Bounderby & Manfred

For my final project in Brit Lit I'm writing a short interchange between Dickens's Josiah Bounderby, and Lord Byron's Manfred. This is the first and roughest draft. I'm basically just aping the characters to demonstrate a grasp of the people in the stories we read, and avoid like the plague writing about anything dealing with women's rights or class struggles. Any advice would be rad, since I don't write fiction. The style is definitely more Hard Times than Manfred, but I get a bit of the Byronic Hero's desire for mad sympity. Enjoy, and comment:

After a longish pause, in which one man busied himself with the task of looking indispensable to the conversation and the other gaped forlornly into the sky, the former flapped his lips.

“I say, Manfred! You’ve quite a wit about you, not that it’ll get you anywhere in this town. Though I do declare that to be the most whimsical jib of the season!”

Manfred’s comment had, of course, been anything but whimsical, jovial, or lighthearted. Seemingly ignoring present company he remarked, “What is laughter but madness? And if madness could offer me that Oblivion which I so achingly seek, by a thousand oaths would I swear to pursue it with all that is left of my riddled heart. A heart so twisted, so—”

“Now now, that’ll do. No need to go on and on about whatever trifle bothers you at the moment. You’ve nothing to compare my own sufferings with anyhow, and you don’t hear me pinning you to the floor with the weight of my life’s tale, now do you?”

Having regained a stranglehold on the conversation, Bounderby took a healthy swig from his eminently practical mug. It wasn’t the worst ale from the brewhouse, and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown certainly wouldn’t expect to be drinking the best, though he could readily afford it. He’d settled on a modestly priced brown ale, which he enjoyed almost as much for its nondescript flavor as for its most agreeable price.

Manfred had positioned himself near a small window and gazed longingly at the world behind a thin glass pane.

“Would that I had not committed so grievous a sin so as to taint my very being to its core,” he wept, burying his face in his hands.

“Now stop a bit,” bellowed Bounderby. “I’ll not hear any more of this chattel from you on such a preposterous topic until you explain yourself reasonably. All this pomp and high speak over a mere --”

“Speak it not!” cried Manfred, thrusting his hand towards his companion. “For to even mention that moment would be to cast my soul into Hades, abandoning Him to the creatures of the Netherworld. My guilt stained hands clasp together to plead with you, remember my fault no more!”

Manfred threw himself at Bounderby’s feet, much to the swelling of Bounderby himself, who was secretly pleased with the situation, but felt obligated out of forced humility to command the man grasping at his ankles to desist.

“Hrmph! Stop that now, this pitiable groveling, you’ll tear my socks to ribbons! Not that I need them, heaven knows I made it through most of my life shoeless, much less without the comfort of socks. Socks would’ve likely slowed me down on my way to where I am today.”

Manfred regained himself and sat back in his stool, staring intensely at a dark spot on the floor between the two men.

“I say,” Bounderby began, looking from the spot to Manfred, “this business that’s troubling you…might I not be able to lend a hand in making things right? I certainly never received any leg up in this world from anyone, but I suppose it would complete the circle or some such thing for me to –”

At this point, a look of such horror came across Manfred’s face that Bounderby thought for a moment that some monstrosity was sidling up to him from behind, and began to turn around in his chair. While he struggled to rotate his bulbous figure in such a small area, Manfred expressed such abhorrence at Bounderby’s offer that the whale of a man had to bolster himself with another pull of ale before stepping back into the discussion.

“See now, it’s not like that, not like that at all. I wouldn’t be simply giving you the means to make right what has been spoiled. That’d be plain foolish of me, and Josiah Bounderby may be many unseemly things, but he’s no fool. I see it as an investment for the future, one that I’d like to see turn a tidy profit in the long run.”

“To entwine yourself with one so wretched as myself is something I cannot allow you to do. Though the Spirits may meddle with Man, I’ll not stoop to their baseness and pull a neighboring vessel down to the deep with my own!” cried Manfred, quite beside himself. “And more, what could a mere mortal as yourself do to cleanse what has been fouled in such a way? It is more of this madness we spoke of earlier.”

Bounderby, seeing his opportunity to call on the authority of a commoner, motioned blusterously for the barmaid to attend to them.

“Now ma’am,” he said, once she had come over and directed her attention from the weeping Manfred to the swelling Bounderby, “you’ve worked here at the King’s Arms pub for how many years?”

“Thirteen, sir, an’ good ones a’that.”

“Fine fine. Now surely in those thirteen years you’ve had a patron or two lose his balance and topple his glass to the floor, have you not? Or is this a magical place,” he said, looking at Manfred with great pleasure in his own proposing of this notion, “a place where the laws of the universe never make a fool of the man who has perhaps been a bit tipsy?”

“Aye sir, we ‘ave. Why in fact, jus’ the other night those Brecken boys was back froom a match an’ –”

“That’s fine, just fine. Now ma’am, I see that you’ve been here a good time and seen many spilled ales. How is it then that the floor upon which our stools sit is not covered with these blemishes?”

Here, the barmaid swelled a bit herself, and said with a beaming smile, “My husband, Clive, that’s ‘ow. He roons the woodshop near the butcher’s and comes to the Arms once a year to keep up the floors.”

“Now let us suppose that one desired to remove a certain spot from the boards. This one for instance.” He motioned towards the dark area Manfred had been eying earlier, much to the mortification of the spiller of ale.

“Hmmm,” said the barmaid as she leaned in for a closer look. “Well I suppose Clive could coom in early and knock that right out for say, three pound?”

“Do you suppose…,” Bounderby looked at her imploringly.

“Julia,” she beamed.

“Do you suppose, Julia, that you might mention that this spot was tended to by Josiah Bounderby of Coketown? Should anyone inquire as to its being cleaned that is. I’m not one for blowing my own horn, but I think it right proper to give credit where credit is due. Don’t you agree?” he directed this last question at Manfred, who was squirming under the gaze of both Bounderby and Julia.

“Have a bit of a tiff with the pint, love?” asked the smiling woman.

“Wretch that I am! Misery upon woe, will these Demons of Memory never cease to plague me? My soul, tender blossom, is unfit for trials such as these. Away!” As he uttered this last word, Manfred threw himself dramatically out of the nearby window, opened by an encouraging young pub rat. The window was but four feet from the ground, and as Manfred picked himself up from the dirt and flowers and shuffled off, Bounderby looked after him, shaking his head and ‘tsk tsking.’

“That’s Josiah with an ‘H’ ma’am, in case you mean to write it somewhere for a man to see.”