Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens is a reading of the novel, not a discussion of it. The episodes come from a LibriVox recording announced as public domain, and several chapter openings credit Mill Nicholson with recording them. Each episode holds one chapter under a plain label, from '01 - Book 1, Chapter 1' onward, and chapters close with a sign-off such as End of Book One, Chapter Two. That makes the show simple to navigate: episode 01 is where the novel starts, and the numbers keep the order straight. The first chapter, On the Lookout, is set on the Thames between Southwark Bridge, which is iron, and London Bridge, which is stone, as an autumn evening closes in. A strong man with grizzled hair watches from the stern while his daughter Lizzie rows. He leans far out over the water and comes back with money, which he washes in the river, blows on and spits on for luck. By the end of the chapter it is clear what the boat has in tow. Chapter two, The Man from Somewhere, switches to the Veneerings, brand-new people in a brand-new house, down to the pictures, the horses and the baby. Their dinner guests are drawn in quick strokes, among them Twemlow, whose cheeks look as if he once tried to retire into himself and never got any farther. The guests guess at the end of Mortimer's story, and the answer is 'Man's drowned.' Chapter three takes Mortimer from the dining room to a boy of about fifteen who brought a written message, then through muddy alleys to a police station where a night-inspector is writing up his books. A stranger to London goes with them. The chapter ends with the Harmon murder, as it came to be called, drifting through palaces and hovels before it goes out to sea. The Wilfer chapter starts by setting the grand sound of Reginald Wilfer's name against forebears who made a modest living on the docks. A daughter of the house sits by the fire and complains to her father that she glimpsed wealth and watched it melt away. Boffin's Bower brings in a man with a wooden leg who keeps a stall near Cavendish Square, and Mr. Boffin, who wants some 'fine, bold reading', hires this Wegg to supply it at so much an hour. Boffin walks away from the first reading shaken by how many 'scarers' there are in print. Cut Adrift visits the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, a crooked tavern without a straight floor, where Miss Abbey Potterson presses Lizzie. Lizzie will not move, and she says she is not obstinate, only 'fixed like'. The chapter ends in fear, with a man on his knees wetting a woman's lips and demanding to know what has been let loose on the house. What a listener gets is Dickens's full range in a handful of chapters: dread on the river, comedy at the dinner table, a family's grievances in cramped rooms and Boffin's cheerful bewilderment, all delivered as the text itself.