Our Mutual Friend

[Lee Edwards]

I know that the inhabitants of Queer Street are in financial difficulties (largely due to living fecklessly and beyond their means), but can anyone give me a precise definition of "queer bills"? Thanks.

[Henry IX]

The 'queer bills' that Fledgeby was interested in were debts of questionable validity. Moneylenders who had them were willing to sell them for a small sum, since they doubted that they could ever be collected. Fledgeby used Riah as his "enforcer," and since Jews were commonly thought to be unscrupulous, grasping, and greedy, Riah was thought to be the owner of the firm. In the novel, though, it is Fledgeby who is the greedy one, and Riah is not. It was not common in the 19th century to portray Jews in a sympathetic light, as Dickens does in OMF. Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is the stereotype greedy and unscruplous Jew.

[isidro]

Perhaps that is simply one of Dickens's many little witticisms and puns. The very rich, in his view, always seem to be a little eccentric, and think of the strange kinds of things we pay an arm and leg for today - yoga, anyone? I can say that because I do yoga daily. But you pay money to learn how to effectively turn yourself into a pretzel? Sushi as well. You pay to eat raw fish and take a chance of disease. I love sushi and eat it once a week so I can mock it. But these are the queer bills of the present age, I would think.