Arts & Culture
Great Books from the Wrong Point of View No.2
Published 20 March 2006
Oliver Twist In Dickens's novel, Oliver is lucky to escape the clutches of Fagin and his gang. Told from another point of view, however, the story might seem rather different. Fagin, we would see, is doing very nicely in London - until Oliver Twist turns up and ruins everything
Fagin is only 12 when he leaves a crowded Jewish ghetto in Italy and sets out on the long march to England. He is an "apprentice". His mother has been well paid for his services, and any money he saves (much is promised) will be remitted home.
He leaves to a hero's farewell, but London turns out to be squalid. Fagin joins the other Italian expats in Farringdon, darns old clothes for the Moses brothers (later Moss Bros), sells chestnuts and ice cream on street corners, and even lays asphalt at the Aldwych. From the barrel organists he learns a new skill: picking pockets.
He is quick-fingered, and his padrone is pleased. But Fagin is ambitious. He learns English, makes a name for himself in the butcher pubs of Smithfield, and soon sets up his own gang. No need to import Italian boys: there are loads of English orphans willing to train as purse-snatchers.
Fagin takes them in with a wink, a hot gin-and-water and a wave of his sausage fork. It is no joke being Jewish, though. When he hears the sour remarks people make behind his back, his eyes narrow a bit.
It is a rough life, and Fagin is a criminal. But this is Dickensian London - who isn't? Some of the men he deals with (Bill Sikes) are nasty crooks, but Fagin himself is harmless. He rescues these poor lads (and girls, too - look at Betsy and Nancy) from the gutter, and gives them freedom and adventure. Yes, he steals a few knick-knacks from the rich . . . but looked at in certain lights he's a latter-day Robin Hood.
And then, one day, Oliver turns up. Fagin has never met anyone so clueless. The lad seems really to believe that they make these silk handkerchiefs themselves; he seriously sees Fagin as a saviour of lost souls. He is the most gullible, angelic little fool Fagin has ever met: it would be sad if it wasn't so funny.
But Oliver's benign, unworldly stare is unsettling. From the instant he arrives, things slide. On his first expedition he is arrested, and Fagin has to send Nancy to recapture him. When he goes housebreaking with Bill Sikes, he gets caught again.
No one would call Fagin a saint: he's just a typical street hustler trying to make a living. But the real villain here is Oliver's long-lost brother, who is paying princely sums to have Oliver turned into a thief. And Fagin's den at Saffron Hill isn't a five-star hotel, to be sure - but have you seen the poorhouses recently? Bumping into Fagin was about the luckiest thing that had ever happened to Oliver Twist.
Eventually, the boy's saintly halo distracts and corrupts even Nancy. Something about the damned child touches her. She speaks out against Fagin's gang, and the game is up. Sikes kills her and is hunted down, while Fagin himself is arrested, tried (if that lynch mob in court can be called a trial) and sentenced to death.
Why? For a few grubby years he has tasted freedom and wealth. Now they have been torn from him by this precious little brat. All Fagin ever did was tell the boy he had to pick a pocket or two, and for that he's in Newgate gaol, facing the noose. Too late, he sees that posterity - novelists, cartoonists and film-makers - will render him a pantomime villain. His indignant howls echo across London and down the ages. Consider yourself part of the family? Who were they kidding?
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