Book I - Chapter IV. The Preparation Practice Quiz — A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Book I - Chapter IV. The Preparation
Where does Mr. Lorry arrive at the beginning of Chapter 4?
The Royal George Hotel in Dover, after an overnight mail-coach journey from London.
How does Dickens describe Mr. Lorry emerging from the coach?
Shaking himself out "in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs" -- "rather like a larger sort of dog" emerging from a "larger dog-kennel."
What is the "Concord" in this chapter?
The bed-chamber at the Royal George Hotel that is always assigned to mail passengers for freshening up. Staff note that "although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it."
How is Mr. Lorry physically described when he sits at breakfast?
A gentleman of sixty in a brown suit, with large square cuffs, a crisp flaxen wig, moist bright eyes, and a loud watch ticking "a sonorous sermon" under his waistcoat.
What is Tellson's Bank's connection to France?
Tellson's is "quite a French House, as well as an English one," with frequent business travel between London and Paris. Lorry himself was stationed at the French branch for twenty years.
How long has it been since Mr. Lorry last traveled from France?
Fifteen years. He tells the waiter it has been "fifteen years since we -- since I -- came last from France."
How does Dickens describe the town of Dover?
A "little narrow, crooked town" that "hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich." Smuggling is implied through tradesmen who "unaccountably realised large fortunes."
What recurring mental image occupies Mr. Lorry as he waits?
His mind is "busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals" -- connecting to the earlier "Recalled to Life" message and the imagery of unearthing a buried person.
How old is Lucie Manette when she first appears?
She is "a young lady of not more than seventeen," wearing a riding-cloak and holding a straw travelling-hat by its ribbon.
What physical features define Lucie Manette?
A "short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes," and a distinctive forehead with a "singular capacity" of expressing perplexity, wonder, alarm, and fixed attention simultaneously.
What memory flashes through Lorry's mind when he sees Lucie?
A sudden vivid likeness of "a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high."
How does Lorry frame his revelation to Lucie?
He presents Dr. Manette's story as that of an anonymous Tellson's Bank "customer" -- a French doctor from Beauvais -- to soften the blow, repeatedly insisting it is merely "a matter of business."
How does Lucie deduce that the story is about her own father?
When Lorry mentions the customer was a doctor from Beauvais, Lucie immediately asks "Not of Beauvais?" She then connects the details and says, "I begin to think... it was you who brought me to England."
What does Mr. Lorry reveal about Dr. Manette's fate?
Dr. Manette was not dead but was "spirited away" and secretly imprisoned for eighteen years. He has now been found alive, "greatly changed" and "almost a wreck," and taken to the house of an old servant in Paris.
What is the coded phrase Lorry carries in his credentials?
"Recalled to Life" -- which "may mean anything" to outsiders but refers to the secret mission to retrieve Dr. Manette from Paris.
What does Lucie say when she learns her father is alive?
"I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost -- not him!" She suggests the living man cannot be the same person as the father who has been imprisoned for eighteen years.
What literary device does Dickens use in the description of Lucie's dark room?
Symbolism and foreshadowing: the room is "furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair" and the candles are reflected "as if they were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany" -- echoing the themes of death and burial surrounding Dr. Manette.
How does Miss Pross enter the scene?
She comes "running into the room in advance of the inn servants" and settles the question of detaching Lorry from Lucie "by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall."
How does Miss Pross physically appear?
"All of a red colour" with red hair, dressed in "extraordinary tight-fitting fashion," wearing "a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure" or "a great Stilton cheese."
What is the tension between business and feeling in this chapter?
Lorry repeatedly insists the revelation is "a matter of business" and claims to be a "speaking machine" with no feelings, yet his careful indirectness, visible emotion, and tender memory of carrying Lucie as a child reveal deep compassion beneath the professional mask.