Kieran.Stories

At the time of writing, I am on my way back from seeing a friend in Worcester. I was supposed to be staying over, but I suddenly needed to get home. I feel quite embarrassed about it. My breathing became uneven. I felt unsteady on my feet, in the house. On the train, I can point to lots of feelings, but nothing to explain why I reacted like that. I have a challenging connection to make at Crewe. As an odious man once said, ‘Them’s the breaks.’ Throughout June, I have been reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. It has provided an escape but not necessarily a healthy one. It was easy losing track of my own problems and anxieties in a book as large and complex as this one. I won’t be getting back to Preston until close to midnight. I have my floppy Wordsworth Classics edition of Our Mutual Friend, and I have been making notes in purple ballpoint pen.

Why Our Mutual Friend? This is part of my continuing journey with Dickens. Over a year ago, I listened to Robin Allender’s conversation with musician Sam Amidon about the book on The Allender Calendar. That really set the spark alight. I also wanted to dedicate a whole month to one book. My big reading project this time last year was The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, and this seemed like a similar challenge. To start at the very beginning: what does the title mean? Our mutual friend is John Harmon. He is referred to as our mutual friend by Mr Boffin, although Mr Boffin at this point does not know that his secretary is Harmon, or maybe he does; we cannot be totally sure. On a more symbolic level, our mutual friend is Money. You could just as strongly make the case for Death. Love is a strong contender. Love triumphs over cynicism in this novel, as it does in Great Expectations (eventually). It is also a very funny book. In a way I think Dickens’ greatest talent was accumulation. It is difficult to get across what Our Mutual Friend feels like, other than saying, panoramic – but even panoramic misses the mark, because the story strands have a claustrophobic feel, too. Instead of trying to summarise and scrutinise every plot, nefarious scheme, and love story in Our Mutual Friend, I would like to discuss some of my favourite ideas and moments in the book. The page numbers refer to the 1997 Wordsworth Classics edition which features illustrations by Marcus Stone. The George Lucas meme was all me, baby!

Let us start with Podsnappery. Podsnap appears infrequently in Our Mutual Friend, but he has a huge impact on how we view this world. He is the Best Supporting Actor winner with two minutes of screen time. The chapter ‘Podsnappery’ is an incredible piece of invective against closed-mindedness. The opening paragraph is Dickens at his direct best:

Mr Podsnap was well-to-do, and stood very high in Mr Podsnap’s opinion. Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself. (pp. 120)

Dickens captures in one chapter a particular crabbed English mindset. You could read Our Mutual Friend as a treatise against carelessness. Podsnap is supremely careless. He refuses to believe in suffering. These people do not exist in his universe, which is the one true universe. And if these unfortunates are suffering across London, it is their own fault. ‘He finished with that flourish of his arm which added more expressively than any words, And I remove it from the face of the earth.’ (pp. 133). It goes without saying, this all feels very contemporary.

In Podsnap’s world, the Voice of Society is safe. It is up to the nobler, more thoughtful characters in the novel to challenge and dismantle the Voice. They could never succeed, but they must stand against it. This is the point, I think, of the last chapter of the novel, in which Twemlow, one of the most intriguing characters in the book, challenges Podnap and his other false friends as they discuss, carelessly, the recent marriage between Lizzie Hexam and Eugene Wrayburn. Wrayburn has married beneath his station. In the first chapter, Lizzie trawls the Thames with her father. The Hexams search for dead bodies to pickpocket and cart to the police. Wrayburn has a rich father (My Respected Father) and is a sort of lawyer searching lackadaisically for meaning. The Voice of Society takes potshots. Twemlow, who up to this point has played a ‘passive part’ in proceedings, bravely defends the couple:

“A gentleman can have no feelings who contracts such a marriage,” flushes Podsnap.

“Pardon me, sir,” says Twemlow, rather less mildly than usual, “I don’t agree with you. If this gentleman’s feelings of gratitude, of respect, of admiration, and affection, induced him (as I presume they did) to marry this lady-”

“This lady!” echoes Podsnap.

“Sir,” returns Twemlow with his wristbands bristling a little, “you repeat the word; I repeat the word. This lady. What else would you call her, if the gentleman were present?”

This being something in the nature of a poser for Podsnap, he merely waves it away with a speechless wave. (pp. 775)

This is what I mean by Dickens accumulates. The world is so heavy at this point. ‘Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and take up as much room as possible.’ (pp. 123). The Voice of Society is overpowering. So, Twemlow fighting back, even in this small way, feels absolutely revelatory.

The membrane between life and death is thin in Our Mutual Friend. That old chestnut! One exceptional person, the person of the house, uses this to her advantage. Jenny Wren, real name Fanny Cleaver (this is also a novel about doubles), is introduced at the start of Book Two. She changes the whole feel of Our Mutual Friend. Podsnap stands for the world and all its horrible solidity. Jenny Wren is also in the world, picking up the pieces of her alcoholic father (her poor child), but she also cuts through the Voice and undermines it. She reminded me of a character like Jaques in As You Like It. She elevates the book and in particular Lizzie Hexam’s story.

The most striking Jenny Wren moment happens above us all. We have been following cruel and calculating Fledgeby, and unexpectedly happen upon Jenny Wren and Lizzie on the rooftops, looking over London in the nighttime. This dialogue around stepping into death is ever more powerful because by this point we have seen charaters not only die but skirt with death. Like Jaques’ famous ‘All the world’s a stage…’ this feels like Jenny Wren inviting the reader to think about what they have experienced so far, and what might be down the track:

‘We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,’ said Jenny. ‘You see, you don’t know what the rest of this place is to us; does he, Lizzie? It’s the quiet, it’s the air.’

‘The quiet!’ repeated Fledgeby, with a contemptuous turn of his head towards the City’s roar. ‘And the air!’ with a ‘Poof!’ at the smoke.

‘Ah!’ said Jenny. ‘But it’s so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky from which the wind comes, and you feel as if you were dead.’

The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight transparent hand.

‘How do you feel when you are dead?’ asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.

‘Oh, so tranquil!’ cried the little creature, smiling. ‘Oh, so peaceful and so thankful. And you hear the people who are alive crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the close dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you… But you are not dead, you know,’ said Jenny Wren. ‘Get down to life!… Don’t be long gone. Come back, and be dead!’ And still as they went down they heard the little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half singing, ‘Come back and be dead, Come back and be dead.’ (pp. 264/265.)

At its heart Our Mutual Friend is two love stories: Bella and John, and Lizzie and Eugene. It is the story of how those two relationships develop and inform each other. There is a fairy tale quality to the Bella and John romance, which hinges on a hidden identity, a prize in the form of an inheritance (which is, brilliantly, as well as money, massive piles of rubbish, otherwise known as Dust), and a Cinderella-esque twist at the very end. The book is peppered with references to fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Jenny Wren refers to the character Mr Riah as her Fairy Godmother. When she is tricked into thinking he has been unjust, he transforms into a wolf. The Bella and John romance is like a moral lesson. It doesn’t exactly set the heart a-racing. But without their story, the plot would sort of disolve, like a Solero with no stick. Although Soleros sometimes fall apart when it’s hot, even with a stick (trust!). Our Mutual Friend, in a sometimes interesting way, feels like a novel on the brink of collapse. Its horrid solidity, but also its looseness, and its wonderous proficiency of style. The weight of its technique is almost too much to bear. This potential collapse is nearest when Dickens tries to remind us of the plot. Wrayburn seems to sum all this up on page 390 during one of several party sequences:

I’ll tell you a story

Of Jack a Manory,

And now my story’s begun;

I’ll tell you another

Of Jack and his brother,

And now my story is done.

Probably, for me, Our Mutual Friend is a novel of brilliant set pieces surrounded by lots of plots that are ultimately worthwhile because they serve these moments. My favourite Dickens’ chapters, like ‘Podsnappery’, read like short stories. Some of these moments happen ‘off page’. For example, there is something extremely evocative to me about Wrayburn seeing Lizzie Hexam in her house, without her knowing, just after her father’s death, also without her knowing that her father has in fact met a watery end. Wrayburn sees it as an invasion of not only her privacy but her interiority, and it is difficult to disagree with him. But they fall in love, and their love, compared to the sort of cartoonish love of Mr and Mrs Boffin, or the fairy tale moralistic love of Bella and John, feels genuine, feels messy and ill-advised. But it sets the heart a-racing. (Also, and this is a whole other post, but Bradley Headstone prefigures Jack the Ripper in a fascinating, terrifying way – just a thought.)

I am conscious that I have not given a plot summary at all, really. If this post has intrigued you and you want to know the actual, you know, set up in Our Mutual Friend, I would recommend Katie Lumsden’s video from about ten years ago, which I have linked below. Her description of the plot is excellent, and her enthusiasm for the book is off the scale. Right, final thoughts…

So, now it’s done, what does Our Mutual Friend mean to me? It’s been a week since I read the final chapter, and it’s been difficult letting go, genuinely. Not necessarily emotionally, but formally – the books I have picked up this week have all felt that bit thinner. In a way, I’m ready for some distance between my brain and Charles Dickens. When Our Mutual Friend was at its best, reading it was like existing in another world. I might have chosen it at the right time, or not. I bought my Penguin copy in Worcester at the end of 2025. I read the first chapter, for the first time, in the first floor cafe of St Richard’s Hospice Shop. I started the book proper when I bought the Wordsworth Classics edition in Brian House, at home. I had a nosebleed when I met the Wilfers for the first time in a cafe in Piccadilly. When I visited Worcester in June, St Richard’s was closed for refurbishment. It was disorienting because I had pictured returning to this amazing bookshop so often. Our Mutual Friend stands for quite a confusing period when all my imaginary interlocutors were out of lock; if that isn’t too grandiose. I don’t think it’s too much to say that it has changed my way of thinking for the last four to five weeks.

Anyway, remember, friends: as John said to Bella, No one is useless in this world.