Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction

Hunting Down Physiognomics

The short story "Hunted Down" was never a favorite among Dickens scholars. Even the most meticulous biographies mention the short piece only in passing, if they mention it at all. It is usually squeezed in between comments on the founding of Dickens's journal All the Year Round, and the publication of A Tale of Two Cities, and it is usually shrugged off as a minor and certainly insignificant work that Dickens mainly wrote for pecuniary reasons,¹ although some critics are interested in the impact "Hunted Down" had on the development of crime fiction.²

Wherever critics attend to this short story outside the realm of the detective story, they often see it as evidence of Dickens's knowledge of and opinion about the "science" of physiognomics—that is, the allegedly scientific practice of reading the inner and invisible human character on the outer and visible human face (physiognomy). Dickens's story is to some extent based on the real-life events concerning Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, who had poisoned his sister-in-law to get his hands on the insurance money (see Forster 279; Haining 18; Ackroyd 86465; Slater 474), and Dickens was, as John Forster attests, personally acquainted with Wainewright, whom he had met in Newgate in 1837 (Forster 184; see Slater 474; Letters 1:277n, 2:252n); and, in fact, some of the existing illustrations of Wainewright show a certain similarity with the villain in Dickens's "Hunted Down," Julius Slinkton (see, for instance, fig. 43 in Andrew Motion's book: the somewhat ironic self-portrait "Head of a Convict, very characteristic of low cunning and revenge").

Given both Dickens's interest in Wainewright's unexceptional, everyday physiognomy, and the criminal's faint resemblance with Slinkton, "Hunted Down" is often evoked as proof of Dickens's belief in physiognomics. In his discussion of the general readability of physiognomies in the nineteenth-century novel, for instance, Werner Wolf claims that "Hunted Down" must be read as a celebration of physiognomic faith ("Speaking Faces?" 397). According to Wolf, "Hunted Down" is an outstanding literary example of a seemingly empirically justified faith in physiognomic transparency ("Gesichter" 314). Similarly, Massimo Verzella, who mentions "Hunted Down" in his analysis of the villains' physiognomies in Great Expectations, refers to it as proof of the author's debt to physiognomics (171). Juliet McMaster also cites "Hunted Down" as offering "sufficient evidence that he [Dickens] took physiognomy very seriously, and had imbibed, however indirectly, Lavater's doctrines" (20; see also Chialant 236-37). And Philip V. Allingham also mentions the short story in connection to physiognomics yet he does not dwell longer on the subject, because he seems to equate the first-person narrator's interest in physiognomics with the author's: "Mr. Sampson, a student of physiognomy (like Dickens) … narrates a personal reminiscence to justify the reading of character from facial characteristics" (86). Where Dickens's interest in physiognomics is taken for granted, there would seem to be no need to [End Page 168] analyze the relation between "Hunted Down" and physiognomics in detail. In a similar vein, although with no direct reference to "Hunted Down," Michael Hollington, in a series of articles on different Dickens novels,³ establishes Dickens as a believer in physiognomics, stating that "the science of physiognomy, or, more precisely, as we shall see, 'physiognomonics' … is a feature of all Dickens's novels—a rather seriously neglected one, I believe" (1991: 6). While he argues that Dickens's novels are saturated with physiognomic passages—a "ubiquity of physiognomonics in Dickens's writing," he calls it—Hollington also allows for a critical view on physiognomics in Dickens, arguing that the novels display "a full spectrum, on the one hand, of more or less difficult cases for physiognomonical reading, and on the other, of more or less astute and insightful interpreters" (1991: 7). In Hollington's view, then, Dickens is a writer who generally believed in physiognomics, but at the same time knew of its deficiencies, which he articulated in his fiction.

Hollington's interpretation is exemplary of a certain tendency in studies concerned with Dickens's opinion on physiognomics, to read his treatment of it more ambivalently. These studies either present Dickens as a skeptic, or are irresolute on the subject. In her analysis of the function of physiognomics (and of the numerous misreadings it produces) in Our Mutual Friend, Angelika Zirker concludes that "Dickens is, indeed, sceptical as to the scientific value of physiognomy studies" (382) and that he is in Our Mutual Friend "testing Lavater's theory of physiognomy, pointing to its lacunae" (388). Zirker's view is not fully dismissive of physiognomics as such and of Dickensian physiognomics in particular, since she adds that the novel is also "suggesting its own prerequisites for correct reading of the faces of others" (388). Graeme Tytler, too, interprets Dickens as rather ambivalent on the subject. While Tytler is certain of Dickens's contempt for phrenology (96, 183, 263), he seems to have difficulties in where to place him in terms of physiognomic belief. He claims that Dickens "ridicules the typical Lavaterian disciple" and that he "pokes fun at the earnestness with which some of his minor characters … take their physiognomical skills" (264-65), while simultaneously establishing "Pip as physiognomical narrator of Great Expectations," who "has a fairly wide range of physiognomical skills," which, in turn, "bespeaks the talented physiognomist that Dickens was in all his novels" (286-89). Part of the reason for Tytler's inconclusiveness is certainly the hypertrophic concept of physiognomics that he inherits from Johann Caspar Lavater, the influential Swiss physiognomist, who does not distinguish between the ways in which physiognomies, clothes, manners, mimics, and gestures tell about character. Tytler's ambivalence regarding the question of Dickens's stance toward physiognomics is, I believe, also the reason why he neither discusses nor refers to "Hunted Down" in his book-long study on physiognomics and European literature.

Nevertheless, in "Hunted Down," the narrator's decisive statement very early in the story that "There is nothing truer than physiognomy" (174) may trouble scholars who attribute a more skeptical viewpoint to Dickens. To some readers, [End Page 169] the assertion of Sampson, the first-person narrator, must appear to confirm the idea of Dickens as a believer in physiognomy, and, accordingly, McMaster is convinced that "the plot of this little story … tends to confirm the claim" (18).

I suggest, however, a reading different from the ones I have mentioned. I believe that in "Hunted Down" Dickens was neither affirmative of nor skeptical about the value of physiognomics (both in real life as in the world of his novels), but entirely dismissive. The evidence in the scholarly texts that I mentioned clearly proves that Dickens was not simply "unphysiognomic" in the sense that he was indifferent to the advantages and disadvantages of that "science." If he was neither a physiognomic, nor an unphysiognomic writer, then it follows that—as concerns "Hunted Down"—he must have been an anti-physiognomic one—that is, he must have been well-informed about physiognomics (be it through firstor second-hand knowledge), but must have disapproved of it. The presentation of physiognomics in "Hunted Down" is therefore, I argue, highly ironic and is geared toward ridiculing those characters who boast about their remarkable physiognomic skills. Although "Hunted Down" is the one text that appears to offer the greatest confirmation of Dickens's physiognomic belief, I am going to demonstrate that the story's complex narrative frame is meant to cast a considerable doubt on the narrator's seemingly sound physiognomic skills, and that his firm belief in physiognomics tells more about him, the self-proclaimed physiognomist, than about the objects of his "physiognomic gaze." It is, in fact, similarly classificatory as the judgment of taste that Pierre Bourdieu analyzes in his work, and of which he writes: "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed" (6).

The physiognomic classifier is classified by his classification or, in Sampson's case, as I will show, by the classificatory power he ascribes to the "science" of physiognomics. Sampson's initial claim about the validity, veracity, and accuracy of physiognomic observation has led critics either to read "Hunted Down" as a testimony to Dickens's belief in physiognomics—thereby confusing the opinions of an author with that of one of his characters—or to omit the story completely from their discussions in order not to endanger the idea of Dickens's irresoluteness on that point. I contend that this claim serves quite a different purpose, namely to lift Sampson's status from that of a relatively passive bystander to that of an active observer of events, and to bestow on himself a residue of agency, which becomes necessary to him in the final transition from Miss Niner's professional advisor to her uncle-in-law. I will demonstrate that his self-fashioning as a competent physiognomist is anything but convincing, and that his belief that "there is nothing truer than physiognomy" is but an empty phrase, intended to increase his own cultural capital (as a "scientific" observer of mankind) and to conceal his otherwise mostly passive position in the events narrated. [End Page 170]

"That Intolerable Parting": Non-Physiognomic Signs and First Impressions

The prime object of Sampson the first-person narrator's physiognomic interpretation (and ostensible misinterpretation) is the story's villain, Mr. Julius Slinkton. When Slinkton first appears in Sampson's office, the narrator's attention is immediately drawn to Slinkton's exterior:

He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly well dressed in black,—being in mourning,—and the hand he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting black-kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so many words: 'You must take me, if you please, my friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing.'

(175-76)

Given Sampson's previous claim that "There is nothing truer than physiognomy" (174), the portrait contains surprisingly little physiognomic detail. Slinkton's hand—a bodily part of great significance for Lavater (see Lavater 3:103-09)—is mentioned, although Sampson cannot see it, as Slinkton keeps it in his "particularly well-fitting black-kid glove." If anything, Sampson's description points to the concealment of a physiognomically important part. The portrait is vague in other aspects as well: Slinkton's age is only guessed ("he was about forty or so"), and Sampson does not clarify whether "dark" refers to Slinkton's dress or gloves, which are in fact black, or his hair or skin.

While Sampson carefully avoids any meticulous description of Slinkton's physiognomy, he conspicuously emphasizes both Slinkton's manners and his dress, describing him with somewhat repetitive phrases such as "A well-spoken gentleman," "well-bred" (177), who appears "well-dressed in black," and with a "well-fitting black-kid glove." The similarity of these phrases are not precisely what one would expect of a physiognomist with a keen eye for details (according to Lavater a basic prerequisite for any physiognomist; see Lavater 1:170-71). In fact, the constant repetition of the word "well" in his initial description of Julius Slinkton may even suggest that Sampson is made suspicious by the seeming perfection of Slinkton or that the passage is ironic, comparable to the insistence of Shakespeare's Mark Antony that Brutus is an honorable man. Sure enough, Samspon makes no secret of his dislike and concedes, "I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw him" (176), seeing him, that is, as a well-dressed, well-behaved man.

Even where the narrator mentions analyzing Slinkton's face in detail, he does not share the results of his observation with the reader. It appears as if he is not interested in the physiognomy itself, but rather in pointing out his own attentive [End Page 171] perception: "I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail. I could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say even less against them when they were put together" (180). Despite the vagueness of Sampson's description of Slinkton—and perhaps also of his observation—despite the complete lack of any particulars, he insists that it is often in such details that one finds the key to unlocking the mystery behind the physiognomy: "An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door" (180).

This little key, the only detail the reader gets in the description of Slinkton's physiognomy, is his hair, or rather: the parting of his hair. It is mentioned seven times in the short story. Yet, this is hardly a physiognomic detail, such as color, mass, or texture of Slinkton's hair would have been.⁴ The parting of Slinkton's hair, "elaborately brushed and oiled" (175), is rather indicative of his style. While style, as the narrator in "Hunted Down" suggests, is clearly also indicative of character, it is important to point out that it is a sign system different from physiognomy. Not only are clothes and style more often markers of class than of natural character (with which physiognomics is concerned),⁵ but they are also, as legible signifiers, prone to deception. In fact, it is, as Andrew Motion has pointed out, part of Dickens's fascination with a murderer like Wainewright "that someone who had been 'one of us'—an artist and a dandy—should have become 'one of them'—a criminal and an outcast" (289). With Slinkton and other characters in his work, Dickens seems to imply that the dandy's signature, his style and manner, may or may not be indicative of his character; there is no way to tell for sure. Both pathognomic signs (e.g., Slinkton's "agreeable smile" [176]) and signs of style ("exceedingly well-dressed" [175]) are erratic and do not guarantee a safe judgment of character. The fact that Sampson becomes fixated on Slinkton's hair parting and ignores almost all the truly physiognomic signs is inconsistent with his self-fashioning as an expert in physiognomics at the story's outset. This inconsistency is further highlighted by the hair parting seeming to tell him primarily, "You must take me … just as I show myself." It thus inverts the role of active physiognomist and passive physiognomic object; it is not Sampson who decides which facial features he reads and what to read in them, but Slinkton, whose parting of hair appears to make demands on the physiognomist: "just as I show myself" (my italics).

Struggling in vain, it seems, against Slinkton's commanding parting, there remains very little to be done by Sampson, the self-proclaimed physiognomist, as he himself admits. His physiognomic vision, if it can be called that after all, is limited to the "first impression of … people, founded on face and manner" (175). It further seems that Dickens suggests that this is truly all that physiognomics can achieve: an intuitive, vague, and completely unscientific idea of other people. Dickens's stance toward physiognomics, thus expressed in "Hunted Down," [End Page 172] resembles that of Arthur Schopenhauer, who included an entire chapter titled "On Physiognomics" in the second volume of his Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), which was favorably reviewed by John Oxenford in George Eliot's Westminster Review in 1853—a circumstance that sparked interest in Schopenhauer on both sides of the English Channel, so that it is not unlikely (even though not verifiable) that Dickens had at least some second-hand knowledge of Schopenhauer's writings. Although Schopenhauer conceded that physiognomics might work in certain everyday contexts, he firmly denied it the status of a true science. In Parerga, he asserts that "The study of physiognomy is, therefore, one of the principal means to a knowledge of mankind" (2: 638). Yet he also claims in his philosophical magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, that "a science of physiognomy in the abstract cannot be brought into existence to be taught and learned" (1: 56; see also Parerga 2: 635). His idea of physiognomics is that it is only operational (and only to a very limited degree) if the observer is not influenced by his knowledge of the analyzed person—that is, in an ideal situation of pure impartiality—which in his opinion is given only on first encounter (Parerga 2: 635). It is, in other words, impossible, Schopenhauer claims, to analyze physiognomically a person that one already knows.

Sampson seems to share Schopenhauer's belief. He admits that his physiognomic skill, which he presents as the result of careful observation and of a life-long and concentrated engagement with it (174-75), ceases to operate whenever he knows someone: "I confess, for my part, that I have been taken in, over and over again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of persons My mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away" (175; italics in the original). He can only issue a correct physiognomic judgment from the safe distance of personal unfamiliarity with the object of his analysis. As mentioned before, he believes such a judgment to be infallible: "Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true" (175). Consequently, he, the actuary, installs in his office a "thick plateglass … in order that I might derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything they said" (175).

Consequently, Sampson's long and somewhat meandering opening of his narrative is intended to set the scene for Slinkton's first appearance. The narrator wants to build trust in his observational skills as well as in his ability correctly to read character on the face—upon first sight. In the very brief first section of "Hunted Down" (420 words only), Sampson uses the positive, comparative, and superlative forms of the word "true" in connection with physiognomic judgment: true, truer, truest. When, after the introductory section with its affirmative diction, Sampson mentions that it was "through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose story I am going to tell" (175), the reader is likely to believe whatever judgment Sampson might pass on Slinkton. And of course, that judgment can [End Page 173] hardly be called commendatory: "I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw him" (176). If judgments like this one, however unphysiognomic and vague they might be, are presented as true, truer, and truest first observations in the Schopenhauerian sense, then the reader has no reason to disbelieve them, as Sampson's reliability as narrator is, at that point of his narrative at least, still intact. But Allingham argues that in "Hunted Down" it is the "unreliable (even devious) narrator that strikes the modem reader as its salient feature" (86). He continues to argue that Dickens in his short story "explores the unreliability of a superficially trustworthy persona" (90). The obvious terminus a quo of Sampson's unreliability is the end of section 3, when he withholds from the reader the important information that Meltham—the former insurance agent who actually hunts down the insurance swindler and poisoner—had visited him before Slinkton came to his office on the day described in this section, and that Meltham had warned him about Slinkton's machinations. Allingham is therefore correct when he asserts that "Sampson is unreliable only in the way he has told 'Hunted Down'" (93). And that includes the way in which he inscribes himself into the story as an active and competent physiognomist, who had suspected Slinkton of being up to some mischief all along. If considered in this light, his complete failure to find any fault in Slinkton's physiognomy that would confirm his profound aversion—"I could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say even less against them when they were put together" (180)—must be understood as Sampson's attempt to explain, ex post facto, his dislike as the result of scientific analysis, rather than a response to a simple warning by a trustworthy and investigative colleague.

"You must take me … just as I show myself": The Insurance Agent's Agency

Sampson pursues a particular narrative strategy by introducing Slinkton, "the gentleman whose story I am going to tell," the way he does. Slinkton's parting of his hair renders Sampson passive in his role as physiognomic observer; it repeatedly forces him to "keep off the grass," and seems to tell him, "I allow no trespassing" (176). Throughout his narrative, Sampson does not find the strength to overcome Slinkton's opposition. In fact, he becomes rather emotional in the attempt: "'Humph!' thought I, as I looked at him. 'But I WON'T go up the track, and I WILL go on the grass'" (178; emphasis in the original). Therefore, Sampson, as if presenting a reminder of his own autonomy, intends doubly to render his adversary the passive object of his story; Slinkton is both the man whose story is told by someone else (since Slinkton's death at the end deprives him of a voice to tell his own story), and the man who is, according to the title, "Hunted Down." Yet, as mentioned before, the hunter in this case is not, as one might expect, [End Page 174] Sampson himself, but rather his colleague, the actuary Meltham in the disguise of Slinkton's depraved neighbor, Alfred Beckwith. Sampson's story is therefore that of another insurance agent, Meltham, hunting down the poisoner and insurance swindler, Mr. Slinkton.

Sampson tells the story many years after the events have taken place, describing his own narrative position in it as that of a theatergoer who has returned from a play and now tells what he has seen: "I have come home from the Play now, and can recall the scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre" (174). Not only does he narrate events long past, but he also intimates that his was the role of a spectator rather than actor. He was the witness of a play in which he, as a spectator, played more of a passive part. The events took place on the stage, which was separated, as Sampson admits, from the auditorium by either curtain or proscenium arch, in a way similar to that of the thick glass-wall that separates his office from the antechamber (175). It allows him to observe the people on the other side of the wall, but not to interact with them.

Quite literally, the parting wall that condemns Sampson to the inactivity of a passive by-stander only breaks down in the final section, when Meltham exposes Slinkton's machinations. It is then that "Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it was past" (193). The function of Slinkton's parting was to keep others "off the grass," as it is the curtain's and the wall's function to keep others off the stage and out of the office; the destruction of this parting enables others to enter the stage and act. Sampson was then able to let go of his "professional indifference," as Jennifer Ruth has called it (284), and to become the good uncle.

Only in the final sentence of the short story does Sampson reveal the familial bonds that tie him to the protagonists of the story he has just told. Slinkton's second niece, Miss Niner, "married my sister's son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick when I go to see her" (196). In other words, during the events of the story, Sampson is professionally detached from it; when he is telling the story, however, he does so as the uncle-in-law of the story's central object of desire, Miss Niner (Meltham protects her, Sampson warns her, Slinkton wants to murder her). Here his real agency begins, and he can become active as the narrator of events. Yet the very story he is telling simultaneously bears testimony to the fact that he was, for most of it, a bystander. Ruth correctly observes that Sampson's role of the good uncle, "the domestic gratification that came as a reward to fiction's earlier protagonists," was only enabled by Meltham's actions: "In this case, the intangible goods of the restored family are delivered to none other than our narrator Sampson" (293). After having acquired his new role, Sampson consequently withdraws from his former, professional role; in fact, this has become necessary to accumulate the "intangible goods" that Ruth mentions, a form of capital which, according to Bourdieu, "can [End Page 175] only be acquired by means of a sort of withdrawal from economic necessity" (53-54). Before he can begin to tell his (and Miss Niner's) story, Sampson must cease to work as insurance adviser for Miss Niner and her family.

Meltham, the insurance agent with true agency, suffers from a similar conflict of the personal and social roles he adopts throughout the story. He dies at the end, because he holds the extreme view that, after Slinkton's death, there is for him "no hope and no object" in life (Dickens 196), because he was forced to relinquish his role as lover of Slinkton's first niece, and has therefore given up his professional role as actuary, in order to become the eponymous hunter. Once the hunt is over, the role of hunter, of lover, and, in his opinion, of actuary are no longer open to him. Sampson reports his death, that of a "broken" and "broken-hearted" man (196), in the final paragraph of his story. Once again, the teller of the story, Sampson, prevails over the protagonist of his story, Meltham, the hunter, because he has succeeded where Meltham failed: in resolving the role conflict of professional disinterestedness and relative passivity, on the one hand, and of personal interestedness and activity, on the other. As physiognomist, Sampson seeks to steer a middle course. He actively (and "scientifically") observes the villain of the story, but never actively betrays the professional ethics that binds him to his customer, the insurance-holder Slinkton.

By simultaneously keeping up an active role (acting as physiognomic observer of Slinkton) and a more inactive one (who, as Slinkton's insurance adviser, cannot act), Sampson finds a loophole that enables his eventual transition from professional person to avuncular narrator, his taking on the official role that Slinkton had occupied earlier: that of Miss Niner's uncle. While Sampson's former professional detachment largely prohibited his agency, the familial bonds acquired at the end of the story do call for it. When telling the story to his grandnephew and grandniece (196), he certainly finds himself confronted with a different set of questions than he might expect from complete strangers. The shift from the horizontal axis of professional relation to the vertical axis of familial bonds brings in its wake the urgent question of Sampson's part in the events. As we have seen, he had only a limited active part in them, his main action being to caution Miss Niner against Slinkton. Yet even his convincing Miss Niner of her uncle's mischievous intent during their conversation at the beach in Scarborough could (arguably) have been performed by anyone, especially since Meltham and his servant are present during the entire conversation and keep themselves "at the cliff very near us … so near that we were there before she had recovered the hurry of being urged from the rock" (186). It is the one crucial active deed that Sampson performs in the story. Aside from that, his agency is limited to the dubious task of analyzing—if his activity can even justly be called that—Slinkton's physiognomy.

Not having promoted his niece-in-law's case by any active deed except one, and simultaneously having given up his own professional indifference, Sampson must fashion himself as the story's acute observer. His true agency in the entire story, he suggests, has been observation. After the exposure of Slinkton's murderous [End Page 176] intentions (brought about by Meltham), Sampson emphasizes how he kept his keen eye on the villain through repeated use, in quick succession, of verba sentiendi: "I noticed … I saw … I saw … I saw …" (194). Sampson's stress on visual perception is a crucial point of "Hunted Down," a story that is very much about our ways of seeing, and a negotiation in how far seeing is always already an active deed. The opening paragraph of this short story plays what "Most of us see" against that which "I [Sampson] have within the last thirty years seen" (174). In the text, this declaration is immediately followed by the already-mentioned theater metaphor that locates Sampson as a spectator in the auditorium, rather than as an actor on the stage, as if suggesting that true observation of persons and events precludes both interaction with these persons and active participation in these events.

It is clear that the self-fashioning as physiognomic observer ultimately serves as Sampson's justification for his relative passivity throughout the story. Being but an excuse for the comparative lack of the narrator's agency, "Hunted Down" could not be further off from what Wolf has described as a celebration of physiognomic faith ("Speaking Faces" 397). Physiognomics is introduced to the story by the good uncle (in-law), Sampson, in order to bestow a residue of agency on himself in hunting down the bad uncle, Slinkton, as well as to excuse the fact that his active part in the events is rather scant. When Meltham leads Miss Niner quickly away from Slinkton on the Scarborough beach, Sampson tellingly remarks, "I had the inexpressible satisfaction of seeing her … half supported and half carried up some rude steps notched in the cliff, by the figure of an active man. With that figure beside her, I knew she was safe anywhere" (186; my italics). Sampson glosses over the fact that Miss Niner's safety is the result of Meltham's agency, not of his own.

My analysis of the narrative strategies in "Hunted Down" has shown that the alleged celebration of Dickens's belief in physiognomic validity is in fact the story of a physiognomic bungler, who uses physiognomic observation as a means to inscribe himself, ex post facto, in the story in which he had almost no active part, but with which he gains a personal relation at the end, by replacing the familial function of the story's villain. It further provides the narrator with yet another reason for his comparative inactivity: taking on a fully active role is impossible for Sampson, he suggests, as it would clearly impede his physiognomic observation, given his initial suggestion that physiognomics is possible only from a safe distance.

The personal bond to the story's central object of desire, Miss Niner, is the motivation for Sampson's self-fashioning as a competent physiognomist, who is able to identify villains at first sight. The fact that he not even once in his story actually analyzes a single physiognomic feature, but instead relies, on impressions attributable not to true acquaintance with the person analyzed, but to a warning from another character, shows how little truth there is in his apodictic claim that "there is nothing truer than physiognomy." Instead of affirming the truth of physiognomics, such a performative contradiction of praising it as a science, but [End Page 177] not putting it to practice even once, is rather subversive. This is an instance of the great Dickensian topic of the difference between talking about and performing a deed—the kind of hypocrisy readers associate with a range of Dickens characters, such as the "'umble man" Uriah Heep, the "moral man" Seth Pecksniff, the "self-made man" Josiah Bounderby, or the "philanthropist" Luke Honeythunder. Similarly, Sampson is the "active man," who uses the "science" of physiognomics (which he presents as true—truer—truest) to inscribe himself in the story as an active hunter, hunting down the main villain. But the only truth in physiognomics, Dickens clearly indicates in "Hunted Down," is that it might tell us something about the one who believes in it or uses it to his or her purposes, just as Sampson does. In analogy to Bourdieu's words once again: it classifies the classifier rather than the classified.