H

Haredale, Geoffrey (BR) A Catholic squire and the younger brother of the murdered Reuben Haredale, he lives at the Warren, near Chigwell, Essex, taking affectionate care of his niece, Emma, Reuben’s daughter. He broods over the mysterious murder, of which he himself has been vaguely suspected. In contrast to Mr Chester, whose smooth sophistication and cynicism he detests, he is ‘a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and [sometimes] forbidding both in look and speech’. He agrees with Chester, however, that the relationship between his niece and Edward Chester must cease, although five years later, when Edward’s worth has been fully proved, he agrees to their marriage. Ever since the supposed death of Mrs Rudge’s husband, he has paid her a small annuity;

he is perturbed by her refusal to continue accepting the money and by her disappearance. He comes gradually to realise that the Stranger who has ominously come upon the scene is Rudge and that he was the murderer. After Haredale’s house is burnt by a mob during the Gordon Riots, he returns to the ruins, discovers Rudge there, seizes him and has him imprisoned, tried, and executed. In a duel with Sir John Chester, Haredale kills him with his sword, flees the country, and finds refuge in a religious establishment in Europe. (1, 10-12, 14, 15, 20, 25-27, 29, 34, 42-44, 56, 61, 66, 67, 71, 76, 79, 81, 82)

Harker, Mr (CS) The officer in charge of the jury in the murder trial. ‘He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice.’ (‘Doctor Marigold’)

Harker, the Reverend John (CS) A clergyman, later martyred in New Zealand, who supplied a reference for Mrs Miller when she adopted an orphan foundling. (‘No Thoroughfare’)

Harleigh, Mr (SB) The singer of the part of Masaniello at the Gattletons’ evening of Private Theatricals. But he ‘was hoarse, and rather unwell, in consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar-candy he had eaten to improve his voice’. Dickens named him after John Pritt Harley (c. 1790-1858), the manager and principal actor at the St James’s Theatre, London, where Dickens’s comic burletta, The Strange Gentleman, was performed. (‘Tales: Mrs Joseph Porter’)

Harmon, John (OMF) He was the only son of John Harmon, ‘a tremendous old rascal who made his money by Dust’ (i.e., dealing in refuse). As a 14-year-old boy, he pleaded his sister’s cause with his father (who had turned her out because he was angered by her engagement to be married), was himself turned out, and

went to work in South Africa. His inheritance from his late father was dependent on his marrying Bella Wilfer, whom he had not even seen. On returning to England, he tells George Radfoot, the third mate on the ship, that he would like to land incognito: ‘So the plot was made out of our getting common sailors’ dresses (as he was able to guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer’s neighbourhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing whatever chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it.’ But Radfoot double-crosses him, drugs and attacks him, gets involved in a further mêlée, is thrown with Harmon into the Thames, and is drowned. Harmon swims ashore, adopts the name of Julius Handford and identifies Radfoot’s body as his own. Adopting a second name, John Rokesmith, he takes lodgings with the Wilfers, who see him as ‘A dark gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say, handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained, reserved, diffident, troubled.’ He becomes Secretary to Mr Boffin, and genuinely falls in love with Bella (who at first rejects him). When Boffin expels him (as part of his plan), Bella realises that she loves him, leaves the Boffin household, and happily marries John. Meanwhile, Mrs Boffin has recognised John Rokesmith as John Harmon, although he himself does not reveal his identity, even to his wife, until he is on the point of being arrested on suspicion of murder. In conversation with the Wilfers, Mr Boffin refers to John Harmon as ‘Our Mutual Friend’, an ungrammatical phrase (as has often been pointed out) but nevertheless a clear indication of the part he plays in one of the main plots of the novel. ‘Upon no hypothesis, however,’ G.K. Chesterton argued, ‘can he be made one of the more impressive figures of Dickens. It is true that it is an unfair criticism to object, as some have done, that Dickens does not succeed in disguising the

identity of John Harmon with John Rokesmith. Dickens never intended to disguise it; the whole story would be mainly unintelligible and largely uninteresting if it had been successfully disguised. But though John Harmon or Rokesmith was never intended to be merely a man of mystery, it is not quite so easy to say what he was intended to be’ (1933: 216). (I: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 15-17; II: 7-10, 12-14; III: 4, 5, 9, 15, 16; IV: 4, 5, 11-14, 16)

Harris (OCS) See Short

Harris (PP) The greengrocer in whose shop the Bath footmen hold their ‘swarry’, to which Sam Weller is invited. (37)

Harris, Mr (SB) A law-stationer, who is one of Mr John Dounce’s friends. (‘Characters: The Misplaced Attachment of Mr John Dounce’)

Harris, Mrs (MC) Mrs Gamp’s supposed friend, in whose existence Mrs Betsey Prig memorably expresses her disbelief. See Gamp, Mrs Sarah and Prig, Mrs Betsey. (19, 25, 29, 40, 46, 49, 51, 52)

Harrison (OMF) A little boy, whom the Reverend Frank Milvey suggests as a suitable orphan for the Boffins to adopt. He is overruled by his wife, who says the child squints ‘so much’. (I: 9)

Harry (OCS) Mr Marton’s favourite pupil, who falls sick and dies. His grandmother blames the schoolmaster for his death since she claims that he studied too hard for fear of him. (24, 25)

Harry (OT) The ‘half pedlar and half mountebank’ who offers to remove the bloodstain from Bill Sikes’s hat when he is fleeing after murdering Nancy. (48)

Harthouse, James (HT) A handsome man, 35 years old, who comes to Coketown with a view to being its Member of Parliament. He ‘was a thorough gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and putting no

more faith in anything than Lucifer’. He had tried various occupations and activities, including army service, the diplomatic service, travelling to Jerusalem, and yachting round the world, but had found everything ‘a bore’. His brother then suggested that he should stand for Parliament: ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men.’ Harthouse is attracted by Mrs Bounderby (Mr Gradgrind’s daughter, Louisa) and cultivates the friendship of her brother, Tom, whom he calls the ‘Whelp’. He is ready to elope with her, but she resists temptation, leaves her husband, and returns to her father’s home. Sissy Jupe persuades Harthouse to leave Coketown, saying, ‘I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done’. He accepts defeat, sees himself as ‘a Great Pyramid of failure’, decides to go up the Nile, and writes to his brother accordingly: ‘Dear Jack, – All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in for camels. Affectionately, Jem’. In his Introduction to Hard Times (1913), Bernard Shaw saw Harthouse as a typical Victorian ‘swell’. ‘[He] reappears, more seriously and kindly taken, as Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood in Our Mutual Friend. He reappears as a club in The Finches of the Grove in Great Expectations. He will reappear in all his essentials in fact and fiction until he is at last shamed or coerced into honest industry and becomes not only unintelligible but inconceivable’ (Laurence and Quinn 1985: 35). (II: 1-3, 5, 7-12; III: 2, 3)

Harvey, Mr (SYC) The ‘angel of a gentleman’ who marries Miss Emma Fielding. (‘The Young Couple’)

Havisham, Arthur (GE) Miss Havisham’s half-brother and Compeyson’s partner in crime (42).