They Came from Bleak House

Veronica Shapovalov, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

While the literary sources for the French and German characters in the novel The Gambler by F. Dostoevsky have been studied to a considerable extent, Mr, Astley, the rich Englishman, who plays a prominent part in the development of the plot, still remains a mystery.(1) However, he is the clue to one of the literary sources of The Gambler.

Aleksei Ivanovich meets Mr. Astley for the first time in the railway carriage in Prussia; their next meeting occurs in Roulettenburg. Feeling sudden trust for Mr. Astley, Aleksei Ivanovich chooses him to be his confidant. He does it in spite of the fact that Mr. Astley, like Aleksei Ivanovich himself, is "hopelessly in love with Polina".(2) It turns out that Mr. Astley is well informed about the details of every character's life in the novel. From the questions of Aleksei Ivanovich it becomes clear that Polina turned to Mr. Astley for help and he plays the role of a protector and adviser to her. It is Mr. Astley that Polina runs to after Aleksei Ivanovich's fantastic win. Mr. Astley calls a doctor for Polina and then sends her to England where Polina stays with his mother and sister. A year and a half later when, on Polina's request, Mr. Astley comes to Homburg, he meets Aleksei Ivanovich there and offers him a thousand pounds on the condition that Aleksei Ivanovich quit gambling and start a new life. Moreover, it is clear that Mr. Astley is ready to sacrifice his own happiness for that of Polina and Aleksei Ivanovich. This is the role of the rich Englishman in the plot of the novel The Gambler.

There are two hypotheses for the possible sources of the name Astley. The name Astley is mentioned in Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray(3) and in the novel Ruth by E. Gaskell.(4) However, the name Astley is also mentioned in the novels of Dickens - in The Old Curiosity Shop (5) and in Bleak House. (6) Dickens, like Thackeray, wrote about the famous Astley Theatre in London. Mr. Astley, in The Gambler, is a rich bachelor and a partner in the Lovell and Company sugar refinery. The character of a beneficial rich bachelor also goes back to the novels of Dickens. In Dickens' novels, the rich bachelor does not actively take part in the adventures of the characters, but appears only in cases of extreme danger for the protagonists. Mr. Pickwick from The Pickwick Papers (7) , a novel well known to Dostoevsky, is the first in the line of beneficial bachelors. However, Mr. Pickwick is involved in the adventures and gets himself in trouble. In the later novels of Dickens, the rich bachelor figure stands apart from the active life of the characters. This character type appears as Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist (8) , the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby (9) , Master Humphrey in The Old Curiosity Shop and at last, Mr. Jarndyce in the Bleak House. (10)

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Mr. John Jarndyce is of special interest to our analysis of the Englishman Astley in The Gambler. John Jarndyce is the guardian of Esther Summerson, the main character in the novel. Esther constantly turns to him for help and advice. In The Gambler, Mr. Astley assumes the role of a guardian for Polina: Polina confides her fears to him about de Grieux; it is to him that she comes after the night in the hotel, and he repeatedly warns Aleksei Ivanovich against harming Polina in any way.

Mr. Jarndyce in Bleak House loves Esther and offers his heart to her. His feelings for Esther are so profound that when he learns about Esther's love for Alan Woodcourt, he sacrifices his personal happiness for the sake of Esther and Alan. Furthermore, he builds a new Bleak House and gives it to Esther. In The Gambler, Mr. Astley loves Polina to the extent that he is ready to sacrifice his happiness for her sake: at her request he goes to Homburg in search of Aleksei Ivanovich.

Mr. Astley, like Mr. Jarndyce in Bleak House is representative of an abstract goodness and, like Mr. Jarndyce, he has no illusions about the surrounding world. If, at the beginning of the novel, Aleksei Ivanovich sees Mademoiselle Blanche as a mysterious woman, for Astley there are no doubts about her real nature: he is well informed about her past. To Aleksei Ivanovich, de Grieux seems to be his happy rival who won Polina's heart, whereas Mr. Astley sees that the General's debt is the real reason of the relations between Polina and de Grieux.

Mr. Jarndyce is very sceptical, and especially so when he ponders upon the future:

Unreason and injustice in the heart and at the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end - if it ever has an end.(11)

Mr. Astley, in the The Gambler, is also very sceptical about the future that waits for Aleksei Ivanovich:

So far you've preferred being a flunkey to stealing... But I dread to think what may happen in the future.(12)

But the scepticism of Jarndyce and Astley does not prevent them from disinterestedly helping other people. Thus, Jarndyce opens an orphanage and a school in the Bleak House and Astley offers help to Aleksei Ivanovich.

The theme of "a new life" is very prominent in Bleak House. In Dickens' novel it is connected with the biblical Great Flood which destroys everything on the earth. It is not a coincidence that Esther gives a toy Noah's ark to little Pipi Jellyby. The title of chapter 65 of Bleak House is "Beginning the World", and it is Mr. Jarndyce who makes this beginning possible for all the characters of the novel. In The Gambler, the idea of "a new life" is connected with Mr. Astley: he insistently urges Aleksei Ivanovich to begin a new life, and he actually arranges a new life for Polina and the children of the General.

The mystery motif - very important in Bleak House - is only vaguely hinted at in The Gambler and it is Mr. Astley with whom this motif

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is connected. Aleksei Ivanovich calls him "a strange Englishman", though Mr. Astley's behavior does not justify this epithet. Mr. Astley always puts questions in a strange way and his knowledge of the characters in the novel implies the presence of a mystery or a secret that he knows. This theme, quite obvious at the beginning of the novel, does not get further development in the course of the novel. As the novel The Gambler was written in a very short period of time and was actually dictated to A.G. Snitkina, it is quite possible that the theme of mystery originally associated with the Englishman and Bleak House was forgotten and dropped by Dostoevsky in the process of dictating the novel.(13)

Another character in Bleak House finds its reflection in The Gambler. This is Grandfather Smallweed who, like Antonida Vasilievna Tarasevicheva, "la babulinka" in The Gambler, is paralyzed and carried in a chair. Both of them are old and both have a granddaughter. Both of them move around with great noise:

Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of the unusual company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group, at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day of the year but the fifth of November. It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers... the figure gasping "O, Lord! O, dear me! I am shaken!"(14)

Mr. Astley is the first who notices Antonida Vasilievna:

...now I can see where the shouting comes from,... it is that woman sitting in a large armchair who has just been carried inside by a crowd of attendants... "Aleksei Ivanovich! Aleksei Ivanovich! Good Lord, what a dolt he is!" I heard someone shout desperately from the hotel entrance.(15) They carried her upstairs, with me leading the way up the broad stairway of the hotel. Our procession was a most spectacular one.(16)

Grandmother is very short-tempered and in her irritability does not know any limits:

"And stop wagging your tongue! I know what I am doing." Grandmother was actually beginning to shake with excitement... "Monsieur! Monsieur!" she started nudging the croupier who was sitting to her left...(17)

Grandfather Smallweed also easily flies into a rage: he throws a pillow at his wife whenever she utters a word:

"Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man...(18) "If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding up his impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him now." And in a sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs. Smallweed.(19)

Mister Smallweed pushes people around him with no less energy

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than Grandmother:

"Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!" This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a thrust at his granddaughter, that it is too much for his strength, and he slips away out of his chair...(20)

Mister Smallweed is a moneylender; that is, he is the owner of money and property. Grandmother also owns money which her heirs want to get. Though their attitude toward money is at opposite poles - Grandfather Smallweed is stingy and saves money with the stubbornness of a madman and Grandmother without any regret loses ten thousand in roulette - the theme of money is at the base of both of the characters.

The character of a paralytic money owner in The Gambler could have been directly suggested to Dostoevsky by a review of Bleak House by K. Ushinsky. In the review published in Sovremennik in 1853, Ushinsky sharply criticized Dickens' "eccentrics, cranks, lunatics, some disfigured characters"(21) and compared them to literary characters" of those of our writers on whom Dickens had more noticeable influence".(22) The critic singled out "the disgusting paralytic Grandfather Smallweed" as a representative of the "strange society... a collection that goes out of all limits of reality."(23)

By "the writers on whom Dickens had more noticeable influence" Ushinsky obviously meant Dostoevsky since Dickens' influence on Dostoevsky had already been noted in Sovremennik by A. Druzhinin in his review of Netochka Nezvanova. (24) The review contains extensive comparisons of the characters of Domby and Son and Netochka Nezvanova. Moreover, Ushinsky directly points at Dostoevsky in his comparison of fantastic and grotesque literary characters with the portrait gallery of a noble family:

These long rows of forfathers' portraits are interesting only for a progeny; these novels are clear only to a writer. But when a progeny dies the portraits go to the flea-market; when a writer dies or becomes obsolete his works go the same way... Again, we should repeat that we do not want to accuse many of our young novelists for a lack of talent...25)

This is exactly the position of Dostoevsky in the opinion of the critics of Sovremennik. By 1853 he was in prison in Tobolsk and was considered an obsolete writer without any future.

Ushinsky's review of Bleak House shows that Dickens' novel was not immediately understood either by Russian critics or the reading public. Dickens' satire and use of the grotesque were most difficult and unacceptable to the majority of his Russian readers. The connection that exists between the characters of Bleak House and the characters of The Gambler and the refraction of Dickens' themes in Dostoevsky's novel shows that Dostoevsky was one of the first in Russia who understood and appreciated Bleak House.

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NOTES

1. See: V. Dorovatovskaia-Liubimova. Frantsuzskii burzhua. (Material k obrazam Dostoevskogo). - In: Literatumyi kritik, 9, 1936, pp. 202- 217; M. Al'tman. Inostrannye imena geroev Dostoevskogo. - In: Russkoe-evropeiskie literaturnye sviazi. Moskva, Nauka, 1966, pp. 18-26.
2. F. Dostoevsky. The Gambler. Translated by Victor Terras. University of Chicago. 1972, p.6.
3. M. Al'tman. Inostrannye imena geroev Dostoevskogo, p. 21.
4. G. Fridlender. Realizm Dostoevskogo. Moskva, Nauka, 1964, p. 203.
5. The Old Curiosity Shop was translated into Russian and published in Biblioteka dlia cheniia in 1843.
6. Bleak House was translated into Russian by V. Butuzov and published in Sovremennik in 1854. The same year Bleak House was translated by I. Birilev and published in Otechestvennye zapiski. In the translation of I. Birilev Bleak House was published as a separate book in 1855.
7. The Posthumous Papers of Pickwick Club was first translated in 1838. The novel was first published in Biblioteka dlia chteniia in 1840, then in Otechestvennye zapiski in 1849. As a separate book the novel was published in 1850.
8. The Adventures of Oliver Twist was published in Otechestvennye zapiski in 1841.
9. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Niakleby was published in Russian in Biblioteka dlia chteniia in 1840.
10. L. Grossman in Biblioteka Dostoevskogo points out that a copy of the French edition of 1871 of Bleak House was in F. Dostoevsky's library. (L. Grossman. Biblioteka Dostoevskogo. Odessa, 1919, p. 139 Several facts point to Dostoevsky's acquaintance with Bleak House long before 1871: Dickens' novels were among the few books F. Dostoevsky read during his penal servitude in Tobolsk. Bleak House was published in Sovremennik and Otechestvennye zapiski - the periodocals that F. Dostoevsky read at the time of his attempts to return to literary activity after the exile. In Otechestvennye zapiski in 1859, F. Dostoevsky published his novel Village Stepanchikovo. I. Katarsky assumes F. Dostoevsky's knowledge of Bleak House at the time of Dostoevsky's work on Village Stepanchikovo and even compares Mr. Chadband to Foma Opiskin. See: I. Katarskii. Dikkens v Rossii. Moskva, 1966, p. 383-384.
11. Ch. Dickens. Bleak House. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1957, p. 116.
12. F. Dostoevsky. The Gambler, p. 197.
13. This forgetfulness is very characteristic to F. Dostoevsky who often forgot the names of his characters. For example, in Crime and Punishment Marmeladov's landlady is called Amaliia Liudvigovna and Amaliia Karlovna.

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14. Ch. Dickens. Bleak House, p. 281.
15. F. Dostoevsky. The Gambler, p. 76-77.
16. F. Dostoevsky. The Gambler, p. 80.
17. F. Dostoevsky. The Gambler, p.
18. Ch. Dickens. Bleak House, p. 220.
19. Ch. Dickens. Bleak House, p. 229.
20. Ch. Dickens. Bleak House, p. 290.
21. Sovremennik. 1853, v. 42, 11, p. 67. The article in Sovremennik is not signed. It is attributed to K. Ushinskii and included in Arkhivy K.D. Ushinskogo. Moskva, 1962, v. 4, pp. 127-133.
22. Sovremennik, 1853, v. 42, 11, p. 68.
23. Sovremennik, 1853, v. 42, 11, p. 68.
24. A. Druzhinin. Pis'ma inogorodnego podpischika v redaktsiiu Sovremennika o russkoj zhurnalistike. (Pis'mo tret'e). - Sovremennik, 1849, v. 14.
25. Sovremennik, 1853, v. 42, 11, p. 69. See Also: I. Katarskii. Dikkens v Rossii, p. 209.