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NOTES ON ISSUE 7: GLOSSARY
PART 2 OF 3
“…a jinte of meat or two…”
Jerry’s “jinte” of meat is a “joint” – “[o]ne of the portions into
which
a carcass is divided by the butcher, consisting of one or more bones
(e.g. that of the leg or shoulder) with the meat thereon; esp[ecially]
as cooked and served at table” (OED).
“When you go to Rome, do
as Rome does.”
This expression, used by Jerry to
insist that his wife behave as he does (he says, “I’m your Rome, you
know”), means that one ought to accept the rules or the mode of conduct
of one’s host. The phrase is attributed first to Saint Ambrose, who
advised Saint Augustine as follows: “Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito
more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi” (“When you are in Rome
live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live
elsewhere”). The saying exists not only in English, but also in French
(“À Rome comme à Rome”) and Spanish (“Cuando
a Roma fueras, haz como vieras” appears, for instance, in Don
Quixote) (Benham 869b).
“Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a
mother’s first duty is to blow her boy out?”
Mrs. Cruncher’s duty, according to her husband – the duty of “blow[ing]
her boy out” – is to feed young Jerry. The expression, however, may be
anachronistic. A “blow-out” was a slang term, beginning in the 19th
century, for “a feast or a feed” (OED); thus, Mr. Cruncher
seems to be using an expression that would not yet be current in 1781
(Maxwell 458).
He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again,
for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
The Crunchers apparently live in a lodging-house, where rooms could be
rented for specified intervals by anyone with sufficient means and
inclination; the door would be left open to accommodate those who chose
to come home at odd hours. The Dictionary of Daily Wants
(1859) gives this account of
LODGERS AND LODGINGS. – … If
lodgings are taken for a certain and specified time, no notice to quit
is necessary. If the lodger, however, continues after the expiration of
the term, he becomes a regular lodger, unless there is an agreement to
the contrary. If he owes rent, the housekeeper can detain his goods
whilst on the premises, or distrain, as a landlord may distrain the
goods of a tenant. No distinction exists between lodgers and other
tenants as to the payment of their rent, or the turning them out of
possession; they are also similarly circumstanced, with regard to
distress for rent, as householders. The rent of weekly tenants should
be paid weekly, for if it is once allowed to run to a quarter, the
tenant
cannot be forced to quit without a quarter’s notice…. Furnished
lodgings are usually let by the week, on payment of a fixed sum,
part of which is considered as rent for the apartment, and part for the
use of the furniture…. Persons renting furnished apartments frequently
absent themselves, without apprising the housekeeper, perhaps with the
rent in arrear. If there is probable reason to believe that the lodger
be left, on the second week of such absence the householder may send
for a police constable, and, in his presence, enter the lodger’s
apartments, and take out the property of the latter, and secure it
until application is made for it. He may then enter upon the possession
of the apartment; and if, after fourteen days’ notice given by
advertisements in the London Gazette, the lodger does not pay
the arrears of rent, the householder may sell the property to satisfy
his claim, reserving any surplus money, and such goods as it may not be
necessary to sell, and must keep them ready for delivery to the lodger
when he shall demand them. (646)
These remarks illustrate the extent to
which a lodging house is composed of tenants who report to no one but
themselves, and come and go at their own convenience.
The honoured parent steering Northward, had not
gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and
the two trudged on together.
Since Mr. Cruncher goes “fishing,” it is appropriate that he should be
joined by “another disciple of Izaak Walton”: Izaak Walton (1593-1683)
wrote an early fishing manual known as The Compleat Angler, or, The Contemplative Man’s
Recreation: Being a Discourse of Fish and Fishing for the Perusal of
Anglers (1653).
Within half an hour from
the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more
than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road.
Starting from Hanging-sword Alley (the location of the Cruncher
residence), which lies just south of Fleet Street, half an hour’s swift
walk would take Jerry to the “lonely” stretches of Highgate Road above
the built-up part of London. The “more than winking watchmen” whom he
passes were nearly proverbial in 18th-century London. Before the
Metropolitan Police Act of 1829, watchmen were appointed by each city
ward; but since these posts tended to go to the oldest and most infirm
men available, and since these men “were not obliged to pursue
criminals beyond the boundaries of a particular ward,” they were
“notorious for their inadequacy” (Sanders 106).
He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen
was running after him [and was] … fearful of its coming hopping out …
like a dropsical boy’s-kite without tail and wings.
The coffin which young Jerry imagines to be in pursuit of him looks, in
his imagination, like a kite swollen to the point of
three-dimensionality. A “dropsy” is a “morbid condition characterized
by the accumulation of watery fluid in the serous cavities or the
connective tissue of the body” (OED) – a swelling – and is
described by the Dictionary of Daily Wants (1859) as follows:
DROPSY.
– Dropsies, though generally regarded as special diseases, are in fact
only affections consequent on some organic disease or state of high
functional derangement, either of an inflammatory or febrile character;
such as disease of the kidneys, liver, or intestines, or from scarlet
fever, or it may result from debility; the immediate cause appearing to
reside in some pressure on the veins and absorbents. The general
symptoms of the dropsy are, loss of appetite, red tongue, dry skin,
difficulty of breathing, cough, checked secretions, and either general
or partial swelling, which on being pressed leaves pits in the cuticle;
besides which there is much thirst and the skin is of an unnaturally
pale colour. The treatment of the dropsy must depend upon the organ and
the form of disease that has given rise to the dropsy, the two chief
objects to be aimed at being first to equalize the circulation, and
next to promote the absorption of the effused serum. (387)
 A dropsical kite would be a sick
one indeed; and it would begin – swollen and missing its
tail – to resemble a coffin. Compare this illustration
of a kite (taken from instructions for making paper kites in
the Dictionary of Daily Wants [1859]) with this illustration
(below) of the coffin which pursues young Jerry (from the first
American edition of A Tale of Two Cities).
…on the wital subject of business?”
“Wital” is Mr. Cruncher’s pronunciation of
“vital.”
“You have no more nat’ral sense of duty
than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly
it must be knocked into you.”
A pile is a beam, driven vertically into a riverbed or other
marshy or unstable tract of land for the support of some structure
above it – a pier, a bridge, a house, etc. (OED).
Living in Hanging-sword Alley, which lies between Fleet Street
and “this here Thames river,” Mr. Cruncher does
not have to go far for his comparison.
“Father, … What’s a Resurrection-Man?”
A “resurrectionist” or “resurrection man”
was an “exhumer or stealer of corpses” (OED);
the corpses were mostly sold to medical practitioners as cadavers
for dissection. An Act of 1540 had allowed only four cadavers
a year (of executed criminals) to the Company of Barber Surgeons,
which meant that medical schools were woefully under-stocked
(“barbers” originally included surgeons and dentists;
the Company of Barber-surgeons was incorporated by Edward IV
in 1461, afterwards to be known as the Company of Barber
Surgeons [OED]). The result was the rise of “resurrection
men,” who furnished cadavers illegally. “Resurrection”
reached epidemic proportions in the late 18th century, and continued
well into the 19th. In 1828, however, a Select Committee of
Parliament acknowledged the severity of the problem, and in
1832, the Anatomy Act ensured a sufficient supply of cadavers
to doctors and medical students (Sanders 37).
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