Chapter 2
THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house
in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings
was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all their
friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new,
their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were
new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were
as newly married as was lawfully compatible with their having a
bran-new baby, and if they had set up a great-grandfather, he
would have come home in matting from the Pantechnicon, without
a scratch upon him, French polished to the crown of his head.
For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the
new coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and
upstairs again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of
high varnish and polish. And what was observable in the
furniture, was observable in the Veneerings–the surface smelt a
little too much of the workshop and was a trifle sticky.
There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon
easy castors and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street,
Saint James’s, when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a
source of blind confusion. The name of this article was Twemlow.
Q). I saw in an earlier blog you wrote about Dickens’s use of repetition, very evident here- could you comment on it as a comic device? (M. Wrigley)
Dickens loves rhythm in his writing and the ‘beat’ of the extract emulates the expression of wide-eyed, open-mouthed wonder at the Veneering’s newness, an expression we suspect, originates in the ‘innocent piece of furniture’ who goes by the name of ‘Twemlow.’ There is something wonderful( in every sense )in the Veneering’s dedication to the new. Their selfhood depends on their ostentation which is compulsive and therefore communicated via repetition. They are the original, ‘shiny, happy people ‘ of the REM song. Depth is out of the question. Earnestness is dull. They represent pure (and impure) ostentation. The gaze of others must always be upon them as their value is calculated in their external appearance; their performance of wealth and success. The repetition suggests the showy gestures of the Veneerings. Here and here and here. As we read, we are hypnotised, like Twemlow into some trance. ‘New’ has become pathological, an existential necessity that is repeated as an obsession.
All is without any history, and therefore desirable which hints at their moral corruption. Life is now a verbal performance. Aspiration has become an illness.
I love the way that the newness of the Veneering world nearly falls into the Victorian moral cul de sac of illegitimacy. It reads as if their zeal for the new almost casts them out of Victorian respectability, but not quite. Luckily the ‘bran-new baby’ is rendered respectable through a just- in- time marriage which adds to the humour and underlines how contrived and orchestrated, everything about the Veneerings actually is! Their unnaturalness is ironically celebrated at every turn. Little wonder poor Twemlow is bemused!
Q). The name Veneerings has an exuberantly comic blatancy, yet they’re not only cartoons – Please discuss something you mentioned to me, how Dickens still anchors the caricature to the real world. (M. Wrigley)
It would be easy to consign the Veneerings to cartoons. But they are all too familiar, too much like our colleagues, neighbours and even relatives! Their artificiality is comic because it is so human and fallible. The exuberant celebration of their material success is replicated today in advertising, social media and the work-place. Their gusto is infectious. There is a palpable relief in this world that the darkness of the opening chapter, with its near allegorical fascination with mortality, is now contrasted so brilliantly with a couple whose only interest seems to be shopping. The shadowy world of the River has been replaced by the glittering, self-referential world of the Veneerings whose need to draw attention to their newness, suggests their moral emptiness. They are literal and metaphorical exhibitionists.
Beneath the ‘sticky’ surface of the Veneerings is nothing. They are hollow men. (T.S.Eliot) They are obsessed with the acquisition of the material, so when we reflect again upon Gaffer’s fishing for the dead in the opening chapter, we may conclude that the chapters are actually ironic mirrors of one another, after all. And the tenderness between Gaffer and his daughter Lizzie, whilst fraught with the anxiety of poverty seems far more enduring and emotionally sustaining than the existential performance of the Veneerings where nothingness reigns.
Human self-hood is often performative -as Dickens knew very well!
