Charles Dickens's Working Notes from Our Mutual FriendItalic**, Installment 2 (June 1864: Book 1, chs. 5-7). Manuscript images courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

As Dickens notes on the left-hand side of his page, he moved this chapter, "A Marriage Contract," to his third installment (as chapter 10) because it was too long for the second. In its place he added a Chapter 7 titled "In Which Mr Wegg Looks After Himself." In the manuscript at the end of chapter 9, Dickens wrote "Marriage Contract last Chapter of No. 2, to be added here."

This quotation appears in the novel verbatim (with "beggur" changed to "beggar"), spoken by Gaffer Hexam after Charley's departure.

It is possible that "bow" in the notes corresponds to the following description of the beer-pulls in the tavern: "the polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer."

Dickens evidently drew this idea from a note written earlier in his Book of Memoranda: "Gibbon's Decline and Fall. The two characters, one reporting to the other as he reads. Both getting confused as to whether it is not all going on now!" (21). Boffin and Wegg are reading Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Dickens had an 1825 eight-volume edition.

In the manuscript, the first few times the name is corrected from 'Teddy." Dickens probably added the note below (Nicodemus. "Noddy Boffin") after he made the changes in the manuscript.

In his Companion to Our Mutual Friend, Michael Cotsell notes that "Crude surgery and the Napoleonic Wars meant that wooden legs were not an uncommon sight in Dickens's lifetime" (50). See Cotsell for more on Dickens's possible sources for Wegg's wooden leg. The Companion to Our Mutual Friend. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

In the manuscript the title is altered from "Harmony Jail." This alteration in the manuscript but not in the working notes could offer evidence that in some instances Dickens wrote the working notes after or at the same time as he wrote parts of the manuscript.

his "Imaginary man" could possibly refer to the "French gentleman" in Mr. Venus's shop, but it most likely refers to Mr. Venus himself, an imaginary version of the taxidermist Mr. Willis, to whom illustrator Marcus Stone took Dickens for inspiration (see note above). In a letter to Stone on Februrary 28, 1864, Dickens wrote: "I have done the St. Andrew Street place, and have made it the last Chapter of the 2nd. No. I will send you a proof when I get it. It is very like, with an imaginary man and an imaginary place in the story." The full text of this letter is available on the Our Mutual Friend Scholarly Pages (University of California Santa Cruz) at http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/letters/marcus-stone.html.

Dickens told his illustrator Marcus Stone that “he had a personage who had just appeared upon the scene who was to have some eccentric calling, and that he could not find the calling that would suit him” (quoted in Michael Cotsell, The Companion to Our Mutual Friend [Allen & Unwin, 1986], 65). Stone took Dickens to see a taxidermist called Willis in Seven Dials in London, “an articulator of skeletons, a stuffer of birds, and dealer in bottled monsters.” "I suggested Mr. Willis, or rather his occupation, as an idea that might be suggestive," wrote Stone. "'It is the very thing that I want he said it couldn't be better.'" This real-life detour resulted in Mr. Venus’s appearance in the second installment. For more, see Michael Slater, Charles Dickens (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009), 524-25, and Francis Xavier Shea, "Mr. Venus Observed: The Plot Change in Our Mutual Friend," Papers on Language and Literature 4 (1968): 170–181, 170.

Dickens moved this chapter, "A Marriage Contract," to his third installment (as chapter 10) because it was too long for the second. In its place he added a Chapter 7 titled "In Which Mr Wegg Looks After Himself." In the manuscript at the end of chapter 9, Dickens wrote "Marriage Contract last Chapter of No. 2, to be added here."

The "hoarse gentleman" who drives Wegg to the Boffins' house explains the origin of the name Harmony Jail:

'Was-it-Ev-verajail?' asked Mr Wegg, holding on. 'Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,' returned his escort; 'they giv' it the name, on accounts of Old Harmon living solitary there.' 'And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony?' asked Wegg. 'On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches of chaff. Harmon's Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like."

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin rename it "Boffin's Bower"

Here Dickens tests out potential titles for chapter six (VI). He settles on his first choice, "Cut adrift," which appears on the opposite page.

The Boffins rename Old Harmon's place "Boffin's Bower," but it is otherwise known as "Harmony Jail" (see note above):

"Boffin's Bower is the name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property. If you should meet with anybody that don't know it by that name (which hardly anybody does), when you've got nigh upon about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you'll be put right."

Although the phrase "dust ground" does not appear in the installment, Dickens mentions the "dust mounds" in this chapter when Wegg visits Boffin's Bower. The mention of dust recurs at the end of the installment when Mr. Venus explains that Mr. Boffin brings him items he finds in the dust: "'The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust mounds."

Although Dickens marks both Twemlow and the Veneerings as appearing in this installment, they appear only in the original chapter 7, which was moved to the following installment as chapter ten

Lady Tippins does not appear in this installment number, but she does appear in the original chapter seven, which was relocated to the next installment as chapter ten.

The Boffins rename Old Harmon's place "Boffin's Bower," but it is otherwise known as "Harmony Jail" (see note above):

"Boffin's Bower is the name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property. If you should meet with anybody that don't know it by that name (which hardly anybody does), when you've got nigh upon about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you'll be put right."

Dickens told his illustrator Marcus Stone that “he had a personage who had just appeared upon the scene who was to have some eccentric calling, and that he could not find the calling that would suit him” (quoted in Michael Cotsell, The Companion to Our Mutual Friend [Allen & Unwin, 1986], 65). Stone took Dickens to see a taxidermist called Willis in Seven Dials in London, “an articulator of skeletons, a stuffer of birds, and dealer in bottled monsters.” "I suggested Mr. Willis, or rather his occupation, as an idea that might be suggestive," wrote Stone. "'It is the very thing that I want he said it couldn't be better.'" This real-life detour resulted in Mr. Venus’s appearance in the second installment. For more, see Michael Slater, Charles Dickens (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009), 524-25, and Francis Xavier Shea, "Mr. Venus Observed: The Plot Change in Our Mutual Friend," Papers on Language and Literature 4 (1968): 170–181, 170.

Although the phrase "dust ground" does not appear in the installment, Dickens mentions the "dust mounds" in this chapter when Wegg visits Boffin's Bower. The mention of dust recurs at the end of the installment when Mr. Venus explains that Mr. Boffin brings him items he finds in the dust: "'The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust mounds."

Lady Tippins does not appear in this installment number, but she does appear in the original chapter seven, which was relocated to the next installment as chapter ten.

his "Imaginary man" could possibly refer to the "French gentleman" in Mr. Venus's shop, but it most likely refers to Mr. Venus himself, an imaginary version of the taxidermist Mr. Willis, to whom illustrator Marcus Stone took Dickens for inspiration (see note above). In a letter to Stone on Februrary 28, 1864, Dickens wrote: "I have done the St. Andrew Street place, and have made it the last Chapter of the 2nd. No. I will send you a proof when I get it. It is very like, with an imaginary man and an imaginary place in the story." The full text of this letter is available on the Our Mutual Friend Scholarly Pages (University of California Santa Cruz) at http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/letters/marcus-stone.html.

For more information on this change, see note 16 beside the old chapter seven in the right-hand-side notes.

Here Dickens tests out potential titles for chapter six (VI). He settles on his first choice, "Cut adrift," which appears on the opposite page.

The "hoarse gentleman" who drives Wegg to the Boffins' house explains the origin of the name Harmony Jail:

'Was-it-Ev-verajail?' asked Mr Wegg, holding on. 'Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,' returned his escort; 'they giv' it the name, on accounts of Old Harmon living solitary there.' 'And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony?' asked Wegg. 'On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches of chaff. Harmon's Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like."

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin rename it "Boffin's Bower"

Although Dickens marks both Twemlow and the Veneerings as appearing in this installment, they appear only in the original chapter 7, which was moved to the following installment as chapter ten