120 KNOWING DICKENS
form of tribute to Somebody for something that was never done, or, if ever
done, that was done by Somebody Else” (OMF 2.11). Bradley Headstone “in
his own schoolmaster clothes... usually looked as if they were the clothes of
some other man,” but dressed to imitate Rogue Riderhood “he now looked,
in the clothes of some other man or men, as if they were his own” (OMF
4.1). Taking on the role of Somebody Else has become essential to the explo-
ration of manhood.
Partnerships abound in the novel, most of them operating as intimate
alliances of distrust, in which suspicion of the partner is hardly different
from suspicion of the self. The alliances are for the most part betrayed when
one partner makes a secret alliance with another man. The young male
figures—Eugene Wrayburn, Mortimer Lightwood, Bradley Headstone, John
Harmon—are all doubled and redoubled in ways that display the splits in
their inner worlds. The novel is full of eyes and looks that signify knowledge,
or the absence of knowledge, between two parties. So systematic and forth-
right a focus on the connection between the depths of the self and “another
man” is proof that Dickens was consciously and deliberately playing as many
variations on the theme as he possibly could. Even the nickname given to
that most unfascinating of characters, “Fascination Fledgby,” represents an act
of projection onto another man. After Mrs. Lammle accuses her husband of
exercising his “dangerous fascinations” upon Georgiana Podsnap, the two
schemers confer that “honorary title” on Fledgby while Mr. Lammle courts
Georgiana Podsnap as Fledgby’s proxy (OMF 2.4).
Dickens clearly wanted the word “Fascination” to circulate in his narra-
tive, preferably in a free-floating and preposterous way. The title, Our Mutual
Friend, has its own floating meanings, some of which look back to the
Christiana Weller affair. Apologizing to Clarkson Stanfield about missing
an engagement because of a crisis in the Weller-Thompson marriage, Dick-
ens had described Thompson as one who, “on the very eve of his marriage
with a very beautiful girl—the ring purchased, wedding dresses made, and so
forth—finds the whole contract shattered like Glass, in an instant, under the
most inexplicable circumstances that ever distracted the head of ‘a mu tual
friend’ ” (4.397–98). The ironies of rivalry and mediation are in full play
when Dickens uses that conventional phrase, both in the letter and in the
title of his novel.
The man who exists in violent intimacy with another man sits at the heart
of the tale, in the rivalry of Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley Headstone. Brad-
ley Headstone is given Richard Wardour’s energy, his obsessive unrequited
love, and the murderous, jealous rage that is inseparable from his love for
Lizzie Hexam. Eugene Wrayburn is given Sydney Carton’s indifference, his