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"Will you come?" "I!" said the Lord Mayor most emphatically. "Certainly not."
Fred Barnard
1874
5 7⁄16 x 3 11⁄16 inches (13.8 cm by 9.4 cm), framed
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, Vol. VII of the Household Edition, Chapter LXI, 237.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"Oh Lord ha’ mercy!" whimpered the old gentleman, as he wiped his forehead in a state of ludicrous distress, ‘to think of sending an alderman to awe a crowd! Why, my lord, if they were even so many babies, fed on mother’s milk, what do you think they’d care for an alderman! Will you come?"
"I!" said the Lord Mayor, most emphatically: "Certainly not."
"Then what," returned the old gentleman, "what am I to do? Am I a citizen of England? Am I to have the benefit of the laws? Am I to have any return for the King’s taxes?"
"I don’t know, I am sure," said the Lord Mayor; "what a pity it is you’re a Catholic! Why couldn’t you be a Protestant, and then you wouldn’t have got yourself into such a mess? I’m sure I don’t know what’s to be done. — There are great people at the bottom of these riots. — Oh dear me, what a thing it is to be a public character! — You must look in again in the course of the day. — Would a javelin-man do? — Or there’s Philips the constable, — he's disengaged, — he’s not very old for a man at his time of life, except in his legs, and if you put him up at a window he’d look quite young by candle-light, and might frighten ‘em very much. — Oh dear! — well! — we’ll see about it."
"Stop!" cried Mr. Haredale, pressing the door open as the porter strove to shut it, and speaking rapidly, "My Lord Mayor, I beg you not to go away. I have a man here, who committed a murder eight-and-twenty years ago. Half-a-dozen words from me, on oath, will justify you in committing him to prison for re-examination. I only seek, just now, to have him consigned to a place of safety. The least delay may involve his being rescued by the rioters." [Chapter LXI, 236]
Geoffrey Haredale assisted by Solomon Daisey as his coachman have brought their prisoner from Chigwell to London to stand trial for the twenty-eight-year-old murders of Reuben Haredale and his steward. But the prospect of confronting or even crossing the rioters has so daunted the Lord Mayor that he is refusing to offer assistance to such substantial Catholics as the Master of the Warren or Mr. Langdale, vintner and distiller of Holborn Hill, who have petitioned him for aid. The aristocrat wants a prisoner arraigned; the merchant wants protection for his home and business. Fortunately after the porter has shut him and Langdale out, Hardeale has another more reliable public official to whom he may appeal, Sir John Fielding, the blind police magistrate of Bow Street, who does not hesitate to consign Old Rudge to Newgate.
The present scene occurs in the foyer of Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of London. The municipal politician, in dressing-gown and nightcap, refuses to come down the staircase to deal with the requests of the aristocrat Haredale (left) and the bourgeois Langdale because both are Catholics. The presence of the illustration in this chapter merely serves to underscore Dickens's political satire of public officials who were afraid the mobs supporting Gordon's call for "No Popery!"
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz and George Cattermole. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841.
_______. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
________. Barnaby Rudge — A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. VII.
________. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XIV. Barnaby Rudge." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. 213-55.
Created 20 August 2020
Last modified 4 October 2020