Review: The Dean's Watch

When Dean Adam Ayscough, a high-ranking clergyman in an English cathedral town in the 1870’s, stays home from work because of a cold, the last thing he expects is to make a new friend. But when Isaac Peabody, the clockmaker who repairs the Dean’s pocket watch, stumbles into his employer’s office and speaks his mind – “It’s a beautiful watch, sir, and you overwind it. You should take better care of it, sir” (e-book, ch. 5, p. 38) – a friendship forms between the two lonely, eccentric men that is exactly what they need.

Adam’s fierce campaigns for social and ecclesiastical reforms have given him a terrifying reputation, but that same reputation, combined with his lifelong shyness, has made it difficult for him to actually talk to the people he is fighting for. Meeting Isaac becomes a catalyst for a series of encounters that shock Adam out of his comfort zone and teach him to translate his Christian beliefs into action, even as they teach Isaac that his own father’s abusive fanaticism is not the only way to practice religion.

Their kindness to each other spreads in circles until it includes the entire city. Adam’s search for an apprentice for the frail, overworked clockmaker leads to Job, who is secretly dating Polly, Isaac’s maid. Job, a talented and temperamental workhouse orphan, is under a contract to the bullying fishmonger Albert Lee. Adam determines to save them both, victim and abuser, from their unhealthy association. Meanwhile Emma, Isaac’s unmarried older sister, struggles with jealousy of Polly and Job’s romance, and with Isaac’s friendship with one of the most powerful men in the city. Adam has to battle his own dislike of the bitter, narrow-minded woman in order to bring some peace to his friend’s unhappy household. Even Elaine, Adam’s vain and superficial wife, slowly begins to learn the value of her husband, just as she is in danger of losing him for good.

This is one of the few novels I have ever read about, for lack of a better word, professional pride. Isaac’s clocks, Adam’s religious texts, Job’s woodcarvings, Polly’s cooking, the work of Adam’s lawyer, doctor and butler, the long-ago construction of the cathedral, and even Elaine’s fashion choices, are all labors of love. “Genius creates from the heart,” Adam observes. “And when men put love into their work there is power in it, there is a soul in the body” (ch. 7 p. 90). This novel highlights the joys of craftsmanship, but also its challenges, such as Adam’s writer’s block - “Who was he, that he should dare to take a pen in his hand? And how puerile was the result when he had done it” (ch. 14 p. 33) – or Isaac feeling overshadowed by Job’s talent – “He must increase, but I must decrease” (ch. 14, p. 10). This theme of creativity ties in to the story’s sense of faith; whether they acknowledge it or not, the characters’ gifts can all be traced back to the divine. During one of his debates with Isaac, Adam even compares God to a clockmaker:

  “I don’t believe in God,” said Isaac obstinately. 

“I wish I could believe you,” said the Dean. “I should be thankful to believe that you had parted company with the God of your boyhood. But I believe he is with you still in a darkness that shadows your mind at times. Disbelieve in him, Mr. Peabody. Believe instead in love. It is my faith that love shaped the universe as you shape your clocks, delighting in creation. I believe that just as you wish to give me your clock in love, refusing payment, so God loves me and gave Himself for me. That is my faith. I cannot force it upon you, I can only ask you in friendship to consider it.”

-       ch. 15 p. 41-42

 This is also a novel about power, its uses and abuses. Adam does his best to use his wealth, intelligence, and authority as Dean for good, but even he makes mistakes. As a former schoolteacher in an age when corporal punishment was the norm, he knows how difficult it is to draw the line. His attempt to bribe Albert Lee to cancel his contract with Job backfires badly; his classist assumption that money will fix everything collides against Albert’s pride. Albert, on the other hand, is a classic abuser; he gets drunk and beats Job regularly. Emma Peabody is a more subtle example: she resents her brother Isaac for lowering their status by going into trade. She takes it out on him with small things, such as making wool mats that make him slip on the floor, forbidding him to smoke or to chat with Polly, and passive-aggressively reading the Bible to make him feel guilty.

The author, however, instead of reducing these characters to simple villains, shows them to us fully rounded and real. We learn how their harsh actions are, in their own minds, simply defenses from an equally harsh world; it doesn’t excuse them, but it makes them easy to understand. For example, Albert beats his apprentice because he knows Job is smarter than he is, and it makes Albert feel powerless. As for Emma, when Adam reluctantly pays her a visit, a simple gesture – the way she brings out her best tea service for the rare occasion – unlocks a wealth of empathy inside her guest because it shows how lonely she is. Abuse is not a straight line; it is a cycle, and it takes a strong effort to break it. 

Most of all, however, this is a story about love. Sexual love is part of it – Polly and Job share a passionate romance in spite of Emma’s best efforts to stop them – but it is far from being the only part. There is love of place – the city and the cathedral are almost characters in their own right – and love of work – for example, the clocks. The most important love in this story, however, is between people: the friendship between Isaac and Adam, the mentor-student bond between Isaac and Job, Adam’s fatherly love for his lawyer’s granddaughter Bella, the strained sibling relationship of Isaac and Emma, and the complicated marriage of Adam and Elaine.

Of course, none of these relationships are perfect. They all include the potential for hurt and misunderstanding. As Miss Montague, a friend and advisor of almost everyone in the city, says to Adam: “If you turn for your joy to the intractable and explosive stuff of human nature, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.” (ch. 13 p. 57). Besides, the author understands perfectly how challenging it can be for an introvert to talk to people at all. Then again, the reward is more than worth the effort, especially when shared interests form a bridge over the awkwardness: “Love of the work strengthened the love of each other. Love of each other enriched the work” (ch. 14 p. 12). 

Even Isaac, the atheist, feels that “the dark would not entirely get him” while his clocks keep time and his friends remember him (ch. 1 p. 33). Adam, the Christian, holds the same belief with even greater certainty: “Love. The only indestructible thing. The only wealth and the only reality. The only survival. At the end of it all there was nothing else” (ch. 94).