Introduction
“certain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted” still further suggests the supernatural character of the tale. The air of weirdness may thus be said to predominate, but there are undertones which are quite as important. Thus, at the close of the second paragraph, we find this: “Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting round the fire!”—the appeal to the homing instinct and domestic comfort, always so characteristic of Dickens, the skilful suggestion that domestic comfort is to be a part of the tale. A little later, the sympathetic quality of the Chimes is even more carefully suggested: they are “bent upon being heard on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea.” Then, the casual introduction of Toby Veck, as a kind of afterthought to the description of the Chimes themselves, suggests the curious way in which his life is to be bound up with them. Finally, this connection is made all the more unescapable by means of the comparison between Toby and the Chimes which has already been referred to.
It is not necessary to go through the entire story in such detail. But the element of careful preparation and foreshadowing is everywhere apparent. The first two quarters prepare carefully for the last two: all the elements which enter into Toby’s waking life are given forth again, in new and hideous combinations, in his dream. Thus the dream is consistently presented to us from Toby’s own point of view.
When he first appears before us, Toby is already a man whose
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