Whither thou goest, I can Not go . . .

Fred Barnard

1870s

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

Illustration for Dickens's The Chimes (1854). Thus, for Will Fern at the Bowleys' New Year's banquet, the class system of both England and Italy has inverted the biblical promise of "The Book of Ruth" in that he feels wealth and power have perverted their reception of the Christian message, something he makes clear when he states: "Whither thou goest, I can Not go; where thou lodgest, I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my people; Nor thy God my God!" (124). In other words, Will is the spectre of the poor and starving begging to be admitted to Life's feast in Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (second edition, 1803), and terrifying the complacent, upper-class dinner-guests like Poe's Red Death.