The moment he sets foot outside his his new home, Oliver is seized and dragged off by Nancy to Fagin's. Oliver insists his new guardian will come to find him, and this worries Sikes and Fagin, believing the boy may already have betrayed them. Sikes turns violent, hitting Oliver and threatening Fagin. Rattled, the old man begins to think about running off with his 'savings', wondering if a different kind of life might suit him better. Bumble and Mrs. Corney, now married, arrive at Mr Brownlow's house summoned by a letter enquiring after the identity of Oliver's mother , to discover that Oliver is the rightful heir of the Brownlow family: Oliver's mother was Mr Brownlow's niece.
Meanwhile Sikes plans to use Oliver for a burglary job and takes the boy from Fagin's den, to Nancy's fury. Nancy visits Mr Brownlow and confesses to snatching Oliver.
Sikes' burglary is bungled and he flees with Oliver to the pub. Nancy manages to slip out with Oliver, with Sikes in pursuit. They almost make it to London Bridge when Sikes catches them - he kills Nancy and runs off with Oliver. Mr Brownlow arrives too late to stop him. But Bullseye, Sikes' pet dog, leads the police and Brownlow to Fagin's lair. Sikes takes Oliver out onto the roof, while below a crowd gathers.
The police try to climb the wooden steps to reach Sikes but they collapse. They look for access on another street, giving Fagin and the boys chance to escape, but not before Fagin trips and loses his stash of gold and jewels to the Thames mud. Sikes tries to rig up a rope to swing from one building to another. He half succeeds, but the crowd throw stones as he tries to establish a foothold - then a shot rings out.
The police have killed him and his body swings from the high gable roof. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off.
He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health.
Oliver thrives in Mr. Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Polanski abandons this element of the novel, perhaps out of scepticism, but Waller shows that belief in good breeding was widespread in Dickens' age.
And once Waller has raised the issue, he uses it to shine a light on Robert's character. Thanks to workhouse rumours, Robert grew up believing he was the son of a priest. Throughout his childhood, he was known as either "Saint" or "Parson", and never heard the name Robert Blincoe until he received his indenture papers as an adult. Waller argues that this belief, though mistaken, explains Robert's unusual sense of self.
Dickens provides an account of how these surnames were generated in Oliver Twist. The Beadle is asked why the children have such distinctive names and confesses that he invents them on alphabetical lines: before Twist, there was a Swubbles and he will be followed by an Unwin and a Vilkins. On hearing this, the workhouse matron congratulates the Beadle on his literary turn of mind. Dickens, then a year-old author, was poking fun at his own profession, and the conventions that allowed him to create names such as Beadle Bumble, Noah Catchpole and, most lewdly, Master Bates, the young thief who always has his hands deep in his pockets and is gratified by a peek up Nancy's skirts.
Other academics have speculated that Robert's memoirs provided the inspiration for Oliver Twist, so Waller's book is not entirely a surprise. But my father had never even heard of the memoirs until the s, when he attended Manchester University. Friends in the history department asked if he was related to the workhouse Blincoe. Intrigued, my father read the memoirs in the city library. But it was only when the book was republished in the s, with additional notes, that he realised that Robert's son was his own great-grandfather.
By that time, my father had already named my brother Robert: the name survived but the story did not. It seems the family history was suppressed by Robert's son, who won a scholarship to Cambridge and later took holy orders. By the time my father read the memoirs, his own father was dead, so he questioned his Uncle Algie, who was adamant that no one in his family knew the tale. It was only when my father talked about Robert's belief that he came of better stock that Algie's memory was jogged.
That would explain something, he said: the Blincoes always thought they were superior, that they came of gentry or nobility. The original spelling of the surname is Blencow. A few years ago, the Blencowe Families' Association yes, it exists asked my father to take part in a DNA test to help make sense of the geographic spread of the family.
My father's swab proved that he was not related to any of the main line of Blencowes, Blincows and Blincoes. So what should I make of my name - in all likelihood, a slave name? For better or worse, it is Dickensian: exotic and silly. It sounds a lot like Bilko, something one is acutely aware of in a family of big-nosed, short-sighted folk. But it is better than Swubbles or Vilkins, and after reading The Real Oliver Twist, some pride in my family name is restored. I will not be changing my name to Nicholas X.
This article is more than 16 years old. A new book argues that Oliver Twist was based on the story of real-life orphan Robert Blincoe. Novelist Nicholas Blincoe weighs the evidence. Topics Books Fiction news.
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