The Golden Dustman Falls Into Worse Company explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Wealth and Corruption

  Mr. Boffin's obsession with stories of hidden money and misers, and Wegg's greedy scheming, highlight the corrupting influence of wealth and the secretive lengths people go to possess it.

• Charity and Hypocrisy

  Boffin's apparent benevolence in sharing these tales contrasts with his secretive nighttime activities, while Wegg's friendly facade masks his ulterior motives.

Characters to notice

• Silas Wegg

  Frustrated with the slow progress of his scheme, Wegg entertains Mr. Venus and reads tales of misers to Mr. Boffin, becoming increasingly suspicious of Boffin's actions.

• Mr. Venus

  Visits Wegg at the Bower, expressing discontent with the lack of movement in their plan, but is drawn into Wegg's suspicions and agrees to follow Boffin.

• Mr. Boffin

  Engrossed in reading about hidden fortunes and wills, he produces a dark lantern and goes to patrol the yard alone, arousing Wegg's suspicion.

Key passages

• “The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr. Boffin next appeared in a cab with Rollin's Ancient History, which valuable work being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about the period when the whole of the army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his being taken with a shivering fit after bathing.”

  After finishing a history of Rome, Boffin brought Rollin's Ancient History, but it was so boring that he gave up reading it around the point where Alexander the Great's entire army wept when he caught a chill after swimming.

  Dickens humorously describes Boffin's struggle with dry historical texts, contrasting his simple nature with the dense material.

• “What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr. Boffin's chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided in his mind between half, all, or none; at length, when he decided, as a moderate man, to compound with half, the question still remained, which half? And that stumbling-block he never got over.”

  Boffin's main problem with reading was deciding what to believe; he considered believing everything, nothing, or half, but even after choosing half, he could never figure out which half to trust.

  This passage satirizes Boffin's naive approach to knowledge and his inability to critically evaluate information.

• “Many years ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple of the name of Jardine: they had two sons: the father was a perfect miser, and at his death one thousand guineas were discovered secreted in his bed.”

  Long ago in Cambridge, a miserly couple named Jardine raised two sons; the father was so miserly that after his death, a thousand guineas were found hidden in his bed.

  Wegg reads this tale to Boffin as part of a series of stories about misers and hidden wealth, feeding Boffin's growing obsession.

• “But after twenty-one years the defendant's wife died, and he very soon afterwards, at the age of seventy-eight, married a very young woman: which caused some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant expressions of this feeling so exasperated their father, that he in his resentment executed a will to disinherit his eldest son, and in his fit of anger showed it to his second son, who instantly determined to get at it, and destroy it, in order to preserve the property to his brother.”

  After his wife died, the seventy-eight-year-old defendant quickly remarried a much younger woman, upsetting his sons; in anger, he made a new will disinheriting his eldest son and showed it to his second son, who then tried to steal and destroy it to protect his brother's inheritance.

  This story from the Wonderful Museum illustrates the theme of hidden wills and family greed, directly foreshadowing the plot involving the Harmon will.