Plot Summary
Book II, Chapter 19 of A Tale of Two Cities opens on the tenth morning of Dr. Manette's relapse into shoemaking—a compulsive return to the labor that sustained him during eighteen years of solitary confinement in the Bastille. Mr. Lorry, who has kept anxious watch throughout, wakes to find the Doctor sitting calmly at his window, reading in his usual morning dress. The shoemaker's bench and tools have been put aside. For a disoriented moment, Lorry wonders whether the entire nine-day episode was a dream, but the evidence of his own disheveled state on the consulting-room sofa confirms the reality.
Miss Pross joins him, and the two agree to behave as though nothing has happened. At breakfast, Dr. Manette appears composedly himself, though he seems to believe only a single day has passed since Lucie's wedding to Charles Darnay—the event whose secret revelation of Darnay's true identity as a member of the Evrémonde family triggered the relapse.
The Consultation
Satisfied that the Doctor has recovered his faculties, Mr. Lorry adopts a careful stratagem. He presents the case as that of "a particularly dear friend" who has suffered a mental relapse, asking Manette—as a physician—to diagnose the cause and recommend treatment. Both men understand that Lorry is speaking about Manette himself, yet the polite fiction allows the Doctor to analyze his own condition without the unbearable pain of direct confession.
Dr. Manette explains that the relapse was "not quite unforeseen"—he had long dreaded that certain intense associations would be revived under particular circumstances. The effort to prepare himself may have made him less able to bear the shock. He cannot remember the relapse itself, but he offers a hopeful prognosis: having yielded under pressure and recovered, the worst is likely over. He believes only the same specific "train of association" could renew the disorder, and he considers those circumstances now exhausted.
The Shoemaker's Bench
Mr. Lorry then raises the most delicate question: should the Doctor's shoemaking tools be removed? Using the metaphor of a "blacksmith's forge," he argues that retaining the instruments of the relapse may perpetuate the fear of needing them. Dr. Manette resists—the bench is "such an old companion," and the thought of not finding it when needed fills him with terror "like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child." Yet he ultimately consents, asking only that the removal happen in his absence.
After the Doctor departs on the fourteenth day to rejoin Lucie and Darnay, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross carry out their mission. In a darkly comic scene, Lorry hacks the bench to pieces with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer while Miss Pross holds a candle "as if she were assisting at a murder." They burn the wood in the kitchen fire and bury the tools, shoes, and leather in the garden—feeling, writes, "almost like accomplices in a horrible crime."
Themes and Significance
The chapter explores the psychology of trauma and recovery with remarkable sensitivity. Dr. Manette's ability to diagnose his own condition while speaking in the third person reveals both his intellectual strength and his emotional fragility. The destruction of the shoemaker's bench is a symbolic act of liberation—an attempt to sever the last material link to the Bastille—yet the guilty, secretive manner of its execution foreshadows that the past cannot be so easily destroyed.