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The Geometry of the Modern City: G. W. M. Reynolds and The Mysteries of London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Anne Humpherys
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Extract

In Book vii of The Prelude Wordsworth chronicles the months he lived in London and concludes with two images for the modern city. Following his feeling that “The face of every one / That passes by me is a mystery,” he sees a blind beggar with his life's history on a card around his neck; this is followed by the spectacle of Bartholomew's Fair. The poet's response to these experiences of urban mystery and multitudinousness is well-known:

O Blank confusion! true epitome

Of what the mighty City is herself

To thousands upon thousands of her sons

Living amid the same perpetual whirl

Of trivial objects, melted and reduced

To one identity, by differences

That have no law, no meaning, and no end -

(Book VII, 11. 722–28)

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 11 , Spring 1983 , pp. 69 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

1. Two biographical sketches of Reynolds have been published: Bleiler, E. F., “Introduction” to the Dover reprint of Reynolds's novel Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (New York: Dover, 1975), pp. vii–xviiiGoogle Scholar, and James, Louis and Saville, John, “G. W. M. Reynolds” in the Dictionary of Labour Biography (London: Macmillan, 1976), 111, 146–51Google Scholar. Bleiler's volume also includes a thorough bibliography of Reynolds's works on pp. 153–60.

2. Bookseller (07 1868), p. 447; (07 1879), p. 660.Google Scholar

3. Bleiler, , p. xvii.Google Scholar

4. James, and Saville, , p. 149.Google Scholar

5. See James, Louis, “The View from Brick Lane: Contrasting Perspectives in Working-class and Middle-class Fiction of the Early Victorian Period,” The Yearbook of English Studies (1980)Google Scholar for a short discussion of the sources and influence of The Mysteries of London, pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

6. James, Louis, English Popular Literature 1819–1851 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 80.Google Scholar

7. Reynolds, G. W. M., The Mysteries of London, 1st Ser., 2 vols. (London: John Dicks, 185?), 1, 1–2Google Scholar. Further references will be made parenthetically in the text.

8. Maxwell, Richard C. in “G. W. M. Reynolds, Dickens, and the Mysteries of London,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 32 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Greenwood (Eugene) is a new kind of middle-class villain (pp. 192–93). Eugene is an interestingly ambiguous figure; if the independent villainy of the middle class exists anywhere in the novel, it is with him. Still he is ultimately as much a victim of upper-class treachery as is his brother.

9. Bleiler, , p. xv.Google Scholar

10. James, , “View from Brick Lane,” p. 100.Google Scholar

11. In volume 11, Reynolds expresses the call to peaceful revolution most forcefully: “Yes! Most solemnly do I proclaim to you, O suffering millions of these islands, that ye shall not always languish beneath the yoke of your oppressors! Individually ye shall each see the day when your tyrant shall crouch at your feet; and as a mass ye shall triumph over that proud oligarchy which now grinds you to the dust!

“That day – that day cannot be far distant; and then shall ye rise – not to wreak a savage vengeance on those who have so long coerced you, but to prove to them that ye know how to exercise a mercy which they never manifested towards you; – ye shall rise, not to convulse the State with a disastrous civil war, nor to hurry the nation on to the deplorable catastrophe of social anarchy, confusion, and bloodshed, – but ye shall rise to vindicate usurped rights, and to recover delegated and misused power, that ye may triumphantly assert the aristocracy of mind, and the aristocracy of virtue!” (11, 238).

12. Cawelti, John C., Adenture, Mystery, and Romance: Formulaic Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 261.Google Scholar

13. I am grateful to my colleague Gerhard Joseph for pointing out this final “contrast” to me.