![]() ![]() How though, did John Harmon accumulate such a vast fortune from dust? Unlike the abstract ‘Shares’ economy upon which the newly-rich Veneerings and their peers precariously float (the vacuous, airy nature of which is suggested in the disclosures made at the Lammles’ honeymoon at the end of this month’s installment), dust is thickly material, comprised of discarded rubbish which bears yet the potential to be recycled and thus to generate new profits (more of which shortly). The Boffins, like modern-day Lottery winners, have become overnight millionaires (a web calculation suggests that the amount is worth around ten million pounds in today’s terms). That sum, Mortimer languidly tells him, amounts to one hundred thousand pounds, available to Boffin with ‘no trouble’ attached to estates, rents or agents: that is, as ready cash. The third installment of Our Mutual Friend opens in Mortimer Lightwood’s dismal, dusty, eyrie office, with John Harmon’s former servant Mr Boffin arriving early to his appointment to learn the value of the legacy he will receive from Harmon’s will, following confirmation of John Harmon Jnr’s death. Her post draws from her forthcoming chapter, ‘Waste Matters: Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend and Nineteenth-Century Book Recycling’ in Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary, edited by Gill Partington and Adam Smyth, due to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2014. ![]() Heather Tilley explores the value of the Harmon dust mound. ![]()
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