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NOTES ON ISSUE 5: ALLUSIONS
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...his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest
of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms
without.
The “holy of holies,” or “most holy place,” refers to “the inner
chamber of the sanctuary in the Jewish tabernacle and temple, separated
by a veil from the outer chamber or ‘holy place’” (Oxford English
Dictionary). Found in Exodus 26:34 (“And thou shalt put the mercy
seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place”), the phrase
was originally composed in Hebrew; the Latin Vulgate bible translates
the phrase “sanctum sanctorum,” which becomes “holy of holies”
in English.
The text of his order (altered from the original by
only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: “The earth and the fullness
thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.”
The biblical passage modified by Monseigneur is found in Psalms 24:1
and 1 Corinthians 10:26: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness
thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” The pronoun “altered
from the original” in Dickens’ version is “Monseigneur,” which takes
the place of “Lord.” However, since “Monseigneur” means “my Lord” in
French, Dickens’ substitution points out the pun between the biblical
address (“my Lord” as a reference to the Lord God) and the feudal one
(“my Lord” as a reference to an aristocrat or a superior) (Sanders 81).
Which the Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate
cane with a golden apple on the top of it…
The golden apple on the Farmer-General’s cane may invoke stories about
golden apples from mythology. The most famous of the mythological
apples are the “apple of discord” (responsible for the Trojan War) and
the apples of the Hesperides (which Hercules stole to discharge his
eleventh labor).
In Roman mythology, the apple of
discord was thrown into the assembly of the gods by Eris (the goddess
of discord), labeled “for the fairest.” A dispute arose between Juno,
Minerva, and Venus (called Hera, Athena and Aphrodite in Greek
mythology), each of whom believed that the apple was intended for
herself; Paris, a Trojan, was summoned to decide the question and
awarded the apple to Venus. In return, he received the most beautiful
woman in the world, Helen, whose kidnapping initiated the Trojan War.
The apples of the Hesperides were the
golden apples – originally a wedding present to Jupiter (or Zeus) –
guarded by a group of nymphs called the Hesperides (Aegle, Erythia,
Hesperia, and Arethusa) and “an immortal dragon with a hundred heads”
(Apollodorus 221). In some accounts, Hercules, sent to steal three of
the apples, slew the dragon and collected the apples himself; in
others, he was told to appeal to Atlas to fetch the apples for him –
which Atlas did on the condition that Hercules would hold up the sky in
the
meantime. Returning with the apples, Atlas proposed that he himself
deliver them; but Hercules, agreeing to do so if Atlas would hold up
the sky until he had put a pad on his head, tricked Atlas into resuming
his burden and made off with the apples himself (Apollodorus 231-3).
The golden apple on the Farmer-General’s cane is “appropriate” partly
in a punning sense: The Farmer-General, being the official responsible
for “farming” (collecting) the taxes of a particular district in France
(OED), is not a farmer in the agricultural sense. Rather, he
collects a kind of monetary produce aptly represented by a golden
apple. Further, either of the golden apples of mythology – the apple of
discord or the apples stolen from the Hesperides – make the golden
apple on the Farmer-General’s cane even more “appropriate.” Invoking
contention (à la the
apple of discord) or theft (à
la the apples of the Hesperides), the golden apple on the
Farmer-General’s cane suggests transgression – especially the official
transgression of unfair taxation (which figured among the causes of the
French Revolution).
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as
if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down
stairs.
This appears to be an allusion to Matthew 10:14, in which Christ says,
“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye
depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.”
Monsieur the Marquis shakes the snuff from his fingers – like the dust
from his feet – as a way of casting off the rebuff he has apparently
had from Monseigneur.
Heralded … by the cracking of his postilions’
whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as
if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his
traveling carriage at the posting-house gate.
The Furies are avenging goddesses in Classical mythology, usually
represented with “snakes twined in their hair, sent from Tartarus to
avenge wrong and punish crime” (OED). In some accounts, there
are three Furies, identified as Tisiphone, Megæra, and Alecto.
The Marquis’ postilions resemble the Furies because their whips lash
above their heads like snakes.
A postilion is “[o]ne who rides the
near
horse of the leaders (or ... each of the riders of the near horses)
when four or more are used in a carriage or post-chaise; esp[ecially]
one who rides the near horse when one pair only is used and there is no
driver on the box” (OED). The “near” horse is, in a pair, the
horse to the left hand of the driver (if there is a driver), just as
the “near wheel” on a coach is on the left side; the horse on the right
side is the “off” horse. When four horses draw a carriage or coach, the
two left-side horses are the “near wheeler” and the “near leader”
respectively (Brewer, “Near Side and Off Side”).
…as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty,
ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away…
The impartially-falling rain alludes to Christ’s words in Matthew 5:45:
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust.”
What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting up of
Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away
of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was) at a gallop,
like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?
The “ballad of Leonora,” by the German Gottfried Augustus Bürger,
was written in the early 1770s. It was translated into English by
William Taylor in 1790, but appeared in five separate English
translations in 1796 – Taylor’s own Lenora: A Ballad from
Bürger, Walter Scott’s (anonymously published) William
and Helen, J.T. Stanley’s Leonora,
A Tale (with illustrations by William
Blake), and the poet laureate Henry James Pye’s Ellenore, A Ballad (with
illustrations by Lady Diana Beauclerk). It was thus popularly known in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The likeness of Monsieur
Gabelle’s escape to the ballad of Leonora has to do with his flight on
horseback. In the ballad, Leonora loses her sweetheart in the wars, and
wishes that she also were dead – whereupon her young man arrives to
bear her to her wedding-bed:
Let the winds whistle
o’er the waste [says her lover],
My duty bids me be in haste;
Quick, mount upon my
steed:
Let the winds whistle far and wide,
Ere morn, two hundred leagues we’ll ride,
To reach our marriage bed. (Stanley 6)
The wedding-bed, unfortunately, turns
out to be the grave:
Scarce had he spoke,
when, dire to tell,
His flesh like touchwood from him fell,
His eyes forsook his head.
A skull, and naked bones alone,
Supply the place of William gone,
‘Twas Death that clasp’d the maid. (12)
Monsieur Gabelle’s escape on a
“double-laden” galloping horse (double-laden because he springs up
behind a servant, as Leonora rides behind her lover) is rendered more
ominous by association with the German ballad. The question “What did
all this portend?” suggests that his flight will have a trajectory
similar to Leonora’s.
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