter 73)

A more benevolent, albeit at first side ineffectual father is Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, who spoils his daughter Dolly and who does not seem to have the guts to put his foot down against his quarrelsome wife. His apprentice Simon Tappertit, to whom he stands in loco parentis and whom he treats very well – even trying to prevent Simon from entangling himself irrevocably with the fate of the rioters –, has absolutely no respect at all for him and even plots against his master/father.

As the public life focus of this first of Dickens’s two historical novels are the Gordon Riots of 1780, the private life interest of Barnaby Rudge centres on sons’ rebellions against their (often unjust) fathers. Whereas Edward brings his father’s curse and renouncement upon himself for disobeying him in a matter of the heart, in which a tender and responsible father would never have exacted obedience, Simon and Joe Willet rebel openly and actively against their respective father figures. Simon even goes so far as to assault Varden and to kidnap his master’s daughter, but even Joe’s rebellion implies physical violence in that he gives a good thrashing to one of the Maypole cronies, who humiliates him once too often – of course, this is a vicarious attack on his father, Dickens probably knowing that Joe would not work as a good character for his readers any more if he had actually really raised a hand to old Willet himself. Although Joe, unlike Simon, does not join the rioters but the army and although later in the novel old Willet and his son are reconciled (interestingly, old Willet’s mind is addled in the course of events and he is rather like a child than like a father as a result), both Joe and Simon can only be accepted in society again after they have lost a limb or two: Joe loses his arm (!) when defending the King against the American rebels, and Simon has to forfeit his legs, formerly the source of his pride. So rebelling against your elders requires some form of atonement after all, even in the case of Joe.

In a way there is still a third example of filial rebellion, namely that of Hugh against society as a whole, which makes him a prominent leader in the Gordon Riots, whose religious direction of impact soon gave way to the rage of the poor and desperate against those who regarded themselves as their social betters. Dickens’s descriptions of the riots are outstanding for the graphic terrors with which they illustrate both the fierceness and the desperation of many rioters. Hugh is undoubtedly one of the most vicious and relentless leaders of the mob, and he does not shy at destroying lives along with property, but still Dickens gives his character a certain ambivalence that might suggest that it was not exclusively the rioters themselves that were to be blamed but also a society that drove them to the brink of despair:

’[…] I have been always called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew, nor saw, nor thought about a father; and I was a boy of six—that's not very old—when they hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand men to stare at. They might have let her live. She was poor enough.'
'How very sad!' exclaimed his patron, with a condescending smile. 'I have no doubt she was an exceedingly fine woman.'
'You see that dog of mine?' said Hugh, abruptly. […] 'Such a dog as that, and one of the same breed, was the only living thing except me that howled that day,' said Hugh. 'Out of the two thousand odd—there was a larger crowd for its being a woman—the dog and I alone had any pity. If he'd have been a man, he'd have been glad to be quit of her, for she had been forced to keep him lean and half-starved; but being a dog, and not having a man's sense, he was sorry.' (Chapter 23)

Scenes like that imply that at least some of the crime and destruction that broke lose during the Gordon Riots – and Dickens was living at a time when the Chartist movement gave rise to similar misgivings about the durability of social peace – can be attributed to social ills and the irresponsibility of those who have the power to change things for the better. One of the grievances Dickens recurs to is the exaggerated use of the death penalty, which was even executed on children who stole for want of food. In the character of Ned Dennis, the hangman – who was partly modelled on a real life person – Dickens concentrates his most acerb criticism of this gruesome and inhumane punishment. Dennis may well be one of Dickens’s most grotesque characters, providing a sense of dark and morbid humour and a fair share of dramatic irony throughout the passages in which he makes his appearance but all in all he is a most hideous monster that is all wrapped up in the clothes of those he “worked off”, as he calls it, and that mocks the doomed in their prison cells. No wonder he rounds off his ill-deeds by betraying his former companions!

Dickens may have had a certain amount of understanding for the deprivation and the horrors that drove people to rebel against an unfair government – just remember the two sons participating in the destruction of Newgate in order to save their father, who is waiting for his execution – but in the end his Victorian mindset embraced a paternalistic view of politics. In other words, just as Barnaby was pardoned – through the untiring mediation of the benevolent father figure – by the Crown, he held it that social ills should be ameliorated by reform and through the organs of the state rather than by revolution and through grassroots movements. After all, it is the same apparently – as far as his own domestic circle is concerned – helpless Gabriel Varden who helped to forge the big Newgate lock and who did not give in an inch to the threatening crowd that wanted him to pick it. By the way, the outcome of the Riots also helps to put Mrs. Varden back into her place and to restore the Varden family peace as if by magic. So even if Lord Gordon himself, who was responsible for the outbreak of the riots, is not portrayed as a downright evil and malevolent person by Dickens, the author yet makes it clear that Gordon was not really in his senses – and he also makes him partly the victim of a sly and egoistic secretary, who uses his own influence over the labile and gullible master.

Barnaby Rudge does have its flaws as a novel – it being meandering at times and often clumsy in joining the public and the private levels – but it follows its major ideas with a vengeance and shows that the author knew what he was doing, which cannot be said for every single one of his previous novels – I am especially thinking of The Old Curiosity Shop here. Apart from that, with a character like Hugh, Dickens shows his skill at creating more complex characters; and neither should we forget truly Dickensian characters such as the grotesque Mr. Dennis, the overbearing Sim, the hypocritical servant Miggs and the likeable and genial Gabriel Varden. All in all, Barnaby Rudge has certainly not deserved to be in the shadow of many of Dickens’s other works.

I just wrote a brilliant, well thought out review, and some GR glitch deleted it. And now I'm too tired to remember all the insightful things I said, so a new review will have to wait. In a nutshell: it was good.

The most disappointing books are the books where I can tell the author loves what he's writing such that It generates a wonderfully, terrible passion, but that don't really strike a chord with me personally. And truth be told I wish I were on Dickens's level here, but outside of fleeting moments of sequences I just.... wasn't.

Part of this is Dickens writing a historical novel and mashing it together with his typical Dickensian fare. Separately these two worked quite well. That the endings of these particular characters all lined up with my old college theory of "The Dickensian Ending" worked well enough for me and helped me appreciate certain characters more than I had leading up to their fates speaks to what I love so much about "standard Dickens". Hell, the characters of Gabriel Varden and the titular Barnaby Rudge were as delightful and good of characters as I've seen from Dickens thus far. They made me laugh and they broke my heart. It was truly wonderful.

And then you have the historical aspect: Dickens's portrayal and treatment of the Gorden Riots of 1780. I'd not heard of these riots before but Dickens does an elegant job of painting a picture of the riots, both the lead up to them and the actual events of the riots. True to his style, Dickens conveys the human nature of a mob, the pain and the suffering and the fire.... It's a horrifying portrait of truly awful events with the added bite of Dickens providing his own commentary on the goings on of this waste of property and human life.

Unfortunately, I didn't find these two elements blended together super well. The novel was never more thrilling than when it conveyed the actual dynamics and horrors of the riots themselves, but getting there was arduous, half a novel of setting up characters and establishing relationships, only half of whom I ever really connected with or stayed in my memory.

In that, this is a misfire. A young and ambitious Charles Dickens biting off, in my opinion, a bit more than he could chew.

3.5 Stars

The Annual Dickens Rankings
1. Hard Times
2. Barnaby Rudge

Although I can't say that this is one of my favorites of Dickens, it has all of the signature elements of a good Dickens story: great characters (noble, evil, comic), common threads tying the characters together, a murder/mystery and other secrets, a ghost story, and a couple of romances. What makes it stand apart is its historical setting in the Gordon Riots of 1780. This event takes center stage, with the characters moving around it. At times it does drag, filling up 800 pages in my edition. What impressed me most powerfully - even more than the riot scenes, which are described in vivid cinematic detail - were the scenes leading up to the executions towards the end. The character of the hangman was especially poignant. As always, Dickens is making a statement about society.

Not among my favorites. Mr. Dickens turns his hand toward historical fiction, with less success from a storytelling perspective than A Tale of Two Cities. There are just too many villains! It makes for bleak reading, which might be warranted, given the subject is The Gordon Riots, but made for slow going. I believe Dickens should have gone with his gut in naming the book for Gabriel Varden, Locksmith. For while Barnaby is charming, he is heroic only in his innocence, and not central enough to the threads of the story.

That said, as an experiment in historical fiction, the story is pretty good. It conveys the horrors of a mob unleashed. It exposes corruption and the evils wrought both by physical force and by poisoned words. The author does allow some light amid the darkness (just enough to maintain his audience). But you can’t go into it expecting a”Dickens novel.” You need to engage while admitting the right of every artist to spread their wings; and see the tale for what it is intended to be.

I want to commend the recording done by Mil Nicholson for Librivox. She is quite, quite excellent in her interpretation of the novels of Mr. Dickens. And she was particularly skilled in creating a voice and persona for each of the many, many bad guys peppered throughout.

This is Dickens fifth novel and it was his first attempt to write an historical novel and was inspired by the Walter Scott's novels.

In the first chapters, Dickens describes the Maypole and introduces the main characters: Gabriel Varden with his wife and his daughter, Simon Tappertit, John and Joe Willet, Solomon Daisy, the Haredales, the Rudges and a mysterious stranger.

Maypole Inn in the village of Chigwell:



A hint of mystery is also inserted in these initial chapters through the Haredale murder. And a black raven gives a gothic touch into the narrative. Just to remind that a black raven has a special meaning in literature.

It seems that "Barbaby Rudge" was published first in Dickens's weekly journal Master Humphrey's Clock in 1841.



In some editions, the original tittle of this book was "Gabriel Vardon, the Locksmith of London."

One you start to read the description of the Gordon Riots, you won't be able to stop to read this book.

Page 116:
The despisers of mankind--apart from the mere fools and mimics, of that creed--are of two sorts. They who believe their merit neglected and unappreciated, make up one class; they who receive adulation and flattery, knowing their own worthlessness, compose the other. Be sure that the coldest-hearted misanthropes are ever of this last order.

Page 138:
So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.

Page 222:
In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven's mercies to mankind, the power we have of finding some germs of comfort in the hardest trials must ever occupy the foremost place...

Page 244:
'All good friends to our cause, I hope will be particular, and do no injury to the property of any true Protestant. I am well assured that the proprietor of this house is a staunch and worthy friend to the cause. GEORGE GORDON.'

Page 251:
The great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were stimulated by their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by the love of mischief, and the hope of plunder.

The historical description of the Gordon Riots can be found at:

Victorian Web

Wikipedia

A Web of English History

Charles Dickens Page

A TV series was made based on this magnificent book:

TV Series (1960)



An interesting historical reference: The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain by Ian Haywood and John Seed.

3.5 stars. An interesting historical fiction novel set in London in 1775 and 1780. The highlight of the book is the description of the London riots of 1780. The riots had quite an impact on a number of the characters in this novel. As with Dickens novels, there are some memorable characters. The character Barnaby Rudge is a young man with intellectual disabilities. Barnaby’s pet bird, a raven, can speak a few words and is always close by Barnaby. I particularly liked Gabriel Vardan, a locksmith, a brave man of principle.

Readers new to Dickens should begin with ‘Great Expectations’ or ‘A Christmas Carol.’

I can't understand why people think less of this book than other Dickens' because it is utterly fantastic. This man had a way with words and I enjoyed reading every one of them.

I have come to realise that I either absolutely love Dickens or hate his writing passionately. Barnaby Rudge unfortunately wasn't for me.

I’ve read this one twice before and always like it more than it deserves. It’s one of two historical novels by Dickens, a distinction many readers don’t make because all his novels have historical settings for us now. But A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Barnaby Rudge were both set before Dickens’ own time and dealt with a similar subject, mob rule: Barnaby Rudge with the No Popery riots of 1780 and A Tale of Two Cities with the French Revolution.
I say I like Barnaby Rudge “more than it deserves” because while the novel has a complex plot that’s not nearly as episodic as his previous novel (The Old Curiosity Shop, reviewed here in April of this year) it’s not as well-developed as later novels (Bleak House in particular). What’s brilliant about the novel is how Dickens follows the rioters, generally disaffected members of society who are ready enough to believe that they are “held back” because Catholics are doing the 18th century equivalent of “taking all the jobs”. Barnaby, raised by his mother and befriended by a talking raven, is described as an “idiot” and is clearly (if not consistently, especially if you consider his speech) somewhat simple. He’s been described by critics as derived from Wordsworth’s “Idiot Boy”, a child of nature who doesn’t understand the wicked world of men. His mother knows that his father killed a man just at the time of his birth and attributes Barnaby’s affliction to that event. She dedicates her life to his welfare.
But Barnaby is drawn into the riots on the side of Gordon’s No Popery bunch, not understanding the issues at all, but seeing himself as brave and true and fighting for a good cause. Dickens makes that believable as he makes the rioting and the violence believable. Clearly he understood crowd psychology and the manipulation of ideas. George Gordon might have come up with the ideas that spawned the riots, but it was his cohorts who used those ideas and used him to appeal to the disaffected.
There’s the usual compliment of interesting characters, among them a hangman who takes pride in his noble profession, the backbone of the English legal system in his view, and thinks he does the job so expertly that those who are hanged are grateful to him, but who joins the rioters, is caught himself and dragged kicking and screaming to be hanged himself, not at all grateful to the new hangman. There are a couple of pairs of crossed lovers who get together in the end and well as parents and children who are estranged and reunited.

Barnaby Rudge is an "idiot," according to his mother. In Dickens's time they labeled mental issues that way. It doesn't mean what it does today. Rudge, a kid in mind, and loved by his mother, likes to play games, war, and hangs with his only friend, a Raven named Grip. He gets involved in riots at the risk of execution, but he doesn't understand. Dickens describes it in a way that makes you worry, and fear an agonizing ending. The descriptions of violence shocked me in their descriptions, considering the time, and Dickens in comparison to the other works I have read.