NOTES ON ISSUE 1: ALLUSIONS
But, though the bank was almost always with him…
This phrase – that the bank was “almost always with” Mr. Lorry – echoes
a sonnet of Wordsworth’s published in 1807:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
In both countries, it was clearer than crystal to the lords
of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled
for ever.
The phrase “clearer than crystal” is usually identified
(Sanders, Maxwell) as an allusion to Revelations 21:11. In this passage, the
vision of Jerusalem descending from Heaven is described: the city has “the glory
of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper
stone, clear as crystal.” The “loaves and fishes,” on the other hand, refers to
the miracle performed by Christ in Matthew 14:17-21 – the multiplication of
loaves and fishes to feed the faithful:
But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart [back to the village for food]; give ye them to eat. And they said unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they all did eat, and were filled: and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Dickens’ allusion to this miracle is highly ironic, as his
“lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes” are the French and English
aristocrats for whom hunting is a leisure sport (Sanders 24). The “loaves and
fishes” of aristocratic game reserves were kept for entertainment, not
nourishment, and the “preserves” preserve the game from distribution to the
hungrier classes. In short, Dickens’ loaves and fishes are not used to feed a
multitude, but to entertain an unhungry few. It is also worth noting that
Carlyle – whose history of The French Revolution was one of Dickens’
chief historical sources – associates the first flight of the French nobles at
the stirrings of Revolution with the flight of their game: “On the Cliffs of
Dover [Dover is on the English coast opposite France], over all the Marches of
France, there appear, this autumn, two signs on the Earth: emigrant flights of
French Seigneurs; emigrant winged flights of French Game! Finished, one may say,
or as good as finished, is the Preservation of Game on this Earth…” (Carlyle
195). Earlier in The French Revolution, Carlyle describes these French
aristocrats as having “preserved Game not wisely but too well” (192). Invoking
Othello (who “loved not wisely but too well” and killed the object of that
love), the line emphasizes the self-defeating nature of those
preserves.
…his oath on the two Testaments…
The “two
Testaments” of course refer to the two major parts of the Bible, which consists
of the Old Testament (the Hebrew portion, containing “the books of the old or
Mosaic law” [Oxford English Dictionary]) and the New Testament (the
Greek portion, containing the “new or Christian covenant” [OED] – the
gospels of Christ).