In some lapse of formal and informal education, I have never read any Dickens. I may have tried Great Expectations once, but it didn't suit me. Several years ago (5? 7?) I bought A Tale of Two Cities at the bookstore, thinking it was one that I should read and have, but it has moved with me across the country and back and sat on shelves until now. I knew it had something to do with the French Revolution and that's it - no "spoilers" ever touched me.
The first chapter was so full of time-sensitive allusions that it was hard to keep on, but it very quickly became an intriguing story and I found myself delighted by Dickens's skillful character painting and hilarious wit - charming and biting both. By a certain point, I knew where the last half of the book would go, but was pleased to still be struck by some plot surprises and to find all the anticipated parts carried out not dutifully but artfully and emotionally.
I didn't like Sydney (and I don't think we're supposed to at first) and was skeptical of the book jacket's claiming him as the character of the book. I didn't know Dickens had such a heart, such an acute understanding of the beauty of a soul. He draws this character out so beautifully and reveals his inner glory to us all. The last line of the book didn't mean much to me on the back cover, but following Sydney up the steps to his death, they mean something else entirely. They're words I won't forget.
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
p. 55
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's [Bank], the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books ...
p. 131
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house.
p. 206
It is very hard to explain consistently the inner workings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.
p. 211
"I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things. And, O my dearest Love! remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!"
p. 240
... with Monseigneur boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the one only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown -- as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it -- as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw.
p. 245
The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.
p. 376
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
p. 379
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
