The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Chronicles #2 ｜ Charles Dickens： A Tale of Two Cities

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to this episode of Chronicles, where this time we're going to be talking

00:00:19.560 all about A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I figured it would be good to get

00:00:26.240 in early with some Dickens appreciation. So, Charles Dickens was born on February 7th, 1812 in

00:00:34.680 Portsmouth, and from the low fortune of his early life, with his father being sent to a debtor's

00:00:43.240 prison when Dickens was only a small child, to the renown and wealth that he received in his own

00:00:50.440 time. Dickens experienced both the impoverished lows and the celebrity status high society of the

00:00:57.840 Victorian era. And in experiencing both the best and worst of life's offerings, he became a man who

00:01:06.760 just understood people from all walks of life. He understood their hopes, their dreams, and their

00:01:13.240 plight. And his characters were so well realised, from the most misfortunate paupers such as Oliver 1.00

00:01:21.740 Twist, to the aristocratic exiles like Charles Darmy, who we'll be talking about more from this

00:01:28.540 current novel. And of course, his descriptions of London are so vivid, you can almost feel yourself

00:01:36.080 walking the streets through his pages. And in doing this, his works came to define the Victorian

00:01:44.180 era itself with the adjective of Dickensian. I had a quote that I just wanted to start off with

00:01:51.160 about Dickens himself. And it's from G.K. Chesterton, very, very famous writer, philosopher,

00:01:59.180 and critic. And he said, whatever the word great means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious

00:02:07.660 and unhappy who cannot read his books without a continuous critical exasperation would use the

00:02:14.980 word of him without stopping to think. They feel that Dickens is a great writer, even if he is not a

00:02:21.800 good writer. He is treated as a classic, that is, as a king who may now be deserted, but who cannot

00:02:28.860 now be dethroned. Amongst his many famous works, such as Great Expectations and, of course, A

00:02:37.940 Christmas Carol, it is A Tale of Two Cities, which was published back in 1859, that went on to become

00:02:47.040 one of his best-selling works. And it's sold, at present, over 200 million copies. And what's interesting

00:02:56.280 is that, of Dickens' 15 novels, only two of them are historical fiction, and this happens to be one

00:03:04.740 of them. And so, in A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens weaves these threads of fate and love and

00:03:16.240 redemption through the intertwined lives of these private citizens of London and Paris, but always

00:03:22.960 with this foreboding terror of the French Revolution, ever closer on the horizon as a year's countdown

00:03:29.900 to the event that the readers know is coming. And to study one of the most important events,

00:03:37.820 probably in all of human history, Dickens armed himself with one source above all others, which was

00:03:45.400 The French Revolution, a history by Thomas Carlyle. And Dickens walked London until he knew it as well

00:03:53.740 as it knew him. But his view of Paris at that moment of that disastrous epoch was very much informed by

00:04:02.900 Thomas Carlyle's authority on the subject. So, without further ado, let's go through A Tale of Two Cities.

00:04:15.400 It begins with one of the most famous openings in all of fiction.

00:04:20.380 It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness.

00:04:28.960 It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was a season of light. It was a season

00:04:36.380 of darkness. It was a spring of hope. It was a winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing

00:04:45.240 before us. We were all going direct to heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short,

00:04:53.000 the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted

00:04:59.320 on its being received, for good or for evil, in a superlative degree of comparison only.

00:05:06.380 With that famous opening, all told in a single, continuous sentence, the narrative begins

00:05:12.680 in 1775. A man journeys to the port of Dover, pondering the news he needs to impart. Recalled

00:05:21.160 to life. He is the ever-proper Mr. Jarvis Laurie, a man of business from Tellson's Bank. Inside

00:05:30.220 a tavern, he meets with a young woman of surpassing elegance and beauty, Miss Lucy Manette, who is

00:05:37.020 accompanied by her dependable governess, Miss Pross, who had raised Lucy ever since her mother's

00:05:43.220 passing sometime during her childhood. It is revealed to Lucy that her father, whom she has

00:05:49.340 never met, has for the past 18 years been jailed inside the Bastille prison in Paris. This comes

00:05:56.900 as a startling shock to the poor girl, as her mother had told her that he was dead.

00:06:02.800 This revelation sends Lucy into a swoon, but upon recovery, the three characters depart from

00:06:08.520 England and go to bring Lucy's father to safety.

00:06:12.500 The story then takes us to its second city, Paris, and we are introduced to Mr and Mrs Defarge,

00:06:21.220 the owners of a rustic wine shop, in the impoverished, working-class neighbourhood of Faber-Saint-Antoine.

00:06:28.120 When Lucy and her companions come to collect her father, they are taken to a locked room

00:06:33.780 above the wine cellar, where Mr Defarge has been keeping him since he was released from

00:06:39.320 the Bastille. Upon the opening of the door, a grave sight greets them, a once-respected physician,

00:06:47.120 reduced to a hobbled cobbler, with overgrown hair and every hallmark of deep trauma.

00:06:55.180 Slowly and with tender delicacy, Lucy is able to recall her father to life, and the repressed 1.00

00:07:01.660 memories of happiness begin to bring him to his senses. They return to England with Lucy's

00:07:07.740 father, but he is insistent that he takes his workbench with him so that he continue to make

00:07:13.980 his shoes.

00:07:18.880 We then catch up with our cast five years on, at the Old Bailey in London, where Mr Charles

00:07:25.020 Darnay stands accused of being a French spy. The American Revolution rises across the ocean,

00:07:32.140 and Britain can ill afford the French to undermine her efforts to maintain her colonies. But this

00:07:37.920 is a stick chop, by the machinations of Darnay's uncle, the Marquis d'Evermond, and his turncoat

00:07:44.960 lapdog, John Bassard. In the viewing gallery sits Lucy, accompanied by her now fully restored

00:07:52.580 father, Doctor Minette. Despite the Doctor's testimony, and the bombastic defence of the lawyer,

00:08:01.020 Mr Stryver, aptly named, it seems like the verdict will be guilty. That is until Stryver's

00:08:08.060 assistant, Mr Sidney Carlton, intercedes, remarking on the peculiar resemblance between himself

00:08:15.520 and the accused. Despite the dishevelled, drunken display from Sidney Carlton, his case casts

00:08:23.800 enough doubt on the jury as to whether or not they have the right man, that Charles Darnay is acquitted

00:08:29.800 and allowed to go free. Lucy is delighted, having met Darnay on the passage back across the channel,

00:08:35.720 where he was every bit the gentleman. His manners impeccable, his countenance noble,

00:08:41.080 and his virtues self-evident. You see, Darnay was born into the French aristocracy,

00:08:48.040 but he decides to become a private citizen and forgo his privileges to work an honest job in

00:08:54.600 England. His uncle is a distant, cold and tyrannical figure, embodying everything that will light the

00:09:02.360 powder keg of the French Revolution. And after a last frosty farewell between Darnay and his uncle,

00:09:08.920 the Marquis, the Marquis is murdered in his sleep, as a foreshadowing of the upheaval to come.

00:09:15.800 Another year passes, and Darnay approaches Dr. Minette about the prospects of marriage to his

00:09:22.200 beloved daughter Lucy. She is the most precious thing in both men's lives. Dr. Minette gives his

00:09:29.560 blessing, but tells Darnay that whatever the secrets of his past may be, they can wait until after the

00:09:36.280 wedding. By this time, Lucy has become one of the most desirable women in London, with Mr. Stryver

00:09:44.360 intending to propose, and even the drunken wastrel Sydney Carlton privately falling in love with her.

00:09:51.800 Carlton is a man whose life has always been full of potential in law and in love, a man that could be

00:10:00.360 Darnay if he only put down the bottle and tried. But he is who he is, and his love for Lucy is

00:10:07.960 unrequited. But in revealing his feelings to her, he makes a solemn promise.

00:10:14.040 For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of the better kind,

00:10:20.120 that there was an opportunity or capacity to have sacrificed in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for

00:10:26.600 you, and for those dear to you. Soon, the time comes for the wedding of Lucy and Charles. For the

00:10:33.880 wedded couple, it is a perfect day. But for Dr. Minette, who had finally heard from Charles the

00:10:40.920 truth of his Evermond heritage, it brings back the trauma of the Bastille. And while the newlyweds are

00:10:47.880 on their honeymoon, the doctor devolves into his broken, shoemaking submissiveness. After a

00:10:55.000 nerve-racking week for Miss Delory and Miss Pross, not knowing how or when Lucy's father will recover

00:11:01.880 his senses, he appears the next morning with no recollection of his strangeness. But it is agreed

00:11:09.400 that at a moment when he cannot notice, his workbench and shoemaking tools will be taken away from him

00:11:17.000 and discarded. Mr. Laurie handles all of this with such delicacy that Lucy, the daughter, is unaware

00:11:26.440 of her father's relapse.

00:11:31.480 Years pass. Lucy and Charles have a daughter, little Lucy, who grows up surrounded by the happiness and

00:11:38.680 health of her family and friends in the safety and peace of London. But in Paris, seismic events are

00:11:46.200 taking place. The Defarges and other Parisians revolt against the Ancien regime and storm the Bastille.

00:11:54.280 Society is quickly breaking down. The revolution continues to foment over the passing few years,

00:12:00.920 and the former servant of Charles Darnay's is put in jeopardy. Knowing the danger and the risk of losing

00:12:07.800 all that life has given him, Darnay, out of this sense of noblesse oblige, returns to revolutionary Paris to

00:12:15.240 save his former servant. But as a former aristocrat, the law forbids his return, though this law did

00:12:22.440 not exist when he set forth. And so now, in order to save Darnay's life, the vortex of anarchy at the

00:12:30.120 heart of the revolution pulls Lucy, her father and their friends towards Paris to save Charles's life.

00:12:37.000 The streets of Paris are thronged with mobs, and Madame Guillotine's razor of justice is measured by

00:12:43.880 bystanders to the number of pipe barrels they can smoke as she fills through the queue of accused. 1.00

00:12:50.760 All attend the trial of Charles Darnay. And this is a test of strength for Dr. Minnette,

00:12:57.160 as he stands before the mob and attempts to save the life of his son-in-law. Remarkably, against all odds,

00:13:04.040 Darnay is declared innocent, and all seems to have gone seamlessly well. But that same day, Darnay is

00:13:13.480 re-arrested, and another trial takes place. The architect of the sinister plot to kill Charles is

00:13:21.640 none other than Madame Defarge, the ever-knitting, ever-vengeful, ever-merculous woman whose life was 0.96

00:13:29.720 irrevocably ruined by the Evermond family, and Charles, blameless though he is, will be persecuted

00:13:36.840 for as long as it takes for Madame Defarge to see his head removed and all the joys of his life eradicated.

00:13:44.920 When the Bastille was stormed back in 1789, a letter was found hidden in Dr. Minnette's cell.

00:13:51.640 It is then read aloud for the tribunal and all the spectators to hear. In decades past, Dr. Minnette

00:13:59.960 had been brought urgently in the night to save a young woman's life. Her wounds are grave, and she is

00:14:06.440 clinging to life after suffering a vile rape at the hands of one of the Evermonds. Her brother lays in

00:14:14.840 the next room, having tried to rescue her, only to be mortally wounded. He beseeches a doctor to hear of

00:14:23.080 the peasantry's plight. We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by

00:14:30.840 those superior beings. Taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our 0.98

00:14:39.560 corn at the mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our own wretched crops, and forbidden for

00:14:47.000 our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own. Pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we

00:14:53.560 chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that

00:14:59.720 his people should not see it and take it from us. I say we were so robbed and hunted, and were made so

00:15:06.920 poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and what

00:15:12.600 we should most pray for, that our women might be barren, and our miserable race die out. After such 1.00

00:15:19.640 suffering, both a brother and sister die. And Dr Minette is threatened not to tell of what happened

00:15:28.120 by the Marquis, but the doctor's conscience will not allow it, and in his attempt to report the Evermonds'

00:15:34.200 crimes to the authorities, they have Dr Minette imprisoned in the Bastille. Hearing this letter

00:15:40.280 read aloud before a tribunal, the trauma of the past once more breaks Dr Minette's psyche,

00:15:46.280 and it seems that for Lucy, and her loved ones, she has run out of saviours. The tour de force of

00:15:53.560 vengeance that the revolution has unleashed cannot be reasoned with. But then, with Lucy's life threatened,

00:16:00.920 her saviour arrives. It is Sidney Carton. With the clarity and call to action that has eluded him

00:16:10.040 all his life, he masterminds a plan to help Darmé escape and see him and his family safely back to

00:16:16.840 England, gaining entry to the prison cell of the man whose life he has always envied. After exchanging

00:16:23.880 clothes, he drugs Darmé and has him taken away to safety, and the resemblance of the two leaves the

00:16:30.200 revolutionaries none the wiser regarding the switch. Across the city, Madame Defarge moves like a 1.00

00:16:36.920 wraith, determined to have Lucy, and her daughter, killed. But Miss Pross, the ageing, forever loyal

00:16:44.120 governess faces her down, in an altercation that ends with Defarge accidentally killing herself with her 1.00

00:16:51.480 own revolver. All of the characters that we've come to care for manage to escape back to the

00:16:58.120 sanctuary of England. All except the story's true hero, as Sidney Carton, in complete peace of mind,

00:17:06.120 steps towards the guillotine and meditates upon his life.

00:17:10.360 I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead,

00:17:17.400 yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

00:17:24.120 As his doom approaches, he peacefully reflects on the future, the healing of Paris, and the happiness

00:17:30.680 and gratitude that his sacrifice will bring. In one of the most powerful passages that, frankly,

00:17:37.720 I've ever read, I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss,

00:17:44.520 and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come,

00:17:51.880 I see the evil of this time and of the previous time, of which this is a natural birth, gradually

00:17:57.640 making expiation for itself and wearing out. I see the lives for which I lay down my life,

00:18:05.080 peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more.

00:18:11.720 I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants generations hence.

00:18:18.360 I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband,

00:18:26.680 their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed. And I know that each was not more

00:18:33.240 honoured and held sacred in the other's soul than I was in the souls of both. I see that child who lay

00:18:40.760 upon her bosom, and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine.

00:18:48.840 I see him winning it so well that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his.

00:18:54.680 I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men,

00:19:03.560 bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place,

00:19:10.120 then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement. And I hear him tell the child my

00:19:16.840 story with a tender and faltering voice. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.

00:19:25.880 It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

00:19:33.560 Of course, the most central themes of A Tale of Two Cities are both revolution and duality.

00:19:42.600 The two cities of the tale, London and Paris, in many ways contrasting examples of civilisation.

00:19:50.760 And Charles Dickens, being a man of the city, who loved London with all of his heart,

00:19:57.800 was very much warning against what might befall the city that he loves, if the society,

00:20:05.960 Victorian rigid society was unwilling to bend and move with the times, as is what happened

00:20:13.720 with the downfall of the Ancien Regime. In the story, London represents a sanctuary,

00:20:19.960 a place of law, society and manners. And Paris, by example, becomes a place of blood and anarchy and

00:20:29.640 mobs and untrammeled persecution. As Dickens lays out in that very famous opening about it being the 0.88

00:20:37.320 best of times and the worst of times, what he's really saying is that it's an age of contradictions,

00:20:42.920 it's an age of opposites, and it's an age of remarkable instability. And so he goes on later

00:20:51.080 on in that same introductory chapter to talk about the fact that, well, there was a king in England

00:20:57.160 with a square jaw and there was a king in France with a square jaw. There was a queen with a plain face

00:21:03.560 and there was a queen with a pretty face. And what he's really saying with this is that don't think

00:21:09.480 that England and France are so unalike that the fate of France may not also befall England. But it's

00:21:17.560 very interesting to note as well that it is England throughout the entire story. So you have the

00:21:25.480 character of Charles Darnay who basically renounces his Frenchness. He basically says, yes, I'm leaving

00:21:34.680 all of that behind and I'm going to go to England, which is really the only sensible place for any man 1.00

00:21:42.680 to live. And it's very interesting to see that Dickens is both sensitive to the reasons for why the

00:21:51.880 French Revolution happened in the first place, whilst also essentially disavowing everything 0.95

00:21:57.800 that took place in the actual revolution itself. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from

00:22:03.000 the Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 21, 2025

PREVIEW： Chronicles #2 ｜ Charles Dickens： A Tale of Two Cities

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