V

Varden, Dolly (BR) The daughter of Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, and his wife. Dolly has ‘a roguish face . . . a face lighted up by the loveliest pair of sparkling eyes that ever a locksmith looked upon; the face of a pretty laughing girl; dimpled and fresh, and healthful – the very impersonation of good-humour and blooming beauty’. She willingly acts as a go-between for Emma Haredale and Edward Chester and (on Mr Haredale’s suggestion) becomes a companion to Emma. Sim Tappertit and Hugh, the ostler, both desire her, but her true admirer is Joe Willet. But Dolly is ‘a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child’. Although she loves Joe, who declares his love for her, her flirtatious rebuffs deeply hurt him and he goes abroad to serve in the army. As soon as he left her, she ‘bolted herself in, laid her head down on her bed, and cried as if her heart would break’. With Emma and Miggs, she is held captive by Sim Tappertit, Hugh and Dennis during the Gordon Riots until rescued by Edward Chester, Joe Willet and Gabriel Varden. Repentant, Dolly soon afterwards declares her love for Joe, who, she says, has taught her ‘to be something better’ than she was. They marry and have ‘more small Joes and small Dollys than could be easily counted’. On one occasion Dolly had worn a ‘a little straw hat trimmed with cherry-coloured ribbons, and worn the merest trifle on one side –

just enough, in short, to make it the wickedest and most provoking headdress that ever malicious milliner devised’. Because of this description, a ‘Dolly Varden’ came to mean a certain type of hat worn by women. Pictorially, Dolly’s image was popular, especially as portrayed by William Powell Frith, who was requested by Dickens to paint two companion pictures, one of Dolly Varden and the other of Kate Nickleby. Frith’s painting of Dolly is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (4, 7, 13, 19-23, 27, 28, 31, 41, 59, 70-72, 78, 80, 82)

Varden, Gabriel (BR) The stalwart, honest locksmith, after whom the novel Dickens eventually entitled Barnaby Rudge was originally named (Gabriel Vardon [sic], the Locksmith of London). He was ‘a round, red-faced, sturdy yeoman, with a double chin, and a voice husky with good living, good sleeping, good humour, and good health. He was past the prime of life . . . bluff, hale, hearty, and in a green old age: at peace with himself, and evidently disposed to be so with all the world.’ Gabriel Varden patiently endures the ‘uncertain temper’ of his wife and is a sympathetic friend to Mrs Rudge and Mr Haredale. When the Gordon Riots break out, he plays his part in upholding the forces of law and order as a sergeant in the Royal East London Volunteers. He indicates to his wife, who had been devoted to Protestantism, that ‘all good things perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally bad’, thus acting as a mouthpiece for Dickens’s opinions on

Figure 37 Dolly Varden by William Powell Frith

religious fanaticism and intolerance. As Gabriel had helped to make the lock on the gate of Newgate Prison, the violent mob of rioters tried to make him force it to give them access, but he defied them: ‘He had never loved his life so well as then, but nothing could move him. The

savage faces that glared upon him, look where he would; the cries of those who thirsted, like wild animals, for his blood; the sight of men pressing forward, and trampling down their fellows, as they strove to reach him, and struck at him above the heads of other men, with axes

and iron bars; all failed to daunt him.’ He is rescued by ‘a one-armed man’ (i.e., Joe Willet) and another man. Gabriel Varden confronts Sir John Chester with Dennis’s revelations concerning Hugh’s parentage but fails to get any admission of the truth from him. After the Riots, Gabriel finds complete happiness in the reformed character of his wife, the dismissal of Miggs, his wife’s maid, and the marriage of Dolly to Joe. (2-7, 13, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 36, 41, 42, 51, 63, 64, 71, 72, 74-76, 79, 80, 82)

Varden, Mrs Martha (BR) The wife of Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, and the mother of Dolly. ‘Mrs Varden was a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper – a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable. Thus it generally happened, that when other people were merry, Mrs Varden was dull; and that when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful.’ She ‘did not want for personal attractions, being plump and buxom to look at, though like her fair daughter, somewhat short in stature’. Mrs Varden is a fanatical Protestant, often engaged in the study of the Protestant Manual, but the outbreak of the Gordon Riots brings about a change of heart: she ‘was impressed with a secret misgiving that she had done wrong; that she had, to the utmost of her small means, aided and abetted the growth of disturbances, the end of which it was impossible to foresee’. After the end of the Riots and with the coming together of Dolly and Joe Willet, Mrs Varden grows ‘quite young’, is ‘laughing in face and mood’, and dismisses Miggs, the domestic servant who had previously been her ally. (4, 7, 13, 19, 21, 22, 27, 36, 41, 42, 51, 71, 72, 80, 82)

Veck, Meg (CB) Trotty Veck’s daughter. (The Chimes)

Veck, Trotty (CB) Toby Veck was nicknamed Trotty ‘from his pace’, since he was a ticket-porter, who stood all day outside the door of an old church (usually identified as St Dunstan’s in Fleet Street, London). Although he was a ‘weak, small, spare old man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions’. He has a dream on New Year’s Eve, in which he has a gloomy vision of the future, but when he awakes he joyfully discovers that the preparations for the wedding of Meg, his daughter, to Richard, the blacksmith, are being made. (The Chimes)

Vendale, George (CS) A ‘brown-cheeked handsome fellow’, who is the partner in the business of Wilding and Co., wine merchants. He eventually becomes its owner. Jules Obenreizer, fearing that Vendale will expose his fraudulent activities, hurls him over a precipice in Switzerland and leaves him for dead. But he is saved by Marguerite Obenreizer, whom he loves and eventually marries. It is discovered that he is the long-lost heir to the Wilding business. (‘No Thoroughfare’)

Veneering, Hamilton and Anastasia (OMF) They were the appropriately named ‘bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new.’ All the things in their house ‘were in a high state of high varnish and polish. And what was observable in the furniture, was observable in the Veneerings – the surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and was a trifle sticky.’ Mr Veneering was ‘forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy – a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying’. Mrs Veneering was ‘fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a corner of

her husband’s veil is over herself’. They give dinner parties, at which the guests include Twemlow, Lady Tippins, the Podsnaps, Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn, who represent the ‘voice of society’. Using the influence of such acquaintances as Twemlow, Podsnap and Lady Tippins, Veneering gets himself elected as the MP for PocketBreaches. In the end, however, he makes a ‘resounding smash’ (i.e., he is financially ruined). The Veneerings consequently ‘retire to Calais, there to live on Mrs Veneering’s diamonds’. Society then discovers that it had always despised and distrusted Veneering. (I: 2, 10, 11, 17; II: 3, 16; III: 17; IV: 17)

Vengeance, the (TTC) A fierce friend and ‘lieutenant’ of Madame Defarge’s. She was the ‘short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer’, and regularly attends the executions at the guillotine. (II: 22; III: 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15)

Venning, Mrs (CS) One of the residents on Silver-Store Island, who is proud, in the opinion of Gill Davis, the narrator. (‘The Perils of Certain English Prisoners’)

Ventriloquist, Monsieur the (UT) A ‘thin and sallow [man] . . . of a weakly aspect’, who is one of the entertainers at the Fair. (‘In the French-Flemish Country’)

Venus, Mr (OMF) A taxidermist and dealer in bones and skeletons, whose ‘little dark greasy’ shop is in Clerkenwell. Mr Venus has a ‘sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a tangle of reddishdusty hair’. One of his acquaintances is Silas Wegg, whose amputated leg he had bought from a hospital porter. Wegg persuades Mr Venus to join him in a plot to blackmail Mr Boffin regarding the provisions of old Harmon’s will. Venus, however, while pretending to go along with the plot, repents of his participation

in it and secretly informs Mr Boffin of Wegg’s evil schemes. In the final exposure of Wegg’s machinations, Mr Venus twice calls him a ‘precious old rascal’. Mr Venus, a 32-year-old bachelor, is in love with Pleasant Riderhood, who objects to his occupation, writing that she did not wish to be regarded ‘in that bony light’. But she finally agrees to marry him on condition that he confines himself to the ‘articulation of men, children, and the lower animals’. Dickens based Mr Venus on J. Willis, 42 St Andrew Street, Seven Dials, London. Marcus Stone, the illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, took Dickens to the shop: ‘although Willis himself was not there, [Dickens] took note of everything; in a novel which came to anatomise society and the confusion of human identity, this articulator of skeletons and stuffer of dead animals proved to be precisely the man he needed for the purposes of his design. And so Mr Venus was born’ (Ackroyd 1990: 9434). (I: 7; II: 7; III: 6, 7, 14; IV: 3, 14)

Verisopht, Lord Frederick (OT) One of the most crudely named of Dickens’s characters, he is a young nobleman in Ralph Nickleby’s ‘net’ and under the influence of Sir Mulberry Hawk. Ralph Nickleby thinks that by introducing Lord Frederick to Kate he will be able ‘to draw him on more gently’. Although Lord Frederick is in some respects a typical ‘swell’ (exclaiming ‘What – the – deyvle!’ when he first meets Kate), he is indignant at Sir Mulberry Hawk’s plan to take revenge on Nicholas, who (in Lord Frederick’s opinion) had acted in a ‘manly and spirited’ way. His differences with Sir Mulberry end in a duel, in which he is shot dead: ‘So died Lord Frederick Verisopht, by the hand which he had loaded with gifts, and clasped a thousand times.’ (19, 26-28, 32, 38, 44, 50)

Vholes, Mr (BH) The legal adviser of Richard Carstone, who was introduced to him by Harold Skimpole. He was ‘a

sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in black, blackgloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner, and a slow fixed way he had of looking at Richard.’ He has ‘an inward manner’ of speaking. Mr Vholes emphasises his family responsibilities: that he has an aged father to support and three daughters, Emma, Jane and Caroline. His dark and stale-smelling offices are in Symond’s Inn, Chancery Lane. He is considered as ‘a most respectable man’ (according to Mr Kenge), has a cool and legalistic approach to everything, and makes great play with the idea of openness in his transactions. But he draws the trusting Richard deeper and deeper into the complexities of the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case. Dickens uses him to exemplify the essentially self-seeking nature of the legal system, as he saw it, making plain his opinion in an authorial intervention: ‘In a word, Mr Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a nuisance. And with a great

many people in a great many instances, the question is never one of change from Wrong to Right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.’ (37, 39, 43, 45, 51, 60, 62, 65)

Victualler, Mr Licensed (UT) The ‘host’ of a public-house in the Liverpool docks. He was a ‘sharp and watchful man . . . with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in each eye’. (‘Poor Mercantile Jack’)

Voigt, Maître (CS) A ‘rosy, hearty, handsome old man,’ who was the chief notary at Neuchatel. Obenreizer deceitfully operates the clock-lock that secures the door to his safe deposit and finds the evidence of Vendale’s identity. (‘No Thoroughfare’)

Vuffin, Mr (OCS) A travelling showman encountered by Little Nell and her Grandfather. He was ‘the proprietor of a giant, and a little lady without legs or arms’. When his giants become too old to be shown, Vuffin keeps them in caravans to wait upon the dwarfs: ‘Once make a giant common and giants will never draw [the public] again.’ (19)