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| B00I3SQAVE
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| 1853
| Jan 28, 2014
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it was amazing
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Which house in Charles Dickens's novel is "Bleak House"? It surely cannot be the house which bears its name; a large airy house, which we first visit i Which house in Charles Dickens's novel is "Bleak House"? It surely cannot be the house which bears its name; a large airy house, which we first visit in the company of the young wards of Jarndyce, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, and their companion Esther. Ironically, this "Bleak House" is anything but bleak. It is a pleasant place of light and laughter. Mr. Jarndyce imprints his positive outlook on life, never allowing the lawsuit to have any negative influence. Indeed, when he first took on the house from a relative, Tom Jarndyce, he says, "the place [had become] dilapidated, the wing whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.” Neither can it be another house, which is to bear its name far later in the novel. So does the title perhaps refer to "Tom-All-Alone's", originally owned by Tom Jarndyce, but now a decrepit edifice inhabited by poor unfortunates who have nowhere else to go, sleeping crammed on top of each other? Tom-All-Alone's certainly represents the worst of society's injustices. Or could it be the immensely grand, laybrinthine mansion, "Chesney Wold", owned by Lord and Lady Dedlock? That is a magnificent abode, complete with its ominously suggestive "Ghost Walk"; much admired, much respected, but devoid of happiness. It embodies a bleakness of spirit; those living in it live a lie, and mourn the past. Or is it more likely to be one of the smaller neglected dwellings, such as that of Krook the rag-and-bone merchant, whose house is packed to the brim with junk and paper - or his neighbour, the mad Miss Flite, herself once a ward of Jarndyce, now reduced to living with her caged birds, "Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach." Or the house inhabited by Mrs Jellyby; yet another neglected house near to falling down, as she furthers her missionary zeal, leaving her daughter Caddy to cope as best she can with the crumbling household? Her self-righteous friend Mrs. Pardiggle's house, is also a candidate, "The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him." And the hovel lived in by Jenny and her brickmaker husband, is surely a contender; that meagre hut visited with an ostentatious show of charity by the abominable Mrs. Pardiggle with her "rapacious benevolence (if I may use the expression)"? There is no shortage of candidates for a "Bleak House" in this behemoth novel - but it is by far from clear which house is meant. Dickens has given us a surprisingly short title, but it is as well disguised as the sixty-two word long title for the novel we now call, "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" or even simply, "Martin Chuzzlewit..." in which throughout the novel we think it is called after one character, but on consideration, it is more likely to be about another. Dickens loved his mysteries, and this is his greatest completed mystery novel. Even the characters are in disguise. One has called himself "Nemo" - "no-one" - and another has taken great pains to obfuscate her history; yet another has never known his own name. In some cases the disguise is not by intention; one of the main characters genuinely does not know who she actually is, and thinks she is someone else. But before this review becomes as baffling as some of the nascent strands in this novel (never fear, with Dickens everything is tied up nicely by the end), perhaps I should set the scene properly. Bleak House was Charles Dickens's ninth novel, written when he was between 40 and 41 years of age. Whilst writing it Dickens's wife Kate gave birth to their tenth child, Edward, or "Plorn". A few months later Dickens himself went on tour throughout England with his amateur acting troupe. He then became seriously ill with a recurrence of a childhood kidney complaint, and was bedridden for six days, but still had 17 chapters to write. He went to Boulogne, France to recover, and celebrated finishing Bleak House by holding a banquet in Boulogne, for his publishers Bradbury and Evans, his close friend, the writer Wilkie Collins, and several others. Each part of the serial was illustrated by his favourite illustrator and great friend Hablot Knight Brown, or "Phiz", with remarkable skill. His illustrations take great care to convey the dark brooding mood of the novel, or the quirkiness of the characters. They even cleverly manage to convey the novel's theme of disguise. Esther's face, for instance, is rarely shown. She is usually turned away from the viewer's eye. This novel is often considered Dickens's finest work although it is not by any means his most popular. His working title for Bleak House was actually "Tom-All-Alone's", which seems to indicate that of all the many themes in this book, the paramount one in his mind was his hatred of the London slums. Dickens loathed both the despicable conditions there, and the governmental practices which allowed them to exist. He tirelessly campaigned for their improvement. But the action itself is intended to illustrate the evils caused by long, drawn-out suits in the Courts of Chancery. Much of it was based on fact, as Dickens had observed the inner workings of the courts as a reporter in his youth. In Bleak House he observes bitterly, "The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble." This, then, is the crux of the story, but it is wrapped in a magnificently complex tale of mystery and intrigue. In fact there are about five major stories all interwoven in Bleak House, and it would be difficult to say which the main story is. Each is connected to the case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, and the destructive ramifications of two conflicting and contesting wills echo down the generations, and across all strata of society. It is a breathtaking accomplishment to plot, develop and tell such a complex story in such a riveting way. For it has to be borne in mind that this, like his preceding novels, was only accessible to Dickens's readers in small chunks of three or four chapters at a time, once a month, stretched over a year and a half: March 1852 to September 1853. Yet his readers were gripped, entranced, demanding; able to remember the myriads of characters from one episode to the next. Perhaps this is why Dickens gave his characters such memorable tags: Jo, the crossing-sweeper, who "don't know nothink", subject to grinding poverty and ignorance, forever being "moved on"; the languid "My Lady" Dedlock, fashionably fatigued, forever full of ennui and "bored with life, bored with myself", Miss Flite, who "expects a judgment shortly", John Jarndyce, to be avoided if "the wind is in the east" and he is in his "growlery", Harold Skimpole, protesting he is "but a child" in matters of money. The Smallweeds are a grotesque family of caricatures. The miserly money-lender Grandfather Smallweed is a very old man confined to a chair, where he is probably sitting on a large sum of money. His wife is living in fear of him, and permanently panicked by any mention of money. She starts up and talks nonsense until Grandfather Smallweed throws his cushion at her, silencing her but reducing himself to a bundle of clothes, whereupon we get his catchphrase, "Shake me up, Judy!" There is the lawyer Tulkinghorn; the man of secrets, "a great reservoir of confidences", or the lesser lawyer Vholes, the "evil genius". There are many short quips such as these, carefully planted by Dickens, to jog our memories should we need them. Perhaps the easiest story to follow is that of Esther Summerson, a nobody whose "mother was her disgrace". She was a poor child, with a sense of being guilty for having been born, feeling that her birthday "was the most melancholy ... in the whole year". She was offered an education and a home by the benefactor John Jarndyce. Dickens invites us to view her story as key, by alterating passages of the novel, making some chapters by an omisicient narrator, and some by Esther. Unfortunately for a modern audience, we quickly lose sympathy with Esther, who seems to protest her gaucheness and ineptitude rather too much. Perhaps after all it is telling that she is Dickens's only female narrator. In the narrative she makes it very clear how unworthy she is, how unattractive and dull compared with her peers. She also makes it abundantly clear that anyone reading her words knows that everyone in Bleak House argues with her about this, always complimenting her kindness, virtue, wisdom, hard work and her strong sense of gratitude and duty. It is tempting to view this as an ironic depiction of Esther, were we not now to know that a modest, self-effacing woman such as this, was what Dickens himself admired - or at least professed in public to admire. The character of Esther was thought to be based on Georgina Hogarth, his wife's youngest sister, who had joined his household in 1845, and was taking over more and more of the running of the house. She was apparently a self-sacrificing sort of person, who immersed herself in household duties and was dedicated to the welfare of others. Many other characters in Bleak House were also, as was so often the case, based on people Dickens knew, and sometimes they were famous with his readers too. For instance Harold Skimpole, that dissembling, conniving hypocrite, lover of Art, Music, culture and everything that was fine and tasteful, was a thinly veiled portrait of Leigh Hunt, an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer, who continually sponged off his friends, Shelley and Byron. Dickens himself admitted this, "I suppose he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words! ... It is an absolute reproduction of a real man". Mrs. Jellyby was based on Caroline Chisholm, who had started out as an evangelical philanthropist in Sydney, Australia, and then moved to England in 1846. Over the next six years Caroline assisted 11,000 people to settle in Australia. Dickens admired her greatly, and supported her schemes to assist the poor who wished to emigrate. However, he was appalled by how unkempt her own children were, and by the general neglect he saw in her household, hence his portrayal of Mrs. Jellyby. Another character, Laurence Boythorn, who was continually at odds with Sir Leicester Dedlock over land rights, was based on Dickens's friend, Walter Savage Landor. He also was an English writer and poet; critically acclaimed but not very popular. His headstrong nature, hot-headed temperament, and complete contempt for authority, landed him in a great deal of trouble over the years. His writing was often libellous, and he was repeatedly involved in legal disputes with his neighbours. And yet Landor was described as, "the kindest and gentlest of men". Perhaps the most poignant character is Jo the crossing sweeper. He has, "No father, no mother, no friends", yet is essential to the plot, and clearly has a lot of innate intelligence. Perhaps Dickens took especial care with this portrayal, as according to Dickens's sixth son, Alfred, Jo was based on a small boy, a crossing sweeper outside Dickens's own house. Dickens took a great interest in the lad, gave him his meals and sent him to school at night. When he reached the age of seventeen, Dickens fitted him out and paid his passage to the colony of New South Wales, where he did very well, writing back to his benefactor three years later. If Jo is the character likeliest to tug at the heartstrings, Inspector Bucket may be the one to admire most; the one who seems before his time, presaging much of the detective fiction we enjoy today. The character of the astute Inspector Bucket, uncomfortable unless he gives "Sir Leicester Dedlock - Baronet", his full title every time, is the first ever portrayal of a detective in English fiction, as he, "stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age...there is nothing remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing". Dickens based him on the real-life Inspector Charles Frederick Field, about whom he had already written three articles in "Household Words". Lady Dedlock's maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, is one of Dickens's most powerful females; a prototype of Madame Defarge in "A Tale of Two Cities", full of passion, outrage, and talk of blood. She was modelled on a real-life Swiss lady's maid, Maria Manning, who, along with her husband were convicted of the murder of Maria's lover, Patrick O'Connor, in a case which became known as "The Bermondsey Horror." All Dickens's contemporary readers would have been familiar with the case. Amusingly, one character is named after a real person - though she is not a human being at all but a cat! Krook's cat "Lady Jane", is named after Lady Jane Grey who reigned as Queen of England for a mere nine days in 1533. (She was forced to abdicate, imprisoned, and eventually beheaded.) Although the theme of greed and corruption within the law is bitingly serious, and a passionately held belief by Dickens, and although the mysteries pile one on top of another throughout the book, Dickens provides plenty of comic characters to lighten the mood and pepper his stories. As well as those mentioned, there is the twittery Volumnia Dedlock, a poor relation of Sir Leicester Dedlock, described as "a young lady (of sixty)...rouged and necklaced". And we have the junior lawyer Mr. Guppy, almost too clever for his own good, presented in a ridiculous light, although actually having a sound and loyal moral core. He is one of my personal favourites. There is also Mr. Turveydrop, the owner of a dance academy, and a "model of deportment ... He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear." Esther comments, "As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes." His hardworking, dancing master son "Prince" (named after the Prince Regent) is another humorous portrayal, as is Caddy Jellyby. Albeit a drudge and slave for her philanthropic mother, we are first intoduced to Caddy as a comical crosspatch with inky fingers. The tiny tot Peepy Jellyby is a delight, and Caddy's father too, is almost pathetically comical, finding consolation in leaning his head on walls; any wall seeming to suffice. We do get a slightly different view of the other characters through Esther's eyes, which makes for interesting reading. Harold Skimpole, for instance is, I think, only shown within her purview. But with the comic episodes it matters not whose eyes we are viewing them through; we just enjoy their exuberance as a contrast to the simpering sentiments of Esther, "Dame Durden", "Old Woman", "Little Woman", "Mrs. Shipton" "Mother Hubbard", or any of the other appellations coined by the inhabitants of Bleak House. She herself is irritatingly wont to call Ada "my dear", "my darling", "my pet", or "my love", rarely using her actual name, even in reported speech. My, how tastes do change. So which house do I personally think "Bleak House" refers to? It could well be Chesney Wold, which by the end has itself become a kind of tomb for the ghosts, "no flag flying now by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it", But given all the metaphors in the novel, I am bound to conside the title itself as a metaphor. In most of his works, Dickens imbues buildings, particuarly old houses, with their own personality. Each become a character in its own right. Bleak House, in my view, is a metaphor for the High Court of Chancery. So would it be too fanciful of me to suggest that the main character in this novel in the Law itself? Read it and see what you think. You don't need to take 18 months, as Dickens's public had to. But it may be a good idea to not race through this book, if you want to follow all the mysteries. Perhaps you may wish to explore the contrasting themes of antiquity and tradition represented by Sir Leicester Dedlock, set against the ever encroaching Industrial Age; an age of progress, represented by the housekeeper's grandson, the iron-master's son, Watt (such an appropriate first name!) Rouncewell. Or perhaps the theme of being trapped, being a prisoner, being caged calls to you. There are a host of examples within. Or the theme of unhappy families; bad child-rearing is shown time and time again in all its many guises, with equally devastating effects for rich and poor alike. Nearly all the lives of these characters seem to be unfulfilled, and have been blighted by coincidences or misunderstandings. They are people trapped by their circumstances. You may find that you enjoy spotting the codes, or the continuing motifs of paper, birds, disguised faces, fire, and so on; not to mention getting the most out of Bleak House's masterly complexity and thrilling atmosphere. You may love the richness of the language and description. Or you may, in the end, become addicted to the mystery element and read it strictly for the story itself. There are many interwoven plots in this novel and altogether there are ten deaths as it proceeds; all of them tragic in different ways, and most of them key characters. One is due to a hot topic in scientific debate, so contentious that Dickens felt the need to defend it in his preface. In February 1853, just over halfway through this novel, he became involved in a public controversy about the issue of (view spoiler)[spontaneouse combustion (hide spoiler)]. George Henry Lewes had argued that the phenomenon was a scientific impossibility, but Dickens maintained that it could happen. I do not tell the story, it would be well nigh impossible anyway in this space, but I do encourage you to read this masterpiece. A labyrinth of grandeur...an old family of echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and departs. ...more |
Notes are private!
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3
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Dec 11, 2021
Jan 20, 2016
Aug 15, 1990
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May 25, 2022
Mar 18, 2016
Oct 15, 1990
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Jan 20, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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| 0.00
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| unknown
| 1912
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 19, 2016
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Hardcover
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| B00Q9A92RW
| 3.82
| 28
| Nov 26, 2014
| Nov 26, 2014
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0
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not set
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Jan 14, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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| B004I43BGY
| 3.82
| 10,986
| Jul 21, 1841
| unknown
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really liked it
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2
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Jan 18, 2015
not set
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Feb 09, 2015
not set
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Dec 30, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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| 3.19
| 1,478
| 1846
| 1912
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liked it
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The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, which was first published for the Christmas season in 1846. It is one of his most up
The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, which was first published for the Christmas season in 1846. It is one of his most uplifting Christmas tales. The first Christmas book, “A Christmas Carol” had been enormously successful when he published it in 1843, and continues to be so. All his subsequent Christmas books also sold well at the time they were first published, but none has enjoyed the staying power of “A Christmas Carol”. This one, for instance, has never since attained any high level of popularity, and is now comparatively unknown. Only the first three continue to be popular. Yet Dickens’s name had become so synonymous with Christmas, that when he died in 1870 a costermonger’s little girl in London asked, “Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?” Throughout the rest of the 1840s, Dickens continued to produce a “Christmas Book” each year. The Battle of Life was published in time for the Christmas of 1846, a year which had seen Dickens and his family travel to Switzerland. In this year he had also published his autobiographical writings, “Pictures From Italy”, but perhaps uppermost in his mind at this point, was working on his great novel “Dombey and Son”. Dickens was partway into the serialisation of this novel, which he would not finish writing and publishing for another two years. The Battle of Life: A Love Story is the fourth annual Christmas Story out of a total of five. It was preceded by “The Cricket on the Hearth” and followed by “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain”. All are speculative fiction, designed to entertain as many people as possible, and repeating what he called “the Carol philosophy” striking “a sledgehammer blow” for the poor, uneducated, and repressed. All five stories have a strong underlying message, which is presented in various moods and tableaux. It has been said that “when he had a pill to offer he confected it expertly with spice and sugar”, and we see much evidence of this here. In The Battle of Life we see Dickens’s typical style, a mixture of humour and good cheer, interwoven with an intriguing mystery. The start of the story surprises us, with a dark description of a battlefield. The blood shed had stained all Nature red, and people were to remember the savagery of such a futile massacre for many years hence, though “not a hundred people in that battle, knew what they fought for, or why”. This is portentous writing, which we will see developed in a future novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”. It fills us with foreboding, and we are not sure what its place is here, especially since “it matters little when, and ... it matters little where”. It seems to have a been a senseless atrocity. But we remember the subheading to The Battle of Life as simply, A Love Story, and the very first words have also reassured us that this is “Once upon a time”. This is Dickens, after all, with his optimism and happy endings, so we settle down to enjoy the story. And indeed, the action soon shifts, and we see Dickens in his familiar lighthearted and whimsical mood. We are transported to an orchard “where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of music and laughter”, and two girls, sisters Grace and Marion, dancing without, apparently a care in the world. We then meet a good-natured widower, Dr. Jeddler, who is their father. In fact so jovial is Dr. Jeddler, that his entire philosophy of life seem to be to treat life as a farce, as nothing is worth taking seriously, but, “to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man” “The same contradictions prevail in everything. One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.” (Apparently Dickens was rather aggrieved when his publisher inadvertently called this character “Dr. Taddler”, although either name seems to fit!) Dr. Jeddler clearly adores both his daughters, and they are both devoted to him - and love each other dearly too - all three living happily together in this unnamed English village. This happy trio have two servants, Clemency Newcome and Ben Britain. Dickens’s portrayal of Clemency is a joy, “To say that she had two left legs, and somebody else’s arms, and that all four limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong places when they were set in motion, is to offer the mildest outline of the reality” and provides much of the humour in these early chapters. Clemency’s continuous repeated readings of the nutmeg grater and thimble, provide her with much to reflect on, and Dickens’s recurring references to Clemency’s elbows, which seem to be imbued with a life of their own, had me chortling out loud. Benjamin Britain (which surely also has to be a significant name) is a boastful sort, inclined to view himself as a great philosophiser on life, rather in the mould of the pub landlord John Willet in the earlier novel “Barnaby Rudge”. He is rather disdainful and condescending toward the good-natured Clemency, but she takes it in good part. In many way she seems an early template or working out of the character of Clara Peggotty, in “David Copperfield”, which Dickens was to write three years later. The book is divided into three chapters, and in “Part the First”, we meet another character, Alfred Heathfield. Arthur is Dr. Jeddler’s ward, and is not only celebrating his birthday on this day, but also his coming of age. Also at the Jeddler’s party are two crabbed old lawyers, Snitchey and Craggs, who both seem to be either devious or untrustworthy in some way, as so often in Dickens’s tales. They are not as malevolently evil as Uriah Heep in “David Copperfield” but easily a match for Mr. Vholes - or perhaps early incarnations of Tulkinghorn - both in the later “Bleak House”. Snitchey continually refers to himself as “Self”, but this does not come across as modesty, but more as a detachment from any human feeling; not self-effacing but setting himself above people. Nor do other lawyers in Dickens, such as the barristers Stryver (in “A Tale of Two Cities”) and the lawyer Jaggers, (in “Great Expectations”) have many admirable qualities, but seem to be full of deviousness. Dickens had no love of, and little respect for lawyers, and his portraits are drawn from life. At the age of 15. Dickens was studying law as an attorney’s apprentice. He worked hard to master shorthand, reading lengthy legal texts, and becoming very bored. Dickens loved language, and yearned to use it somehow. In 1829 he became a court reporter for the Court of Chancery, and what he learned there fuelled much of his writing, even to such minor characters as these two, Snitchey and Craggs, only ostensibly here at this point in the story to transfer the Trust Fund. We learn that this celebratory dinner for Alfred is also a farewell meal for him. He is about to leave both Dr. Jeddler’s house and the village, in order to complete his studies. Alfred is apprenticed to the Doctor, but he also hopes to seek his fortune in the world, so that he will be able to propose to the younger sister, Marion. Marion also seems to be drawn to Alfred romantically, and Alfred leaves in the hope that although not officially betrothed, they have an understanding. He entrusts Marion to her older sister Grace’s care, promising to return to win Marion’s hand in marriage. The end of the first chapter sees Alfred setting off to leave the village by stagecoach. We have come a long way from the initial darkness of the blood spilled on the battlefield. We realise that that such a battle must be a metaphor. “The Battle of Life” in another sense, then. A battle involves sacrifice and loss. We sense a shadow of gloom, and are apprehensive. What could destroy the idyllic peace and harmony we have witnessed in this little family? What difficulties are to befall this small group of characters, for whom we already have such an affection (although maybe not so much for the shifty lawyers)? We have learned that Marion’s own birthday is the same day as the great waste of life, the battle of long ago, and wonder if this is significant. Is it then Marion’s “Battle of life” we are to follow? And what part is Grace to play in this? She plays a maternal role, seeming almost to be a mother to Marion, despite only being four years her elder. We have had much description of her kindness and fortitude; her character seems to be aptly named as so often with Dickens. What is the mystery, the subtext here? There is bound to be one. In Part Two we learn more of these slightly unpleasant, yet aptly named lawyers, Snitchey and Craggs. Their offices are “on the old Battle Grounds”. We also meet their delightfully warring wives who are always warning their respective husbands not to allow themselves to be taken in by their business partner. All these four seem to thoroughly deserve each other, and provide much amusement for the reader. We also become aware through these little spats, that nobody here is truly malicious, just life-long complainers. A subplot is developing with a dislikeable scoundrel of a new character, Michael Warden, whose affairs are in a bad way. Or is this merely a subplot? Dickens has a well-known habit of introducing little asides which seem to be inconsequential, only to thrust them straight under the spotlight, whereupon we find they were essential to the main story all along. (view spoiler)[Snitchey and Craggs assure Michael that with their aid, and in due process of time, six or seven years perhaps, they can turn his fortunes around. But he will need to go abroad to live, and forget his love for Marion Jeddler, (whom we know anyway, is otherwise inclined. Or is she? There are many indications that Marion doesn’t love Alfred, and we also strongly suspect that Grace herself is in love with him.) (hide spoiler)] We have two surprises which are the cause of much merriment in this section. (view spoiler)[Alfred is coming home at long last, which should make Marion, his beau, very happy. And Clemency is to marry Benjamin Britain. (hide spoiler)] The snow falls thick and fast, just as it should in a Christmas story, and both characters and readers wait in eager anticipation. (view spoiler)[ But tragedy ensues, and the section ends with Marion’s mysterious and unaccountable disappearance. We do not know how, why, or where. Has she perhaps eloped? But with whom? Michael was certainly pushing her to elope with him, but he is such a disreputable character with no attractive qualities and few prospects. And doesn’t she love Alfred anyway? We are beginning to rethink Marion’s character, and wondering if she loves anyone at all, save her sister and her father. (hide spoiler)] Despite catastrophic events, we hope for a good resolution, and Dickens seem to promise this at the beginning of the “Part the Third” section, which takes place six years later, “The sun burst suddenly from among the clouds; and the old battleground, sparking brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place, flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the country side as if a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand stations.” The day is Marion’s birthday and also happens to be the day of someone’s marriage. (view spoiler)[ Grace and Alfred chose it as their wedding day (hide spoiler)]. A strange visitor in mourning arrives at “The Nutmeg Grater” Inn, one who seems uncannily familiar. (view spoiler)[ Clemency Newcome had lost her job at Doctor Jeddler’s after Marion’s disappearance, because he blamed her for never telling him that Marion had a secret suitor. But Clemency is now married to Benjamin Britain, and they have children. They are the owners of the inn. The stranger turns out to be Michael Warden, who has come back in order to prepare the sale of his goods before leaving the country for ever. He is ostensibly in mourning for Marion. However, in a neat little twist we learn that Marion never did marry Michael, but fled to live with her aunt Martha, who had been estranged from her brother Doctor Jeddler. This was in order to give time for Alfred and Grace to become closer, and become sweethearts. Michael knew of this plan from the start, and by the end of the story, the sisters are reunited at last, and the whole family are in on the secret. (hide spoiler)] The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a “Christmas Book” only in a broadly thematic sense, and sometimes by indications of the time of year. It is not directly concerned with Christmas events. The setting of an English village standing on the site of an historic battle is drawn attention to by the characters themselves, who refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, and we are aware of this fact right from the start, but not the details of how the lives depicted will be played out. In a letter to his friend and mentor, John Forster, Dickens hoped, “to express both a love story in the common acceptation of the phrase, and also a story of love; with one or two other things of that sort” and certainly the major events of this story comprise Dickens’s idea of the real battle of life: that of finding and winning the right partner, so that life will go ever onwards to the next generation. The story is similar to the previous one, “The Cricket on the Hearth” in its domestic rural setting, and also like this earlier one has a satisfying romantic twist at the end, though it is less of a social novel in its underlying theme. The Jeddler family and their acquaintances are all rather confused in their affections and intentions, and we are never quite sure who should end up with whom. There are sacrifices in love made, and “kindly cynical” Doctor Jeddler’s view of life is no longer that of a jester. We are drawn into the “battle” to make things all work towards the resolution; to the happy ending we expect from Dickens. Unlike all Dickens’s other Christmas stories, there is no explicitly religious element, nor is there any supernatural content which so often aids the character’s change of heart. All Dickens’s Christmas books involve at least one character having a life-affirming change of heart, but this time it is without the aid of supernatural beings. There are no ghosts or spirits, although he does manage to create an ominous Gothic feel. There are many references to darkness, gloom and glimmers of light; mysterious strangers lurk in the shadows, things are not what they appear to be. Churchyards with phantoms and apparitions are in the mind of the characters, and much of the action seems to take place after dark. There is a sense of other-worldliness; a sense that one must not step over the threshold. There are unexplained noises, and disappearances, and questions which remain unresolved for many a year. Dickens referred to his new story as, “a pretty idea; and it is unlike the others ...” and we see how a battlefield and site of hopeless brutality can be transformed over the years, becoming a place of healing and care; a place of families, and many different forms of love. Some parts of this piece do now seem unfashionably melodramatic. Dickens loved his set pieces, and outright theatricality. These overly frantic histrionics seem a little self-indulgent for modern tastes, but were very popular with Victorian readers. Dickens had no reason at all to rein in his emotions at that time, and probably gave vent to quite a lot of inner impulses. It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to speculate on the significance of the initial “G” for Grace, which is also the initial letter of “Georgina” Hogarth, the sister-in-law who died so tragically young, and whom he so idolised. By the same token, “M” could well represent Mary, the other young sister, who was a much-loved and valued member of the Dickens household, and looked after his children. The ending is a beautiful piece of writing, as Dickens steps back out of his picture, commenting that, “Time—from whom I had the latter portion of this story, and with whom I have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance of some five-and-thirty years’ duration—informed me, leaning easily upon his scythe, that (view spoiler)[Michael Warden never went away again, and never sold his house, but opened it afresh, maintained a golden means of hospitality, and had a wife, the pride and honour of that countryside, whose name was Marion. (hide spoiler)] But, as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly know what weight to give to his authority.” An ending such as this is sure to make me smile. The Battle of Life; A Love Story may be the least popular of the Christmas books, and does not tackle any great Victorian social issues such as “The Chimes”. But it is a charming little story nevertheless. It has been said to be flawed, and Dickens himself felt frustrated that he was not able to develop it properly under the constraints of the Christmas book format, writing to a friend two years later, “I was thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so short a story. I did not see its full capacity until it was too late to think of another subject; and I have always felt that I might have done a great deal with it, if I had taken it for the groundwork of a more extended book.” But is seems to epitomise what Dickens described for the rest of his life as “the Carol Philosophy”. This philosophy continues to be relevant, cutting through the materialism of modern Christmas celebrations to get to the heart of Dickens’s message. For Dickens this time of year is, “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Surprisingly for such a short piece, Dickens commissioned four different illustrators for the first edition of The Battle of Life: A Love Story. They were Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, John Leech, and Clarkson Stanfield. All four artists engraved their illustrations on wood, and all four worked more in the caricatured style of Phiz than later editions of Dickens’s works. My review here is of the “Pears Anniversary Edition of the Christmas Stories” from 1912; the set comprising one cloth-bound volume for each of his five Christmas Books. They are a matching set, with different coloured bindings, but each with gold-tooled lettering and the Pears cameo inset on the cover. The Battle of Life: A Love Story has illustrations by Charles Green, which are monochromatic and surprisingly very naturalistic. In fact they almost look like photographs. It is certainly not quite how we usually envisage Dickens’s characters whether comic, grotesque or romantic. Phiz is a hard act to follow! What is so delightful about this particular edition, apart from the fact that the book is over 100 years old, and still lovely to hold with no page discoloration, is the sheer number of illustrations. It is interesting to speculate, given the shortness of these novellas, and the plethora of illustrations, whether he intended them as family reading, perhaps spoken or even acted out loud, around the cosy hearth of a family home. My favourite quotation from this book? There are so many wonderful comic quips, but here is Dickens in a sage frame of mind, “We count by changes and events within us. Not by years.” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 10, 2016
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Jan 06, 2017
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Dec 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 3.29
| 1,841
| 1848
| 1912
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liked it
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Charles Dickens is often credited with inventing the modern idea of celebrating Christmas, with festive warmth and family games, mountains of presents
Charles Dickens is often credited with inventing the modern idea of celebrating Christmas, with festive warmth and family games, mountains of presents, food feasts, trees and garlands. He also enjoyed casting a spooky, haunting mood over the holiday. To Dickens, Christmas was not only a time for festive warmth, but one for telling ghostly stories around the hearth, with a cosy fire blazing. Christmas takes place right after the winter solstice, when the weather has dropped colder, and on the longest nights of the year. It seems fitting to be a time for dark examination of the soul, too. For Victorians these ghost stories began to be associated with Christmas time, and the end of the year. The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain is a curious Christmas Tale. It might almost been seen as the mirror image of “A Christmas Carol”, a darkly weird and bleak story for much of the time, although fear not, Dickens will give us his customary happy ending, of sorts. The beginning though, is decidedly sombre. Just a few sentences in, we have: “Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea-weed, about his face,—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity,—but might have said he looked like a haunted man?” Moreover, his manner was “taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve”; his voice, “slow-speaking, deep, and grave”. This then, is the character who will be at the centre of our tale. He is a Mr. Redlaw, a teacher of chemistry who often sits brooding over all the wrongs which have been done him, and the grief from his past. This is how we first encounter him, in his room which is “part library and part laboratory … so solitary and vault-like,—an old, retired part of an ancient endowment for students”. The man and the room seem part and parcel of each other. But wait. What is this strange visitation. Is he dreaming the images he sees in the open fire, or is he seeing some spirit or ghost? We know how much Dickens loved his ghosts, phantoms and sprites, and here we have a visitor similar to Ebenezer Scrooge’s Marley. Is this a supernatural agent, an inner vision, a Mr. Hyde to his Jekyll, a Jungian shadow, a doppelganger? Should this perhaps more accurately have been entitled (view spoiler)[“The Man Who Haunted himself” (hide spoiler)]? “an awful likeness of himself …with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress …” Indeed, I did wonder that Dickens did not use this title, as this element comes so early in the tale, that it would hardly be a spoiler. It seems as though Dickens himself was having a tussle with this tale, his fifth and final Christmas Book. Unlike the earlier ones which followed on each Christmas, his adoring public had to wait another year for this one. Perhaps he was wearying of the format of a short “Christmas spirit”-themed novel, and the fact that his many annual Christmas stories afterwards were far shorter, tends to bear this out. To his friend and mentor John Forster, he confided: “Would there be any distinctly bad effect in holding this idea over for another twelvemonth? saying nothing whatever till November; and then announcing in the Dombey that its occupation of my entire time prevents the continuance of the Christmas series until next year, when it is purported to be renewed. I am very loath to lose the money. And still more so the leave any gap at Christmas firesides which I ought to fill.” This seems so unlike the Dickens we know, who excelled at juggling several projects at once, that I wondered at the true motives. Was he finding either Dombey or this story particularly difficult to write? I do feel that this story is unique in his oeuvre; there’s nothing quite like it really. The inspiration for The Haunted Man first came to Dickens in Lausanne, at the beginning of 1846. Actually, the ideas for three out of the five Christmas books had come to him whilst abroad, which is strange, as the books themselves feel very English. Yet “The Chimes” was inspired by the bells of Genoa, and the one previous to this, “The Battle of Life” was also written in Lausanne. However, since Forster advised Dickens to wait, he did not actually write The Haunted Man until over a year later, in Broadstairs, during his autumn holiday. He took two months, completing it at the end of November at the Bedford Hotel in Brighton. When writing the first Christmas book, “A Christmas Carol” he had also been writing “Martin Chuzzlewit”, and “The Battle of Life” was written during the early days of “Dombey and Son”. Just as parts of that novel are very dark and downbeat, so for the main part is The Haunted Man. It was staged as a Christmas Eve production of a play in 1862, and one wonders if the dour and sombre tone of the book pervaded this production. Certainly the one dramatisation of it that I have heard missed out the comedic elements completely. For there is brilliant comedy. What would Dickens be without his irrepressible instinct to make everyone laugh at some absurdity, or let out an uncertain giggle after a grim, morose, gloom-ridden description, or tragic, savage, devastating part of the story. Here, Dickens seems conscious of drowning his readers in pessimism, with his lengthy descriptions of Mr. Redlaw and the ancient edifice he inhabits. Before he has allowed the Phantom to be any more than a passing impression, he entertains us with William Swidger, the Keeper of the academic institution, followed shortly by his wife, “Mrs. William … composed and orderly … so placid and neat … a quiet mouse”, often quite “taken off her legs” by inclement weather. There is his father a “venerable old man with long grey hair”, forever insisting “I’m eighty-seven — eighty-seven!” The Swidgers, cheeryfaced, simple, innocent with an excess of bustling readiness for anything, are a perfect antidote to the story’s mood, and so they work their uplifting magic on Mr. Redlaw for a while, as we learn of another inhabitant in the unversity: a young student, who had not wanted his presence to be made known to his teacher. But, the Phantom was not to be gainsaid. It would yet manifest itself: “The room had darkened more and more. There was a very heavy gloom and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s chair.” Like Scrooge, Redlaw does not want to see the Phantom: “I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man; “I hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night … Why do you come, to haunt me thus?” And we learn the meaning of the subtitle, The Ghost’s Bargain. It is an extraordinary offer, one which the troubled Mr. Redlaw has seemed to crave: “I would forget it if I could! Have I thought that, alone, or has it been the thought of thousands upon thousands, generation after generation? All human memory is fraught with sorrow and trouble.” For the Phantom offers him oblivion; the ability to erase all the memories with which he is so obsessed. Mr. Redlaw does not hesitate: “My memory is as the memory of other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I close the bargain. Yes! I WILL forget my sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” And the Phantom adds a bonus. Mr Redlaw’s faculty for erased memories will be shared by all he encounters: “The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will. Without recovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you shall henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your wisdom has discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, in its other memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor!” This is has to be good doesn’t it? Or will it be, as in so many of the fairytales beloved by Dickens, that the fulfillment of a desire, or a wish when granted, becomes a curse? There are three sections: I—The Gift Bestowed, II—The Gift Diffused and III—The Gift Reversed, so it seems from this, quite likely that something will go badly wrong, now that Redlaw has had his memories erased. First though, we meet another delightful family, the Tetterbys. A family who own a newspaper shop, this family had me grinning from ear to ear. The shop which tried so hard to be all things to all people, but actually succeeded at nothing; the tiny man enamoured of his pleasantly amply proportioned wife: “She would have made two editions of himself, very easily. Considered as an individual, she was rather remarkable for being robust and portly; but considered with reference to her husband, her dimensions became magnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposing proportion, when studied with reference to the size of her seven sons, who were but diminutive. In the case of Sally, however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted herself, at last; as nobody knew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and measured that exacting idol every hour in the day.” For this “Moloch” (the Canaanite devourer of childhood) of a whopping-sized baby, was carted around every hour of the day, by her adoring older brother Johnny. The four tiniest Tetterby brothers were all at various stages of wildness, and the oldest, Adolphus, varied his daily routine as a newspaper vendor, by altering the vowels in his shouted call, “Morning Pepper” … Morning Pipper”. Whenever the Tetterbys come centre stage, we sit up at the prospect of reading some of Dickens’s funniest writing, and most likeable characters. The Tetterbys are equivalent to the Cratchits, in “A Christmas Carol”. They represent a class and a social group with which Dickens was very familiar; his own family when he was a child. And here their portraits are not as sketchily drawn as the Cratchits, but beautifully filled out. And yet … to me the balance is not right. We soon begin to see the Phantom’s baleful influence, as Mr. Redlaw rightly begins to think of his “gift” as a curse. Whoever he meets, becomes “infected”. We see the wonderful creations Dickens has made us love, become twisted into something dark and evil: “they were fighting now, not only for the soap and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet in perspective. The hand of every little Tetterby was against the other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny’s hand — the patient, much-enduring, and devoted Johnny — rose against the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, going to the door by mere accident, saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the suit of armour where a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child.” We see them lose all their kindness and goodness of heart; all their sunny-natured optimism. We see them become callous, brutal, bitter and wrathful. “What do I care what people do, or are done to?” We see them lose everything that is the best of humanity. There are exceptions. One is a ragged urchin boy, so completely neglected and separate from society, experiencing “no humanizing touch”, that he functions almost an animal, driven only by the Darwinian instinct for survival. He is the equivalent of “Ignorance” in “A Christmas Carol”. Another is the opposite, (view spoiler)[Milly, so tender-hearted that she is immune to Redlaw’s touch. In fact, owing to her purity and own deeply-felt sorrow, Milly is a catalyst, unknowingly able to counteract and reverse Redlaw’s malignant “gift” (hide spoiler)]. And we learn of course, who the student is, why he was so reticent, and what connection he has with Mr. Redlaw. Redlaw becomes increasingly desolate. He is wretched and lonely, despite his “benevolent gift”. When he sees the Phantom, he begs it to allow others to be free of his curse even if he must remain under the curse of forgotten memories himself. He describes himself as: “a man without a soul, as incapable of compassion, artistic sensitivity or spiritual understanding, as the abandoned waif whose neglected short life is equally barren of memories.” The Phantom then appears with a shade that looks like someone familiar to him, directing Redlaw to “seek her out”. She is clearly the key to unlocking the curse of memory loss, although the Phantom does not say how or why. The ending makes us realise why this is a Christmas book. It is an allegorical tale, in which the Phantom helps to effect the moral transformation of Mr. Redlaw. It is the spirit of Christmas which is evoked, rather than any literal interpretation of the Christmas story. Just as Scrooge is taught a lesson and turns his life around, this tale is also about redemption and reconciliation. Once Redlaw’s memories have been restored, he is no longer numb, but feels his emotions and human warmth again. It tells both Redlaw and us, that we need the bad as well as the good; only then do we appreciate what we have. As Dickens wrote to John Forster in 1848: “My point is that bad and good are inextricably linked in remembrance, and that you could not chooser the enjoyment of recollecting only the good. To have all the best of it you must remember the worst also” and in The Haunted Man, Redlaw realises that he: “has lost his memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble … and with that I have lost all men would remember!” “…but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us.” Dickens was always very interested in the illustrations to his books, and often quite adamant about what, specifically, he wanted the artist to convey. For The Haunted Man, he commissioned no less than four artists, who had either worked for him before, or were to do so again: John Tenniel, Clarkson Stansfield, Frank Stone and John Leech. Dickens realised that Leech’s strength lay in comedy, and steered him towards the boisterous Tetterby troop, writing: “Bradbury told me you wished to do some comedy … You will find plenty of bits, I trust, in connexion with the Tetterby family”. Although these illustrators excelled in humorous drawings, especially in some of the earlier novels — indeed, there is a lot to be said for each interpretation — I do personally prefer the illustrations in the volume I have reviewed here, which are by Charles Green. This volume is the fifth in the “Pears Centenary edition of Charles Dickens’ Christmas books”, which were published in 1912. Charles Green illustrated four out of the five books, and this one has more than 30 beautifully atmospheric monochrome watercolours, which have an almost photographic quality. They match the moodiness of this piece perfectly, and to me are more apt than the caricatures which suit some of his other work so well. I do feel that this is a dark piece overall. Dickens has largely moved away from the domestic sentiment and communal cheer of the previous Christmas Books. Although it displays elements which preoccupied Dickens throughout his life, such as his interest in spirits, spectres and ghosts, psychology and doppelgangers, I feel he was exploring a dark side, and allowed this to overshadow the book’s ultimate message. The brooding darkness, for me, was done a little too well. Perhaps Dickens was exorcising his own ghosts. He was all too familiar with traumatic pain from his past. Redlaw tells the Phantom that he was tortured by the memory of the death of his sister. It seem significant then, that Dickens’s own sister, Fanny, had died less than a month before he began his book. He had also, like Redlaw, been rejected by his true love (Maria Beadnell) in his youth. But Dickens’s abiding trauma, which haunted him all his life, dated from his childhood, when he was forced to pawn his books, and drop out of school. He felt abandoned by his family, forced to work in a blacking factory at work he loathed. It has been said that even as an adult, Dickens would weep when passing by the site of the shoe blacking factory from his childhood. Another memory which was never far from the front of his mind, was when he was twelve, and his father was sent to debtor’s prison, the “Marshalsea”. The family was left penniless, the family home was given up, and his mother and all the other children lived in prison with their father. Dickens was money-conscious to the point of being obsessed with making it, for the rest of his life. We see clearly throughout his work, that these vivid childhood memories informed much of his writing, in his politics; his sensitivity to the conditions of the poor, the imprisoned, and the disenfranchised. In The Haunted Man, when Redlaw speaks, we see echoes of Dickens’s own inner anguish: “I am he, neglected in my youth and miserably poor, who strove and suffered and still strove and suffered … No mother’s self-dying love … No father’s counsel aided me … My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds to theirs; and, if they do well, claim the merit; and, if ill, the pity.” Apparently Dickens once met Dostoevsky, in 1862, at the offices of “All The Year Round” in London. Dostoevsky reported that Dickens told him: “[t]here were two people in him … one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life.” Certainly the feelings in this story are akin to the feelings evoked by Dostoevsky, who often explored humanity’s darker side. If Dickens could see himself as having two selves, then perhaps he could also see this as a way to construct a character as well. This does seem to be borne out by other such characters with darker sides, or two distinct selves such as (view spoiler)[Sydney Carton, (hide spoiler)] in “A Tale of Two Cities”, (view spoiler)[Bradley Headstone (hide spoiler)], in “Our Mutual Friend” and (view spoiler)[John Jasper (hide spoiler)] in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I find Dostoevsky’s bleakness hard to take, although of course I recognise his greatness. In a similar way, my rating of three stars here is a purely subjective one. Any writing by Dickens, for me, is streets ahead of most other writers. A more objective view may put this at 4 stars. But within his oeuvre, this remains at a middling three star read for me. I can now see why he preferred to keep the idea of the Phantom ambiguous: perhaps an actual ghost rather than Redlaw’s inner demons. Yet it is clearly a very personal story by Dickens, which perhaps answers my question near the beginning of this review: did he find this difficult to write? When talking about his own harrowing past, Dickens said: “I do not write resentfully or angrily, for I know how all these things have worked together to make me what I am.” In The Haunted Man, Dickens is telling us that it is best to forgive, not to forget. But how difficult this must have felt for him personally, given the anguished memories which he constantly had to endure. NOTE: I have now reviewed all five of Dickens's Christmas Books. My reviews of the others can be found on my shelves. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 04, 2017
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Jan 06, 2018
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Dec 25, 2015
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| 0525429107
| 9780525429104
| 0525429107
| 3.49
| 963
| Oct 20, 2015
| Oct 20, 2015
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None
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Notes are private!
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not set
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not set
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Dec 20, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 1848588682
| 9781848588684
| 1848588682
| 4.00
| 7
| Oct 01, 2012
| Jan 01, 2012
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really liked it
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I actually bought this facsimile of Stories of Children from Dickens a few years ago, for the illustrations. Harold Copping was mainly a religious art
I actually bought this facsimile of Stories of Children from Dickens a few years ago, for the illustrations. Harold Copping was mainly a religious artist, and only ever illustrated a few scenes from Charles Dickens’s stories. However they are always very painterly, and beautiful to look at. Here is perhaps the most famous one: [image] Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim, from“A Christmas Carol”. For Stories of Children from Dickens in 1893, Harold Copping produced this one and 5 more coloured plates, plus many woodcut illustrations, which are interspersed with the text. He was then also to go on to illustrate the author’s “Dickens’ Dream Children” in 1926. The author, Mary Angela Dickens, I took on trust. Several of Dickens’s descendants (or near descendants) have become writers, of varying abilities. He did have ten children after all. Mary Angela Dickens was one of the more successful ones, and made a career out of her writing. She was named after her aunt Mary, “Mamie” Dickens, who had written some charming reminiscences of her father: LINK HERE for my review. His first son, Charles Junior, was also a writer. Charles Dickens Jr. edited his father’s magazine “All the Year Round”, and wrote two books in 1879: “Dickens’s Dictionary of London” and “Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames”. Mary Angela Dickens was from the next generation; she was Charles Dickens’s oldest grandchild, and the daughter of Charles Dickens Jnr. Mary Angela Dickens, like her grandfather, wrote novels, and was a journalist. She wrote several popular sentimental and melodramatic novels during the 1890s, but this style was to go out of fashion by the early 1900s. Now she is largely remembered for her retellings of his stories. Many of us may baulk at the idea of “retelling” a classic, but these are actually quite good, and I feel there is a place for them, because of their focus. When we think of Charles Dickens, the first thing we think of is his wonderful stories. Those are the reason he was the most popular writer of his day, and they capture and thrill audiences even now. But he was also an outspoken and influential critic of society, and that aspect has lasted. Charles Dickens was no “niche” writer, but looked at the whole spectrum of classes and conditions. He was also the first writer to describe what children thought and felt. Nobody understood children better than Charles Dickens. Individual children feature as important characters in all his fiction, from "Oliver Twist" onwards; in fact there is even a "Fat Boy" with his own story in "The Pickwick Papers", whose medical condition of a type of sleep apnea was later to be called after him: “The Pickwick syndrome”. Charles Dickens frequently wrote about their hard, sometimes agonisingly horrific and sad lives, at the hands of society, or uncaring adults. He felt this very keenly, identifying with some aspects of the loneliness of childhood; the unloved child, and retelling this throughout his life in various ways. Some passages in “David Copperfield” for instance, are taken verbatim from his own unpublished autobiography. In Stories of Children from Dickens, Mary Angela relates this sensitively. She removes aspects she considers unsuitable for children, talking about the housebreaker, thuggish Bill Sikes as a “wicked man” for instance, but does not flinch from talking about cruel schoolmasters or guardians, or describing in some detail the deaths of individual children. And, (without spoilers here), some of these children do die. Charles Dickens remembered the deaths of those real life children close to him, and would write about them in his fiction, while his heart was breaking in real life. His wife's sister, Mary Hogarth, died unexpectedly in his arms at the age of just 17. She was the model for numerous young, pretty 17 year old girls in his works. His nephew, “Harry” (Henry Augustus Burnett, the invalid son of his sister “Fanny” (Frances) died of consumption aged 9. He was the model for at least two characters: one of whom lives and one who dies.(view spoiler)[Tiny Tim Cratchit and Paul Dombey (hide spoiler)]. Sometimes, as we see, he would give the child he created the end he most desired, but sometimes they would die, and die most movingly and tragically. He never got over Mary Hogarth’s death, but in the novel he was writing at the time, “Oliver Twist” he made the character based on her (view spoiler)[ Rose Maylie, suffer a lifethreatening illness, and be rescued from the jaws of death (hide spoiler)]. Almost every time we have a sort of portent, when we read that a young child is wise beyond its years, or talks of seeing spirits, or of hearing the sound of rushing waves. Sometimes they even feel most at peace in a graveyard, amongst the flowers and tombstones. And who can forget Jenny Wren with her cry of "Come up and die! Come up and die!" from the rooftop garden she loves, in "Our Mutual Friend". Whether or not they do die in the book, often such children are preoccupied with another life; a real life they talk of to come. And in this they are expressing Charles Dickens’s own beliefs and desires. The introduction by Charles Dickens’s friend and fellow author, Percy Fitzgerald, is called “Dickens’ Dream Children”. He notices that George Cruikshank’s illustrations of Oliver were sometimes “strangely like certain portraits of the author … Whenever Boz comes to touch on the subject of children, a tender chord seems to be struck, charged with love and affection and all the symphathies. His very heart seemed to go out to them.” It was Percy Fitzgerald who had had to decide whether or not to interrupt and tell Charles Dickens, at one of his public readings at St. James’ Hall, that his own delicate son had been made lame in an accident. He felt acutely the coincidence with one of Dickens's most frequently requested readings (view spoiler)[Tiny Tim (hide spoiler)], and waited until the end, when he could tell his friend that he had taken his son home, and that he was safe. The descriptive “dream” of the title is key. Charles Dickens created fictions. Percy Fitzgerald gives examples: “He took us all into that wonderful fairyland which he created—where he made Lady Dedlock walk in one night from London to Barnet and back, without fatigue, this miraculous feat being accepted as a matter of course simply because every one was delighted who cared to be thus amused. The engaging Little Nell or the ever interesting Little Dombey could never in real life have conducted any one so skilfully all about the country or have talked so wisely from morning till night. But what did it matter?” Anyone who has ever tried to plot Oliver’s or David’s long walks precisely, will find it impossible. The various maps that exist, made by admirers of his work, are never consistent with the books in every detail, and various locations are conveniently misplaced, to suit the plot. Yet Dickens knew London like the back of his hand, and walked miles every night. Also Charles Dickens’s invented children frequently do not speak or behave like children. They “think and plan like grown folks … feel acutely, show affection”, and are presented on a level with adults. Dickens had a keen ear, and could easily reproduce the vernacular of either middle class—or street children—at will, if he wished to. His character Jo the crossing sweeper demonstrates this, as his depiction exactly captures the way London street urchins spoke. I personally believe there is a reason for this exception, as Jo unites all the disparate threads in "Bleak House". He is the only character to be involved in every single story strand, and thus Jo has to be presented as completely authentic, in order to deliver the novel’s message. However, just about every other child you read about in Charles Dickens’s fictions does not. They are “dream children”, all of them: Little Nell, Little Dombey, Little Oliver and the rest. George Bernard Shaw calls them “super-children”; and Percy Fitzgerald maintains they are drawn out of Dickens’s own soul: “the heroic, tender-hearted, self-sacrificing, affectionate child, whom others, now that the way was shown, found it easy to make one of their characters—that is the advanced child, who was to a degree grown up.” This means that we can empathise with them very well. Here, Mary Angela Dickens has presented these children with their childish aspect uppermost, although she does include some parts we can recognise as taken direct from Charles Dickens’s own texts. It means that she is talking to the child reader, rather than the child in us. Mary Angela Dickens loved her grandfather dearly, and called him “Old Venerables”, as he encouraged all his grandchildren to do. She had a vivid intensely painful and distressing memory of his public reading of “Tiny Tim”, when: “The 'Venerables' on the platform was quite a stranger to me, and his proceedings were so eccentric as to be most alarming … the climax of my discomfort was reached at last when it dawned upon my poor little faculties that 'Venerables' was crying. I never read the little scene in the carol where Bob Cratchit breaks down … without remembering the horror and dismay which seized upon me then.” The Little Mary Angela was too young to understand about acting. To her, she says, his distress was absolutely real. She had never before seen a grown-up person cry. Her retellings of some of her grandfather’s dream children are clearly written with much love, by someone who had know these imaginary children all her life, almost as her personal friends. Some are cameos, snippets from the tales, and others such Oliver’s story cover much of the book’s length in brief, breaking off when Oliver is happy with (view spoiler)[the Maylies (hide spoiler)] or in David’s case, again when he is still a child, and happy with (view spoiler)[his Aunt Betsey (hide spoiler)], finishing: “When you are older, you can read how he grew up to be a good, clever man, and met again all his old friends, and made many new ones.” For as we all know, this “good, clever man” was really Charles Dickens himself. These children are visions of his own childhood, sometimes only truly existing in his imagination, expressed personifications of an idea. As Percy Fitzgerald reaches out, to grasp the childlike image, he says they are: “Dream Children, lent from the beyond: spiritualised and yet accepted; imperfect, as real as living. Alas, we do not meet, nor are we likely to meet, Little Nells or Paul Dombeys or Tiny Tims. They are the true Dream Children.” The stories in this book are not credited with their original novel or novella, as largely it is obvious. Here they are: Tiny Tim* - A Christmas Carol Jenny Wren - Our Mutual Friend Smike, and Dotheboys Hall* - Nicholas Nickleby The Runaway Couple* - The Holly-Tree Inn: The Boots Little Paul Dombey - Dombey and Son Little Nell and her Grandfather* - The Old Curiosity Shop Poor Jo, the Crossing Sweeper - Bleak House Little David Copperfield* - David Copperfield Oliver Twist* - Oliver Twist (Those with an asterisk have colour plates.) Should children read them? It depends whether you think the works should be spoiler-free when they are read in their entirety. However, I feel that with the increasing number of dramatisations of “Old Venerables”’s stories, some plots from the most popular stories are bound to filter through. If I had read these as a child, I would probably have forgotten them for the main part, by the time I read the complete work. They are only extracts really, using simplified language where necessary, with the bare bones of the plot from a different perspective, and leaving out hundreds of characters and situations from the novels. But they are very enjoyable to read, so it’s really a matter of personal choice. [image] The author, Mary Angela Dickens, by her aunt, the artist Kate Perugini, Charles Dickens’s youngest surviving daughter ...more |
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Jul 29, 2023
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Aug 12, 2023
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Dec 19, 2015
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| unknown
| 4.08
| 852,607
| Dec 17, 1843
| 1912
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it was amazing
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Dec 03, 2020
not set
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Dec 26, 2020
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Dec 12, 2015
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| 3.46
| 7,619
| Dec 20, 1845
| 1912
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really liked it
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"The kettle began it! Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she cou
"The kettle began it! Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn’t say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp." So begins The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home, and straightaway we can tell that this will be a light-hearted piece. Who else could start a novella with such aggrieved indignation by ... well we never really do learn who the narrator is. But right at the start we find ourselves in the middle of an argument between a kettle and a cricket, and it is hilarious—a real joy to read. Dickens loves to give inanimate objects life. He frequently turns a house or a chair into a quirky character with its own presence. Here is Dickens writing to his friend and mentor John Forster, of how he envisaged this charming story, "... a delicate and beautiful fancy for a Christmas book, making the cricket a little household god—silent in the wrong and sorrow of the tale, and loud again when all went well and happy" And this is what begins to unfold before our eyes. A dialogue between a simple kettle and a magical cricket threads all through the story; household fairies, goblins and sprites abound, all centring around an old-fashioned hearth with an open fire, belonging to a bygone age but epitomising home, domesticity and comfort. We have wonderfully drawn characters, a mystery to solve—and we certainly do have "wrong and sorrow". The whole elaborate confection is imbued with a fairytale quality. John and Dot "beaming, useful, busy little Dot—" Peerybingle, now there's a name to instil some joyful Christmas cheer. We quickly learn however that their marriage is threatened by a wide difference in their ages. This is a favourite theme of Dickens, an older husband and younger wife; the older man seeming to be a bit of a plodder and the younger wife being more vivacious and having a bit more more spirit. But who is this mysterious stranger who arrives? Here begins the element of mystery which Dickens always conjures up so well. Are there hints that Dot recognises this unexpected visitor? Before long we are introduced to the Ogre of the piece: a hard-hearted toymaker called Tackleton. Or "pretty generally known as Gruff and Tackleton—for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature ..." But wait, how can a toymaker be an Ogre? Read this and all will become clear, "Tackleton the Toy-merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents and Guardians ... cramped and chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toymaking, he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on children all his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised all toys ... delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market ... movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn’t lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul perfectly revelled." What an inspiration for a villain: someone who delighted in creating toys with horrible faces, and expressions which would terrify their young owners! Of course he also happens to have a none too attractive appearance and manner, and to top it off is about to marry a young innocent girl. As well as the merry Peerybingles and gruff old Tackleton, we have hilarious cameos in the shape of the family dog, Boxer, and Tilly Slowboy, Mrs. Peerybingle's nursemaid. Tilly Slowboy is certainly "slow"; a great clumsy oaf of a girl, who seems to inadvertently use the baby as a battering ram at every opportunity, "Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart ... though these did less honour to the baby’s head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign substances ... she had a rare and surprising talent for getting this baby into difficulties: and had several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own." There are many instances of Tilly Slowboy's antics as the text moves on, making for a very lively read. Tilly may be hitting the baby's head on something or losing "it" (the baby is always described as an object) under the grate. You may well find yourself laughing laughing out loud. We then move on to a centre section; the "Second Chirp". Here is another household comprising old Caleb Plummer, a poor dollmaker working for Tackleton, and his blind daughter Bertha. This part is significantly full of pathos, and if it feels at all over-sentimental, it is worth remembering that Victorians believed such disabilities as blindness were inherited. Dickens's portrayal of the yearning feelings of Bertha, is thus a deliberate way of building yet more tension in the story, because it was not very socially acceptable for the blind to marry. By now we have several relationships which appear to have complications and problems beneath the surface. There are at least two deceptions. One seems well-meaning, appealing to our emotions despite our trepidation, but the other could indicate treachery. That one is shrouded in doubt and uncertainty. As the story proceeds, (view spoiler)[ John is shown what appears to be proof of Dot's infidelity (hide spoiler)], and so he consults the spirit of the Cricket on the Hearth. Earlier in the novel Dot had said she liked the the chirping of the cricket, as it would bring luck. The cricket is revealed centre stage, "The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and stood in Fairy shape before him" and a Voice tells John that all will be well. In in the end all the worry which John and others had is proved to be a misunderstanding. Everything falls nicely into place, and the couple are once more blissfully happy, and their friends join them. Happiness abounds, and there is even a surprise moral conversion of one character, on the lines of Ebenezer Scrooge's in "A Christmas Carol". Towards the conclusion, everything is sweetness and light, dancing, gaiety and good humour. The ending of the story has a wistful dream-like quality, as the scene winds down, and the story slowly refocuses, "Hark! how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp; and how the kettle hums!" As the narrator watches, his bright vision "... vanished into air, and I am left alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child’s-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains." The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home is the third of Charles Dickens's five "Christmas Books". Unlike Dickens's novels, which were all initially published in serial form, the Christmas Books were all first published as books, a year apart. This one was first published as a novella on 20th December 1845. The first three Christmas books were the centrepiece of Dickens's public reading tours in the 1850s and 60s. Seventeen stage productions opened during the first Christmas season alone. One production actually opened on the same day as the book's release. For many years The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home was more popular on stage than "A Christmas Carol"! Victorian readers found its depiction of a happy home very attractive; this was a Victorian ideal. Nowadays however, a domestic setting focusing on the concerns of the home can seem banal, and this novella is sadly sometimes considered sentimental. In his first Christmas book "A Christmas Carol", Dickens had divided into his novella into chapters called "Staves"; in the second, "The Chimes" he named them "Quarters". Here, in The Cricket on the Hearth he whimsically calls them "Chirps". In fact "whimsical" is a word which springs to mind to describe the whole content of this book. Although these first three were all phenomenally popular at the time, only the supremely optimistic "A Christmas Carol" has kept its reputation as a perfect Christmas story. "The Chimes" in many ways was a very topical story, directly about the social problems of the 1840s. Although we can easily relate to its broad message, it now seems less relevant, and some specific references are often missed. Overall now readers often consider it too depressing and downbeat. With The Cricket on the Hearth Dickens has returned to a more lighthearted tone. The bitter sardonic voice of the author has gone, along with the harsh descriptions, and we are back to a scenario which Dickens himself describes as "quiet and domestic ... innocent and pretty." The public loved it, and it quickly went through two editions. William Makepeace Thackeray said, "To us, it appears it is a good Christmas book, illuminated with extra gas, crammed with extra bonbons, French plums and sweetness ... This story is no more a real story than Peerybingle is a real name!" And here we have the crux of the matter. Do not expect the satirical side of Dickens here, nor the hectoring lambast he tended to indulge in, especially in the early novels. This is all sweetness and light; the tongue-in-cheek voice of the Dickens who loved his magical sprites, his house fairies, his pretty females and his quaint, comfortable domesticity, his laugh-out-loud cameos, and his happy endings. It is as the subtitle suggests, "A Fairy Tale of Home," and although it is quite sentimental for modern tastes, if you approach it in the right spirit you may enjoy it immensely. The original illustrations were unusually by several different artists: Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Henry Landseer. The frontispiece, a lovely engraving by Daniel Maclise, features many of the goblins and fairies that Dickens seemed to love to include for atmosphere and that bit of elusive and inexplicable "magic" — especially around Christmas. The version reviewed here is from 1912, when Pears' Ltd., published Centenary Editions of the first five Christmas books by Dickens, and also commissioned new artists. The illustrations are not caricatures. They are naturalistic monochrome watercolours by L. Rossi, but they are also very fine. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 12, 2015
not set
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Jan 03, 2016
not set
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Dec 12, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 3.20
| 9,431
| 1844
| 1912
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really liked it
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For my review of the text of The Chimes, the second Christmas book by Charles Dickens, please link here The beautiful monochromatic-shaded watercolour For my review of the text of The Chimes, the second Christmas book by Charles Dickens, please link here The beautiful monochromatic-shaded watercolour illustrations in this edition from 1912, are by Charles Green: [image] The book forms part of a series of the five main Christmas books by Charles Dickens, which the soap manufacturer “Pears” produced: a “Centenary Edition” to celebrate one hundred years since the author’s birth. Now, of course, more than another hundred years has passed. The Pears’ logo is the painting “Bubbles”, originally called “A Child’s World”, by the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Sir John Everett Millais. It features on the front cover of each volume in an inset medallion. Each volume of the series is cloth-bound in a different colour, red, blue, green or burgundy, and has gold lettering. [image] Bubbles ...more |
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Dec 23, 2015
not set
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Jan 06, 2016
not set
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Oct 26, 2015
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| 0715375075
| 9780715375075
| 0715375075
| 4.00
| 2
| unknown
| 1978
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None
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Oct 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0744586402
| 9780744586404
| 0744586402
| 4.00
| 72
| Sep 05, 2005
| Sep 05, 2005
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None
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0
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not set
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not set
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Aug 18, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 1135530920
| 9781135530921
| B000OLYNSU
| 4.08
| 852,607
| Dec 17, 1843
| 1933
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it was amazing
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For my review of Charles Dickens's text, please link here There are many illustrations by Arthur Rackham in this lovely edition from 1933, printed on For my review of Charles Dickens's text, please link here There are many illustrations by Arthur Rackham in this lovely edition from 1933, printed on very heavy paper. There are both black and white line drawings and silhouettes, plus some beautiful full colour watercolours: [image] ...more |
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Dec 17, 2013
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Dec 19, 2013
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Jul 31, 2015
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Hardcover
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| B00INEDC78
| 3.96
| 16,019
| 1848
| Feb 24, 2014
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it was amazing
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Dombey and Son is a novel about pride and ambition. Paul Dombey, proud, wealthy, arrogant and frigid, is a man to whom the idea of "Dombey and Son" is
Dombey and Son is a novel about pride and ambition. Paul Dombey, proud, wealthy, arrogant and frigid, is a man to whom the idea of "Dombey and Son" is paramount. There has always been a "Dombey and Son"; there will always be a "Dombey and Son". It is his whole world, his reason for being. Everything in his life is focused and directed towards this. The full title of the book is Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. Therefore the "son" of the title, although a real living person, is first and foremost an abstract concept, much as we are led to believe Paul Dombey senior himself had been to his own father, and so on, as far back as living memory allowed. "The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light ... Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A. D. had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombei - and Son." The book starts with a defence of this character by Dickens himself, as part of the Preface from 1867, where he berates his earlier readers for "the confounding of shyness with arrogance", insisting that, "Mr Dombey undergoes no violent change, either in this book, or in real life. A sense of his injustice is within him, all along. The more he represses it, the more unjust he necessarily is." And although we despise Dombey Senior for his rigidity, his cold aloofness, his arrogance and pride, we see that he is the product of his class and time, and that any adapting of that initial "repression" as Dickens terms it, must represent a huge development in his character. This novel is partly about his eventual realisation and breaking out from such an inflexible mould. Dickens carefully inches Dombey along to more and more appallingly selfish acts, so that the reader comes to abominate the man's actions. Throughout he stays completely authentic and believable, even though at root Dombey is an honourable man. He is never a villain in the same mould as, for instance, his man of business the marvellously devious, scheming and manipulative wolf, Carker. Once again we have a myriad of wonderful characters. James Carker is a moral thug who steals every scene in which he appears. He would shoot to the top of the tree of pantomime villains; a delight to read about with his, "two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl of a cat." Carker's beauteous teeth are mentioned no less than 69 times in the novel! Dombey's little son Paul is, to use an expression of the the time, a strange old-fashioned boy. Dickens modelled him on his sister Fanny's crippled son Henry Burnett Junior. Paul's startling observations seem to indicate a wisdom, and perhaps a prescience, beyond his years. Coupled with his frailty, this increases our feelings of impending doom. Dombey also has a daughter, Florence, whom he ignores and despises. Her depiction is easily the most convincing "good" heroine he has created so far. She is virtuous, intelligent, hardworking, determined, modest and kind. In fact she has all the attributes Dickens admired in women. Yet unlike earlier female characters, she has what we would consider a "flaw". She feels guilt where there could not possibly be any. From a modern perspective then, she is very appealing. We do not like perfection. Another character who appears later in the book is Edith Granger, a proud, bridling, passionate but penniless widow, and again, she is a very rounded and complex character, with nuances of ambition, confusion, bitterness, loathing and a kind of desperate love. Almost as many pages of this novel are devoted to female characters as to male characters, including the title character, Dombey himself. Florence and Edith together comprise much of this attention. Edith's mother Mrs. Skewton is a wonderfully monstrous creation, a sort of prototype for the much later Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations". But unlike her, she pimps out her daughter while she primps up herself. As well as the great family of Dombey, there are other families whose kindness and warmth of their internal relationships provide a sharp contrast. There is young, good-hearted Walter Gay, his old salt-of-the-earth uncle Solomon Gills, a ship's instrument-maker, plus their friend the genial old Captain Cuttle. Captain Cuttle himself has an old seafaring friend called Captain Jack Bunsby, who is always called on in times of crisis for much-valued advice, although those around usually find such advice perplexing. Bunsby is hilariously described by Dickens as having, "one stationary eye in the mahogany face, and one revolving one, on the principle of some lighthouses." One cannot think of this family without thinking of Mrs. MacStinger, that fearsome harridan of a landlady, who terrifies the life out of Bunsby. The playing-out and denouement of their continuing saga, is both hilarious and satisfying, as it eventually weaves into another main theme. The strands in this novel are so subtly intertwined; the novel is superbly constructed. This family represent to some extent the old world which is being left behind. The Toodle family, rosy-cheeked Polly - who has to become "Mrs Richards" in order to emphasise her position as nurse rather than her individuality, her "plump and apple-faced" husband, who later begins to work on the railway, plus all the little Toodles including their eldest rogue of a son Rob (the Grinder) represent the new world. There is Dombey's sister Louisa Chick, the only person to have any influence whatsoever over him, slight though it is, and whose byword seems to be "effort". Anything could be overcome by more effort. According to her, the fact that Dombey's first wife died during childbirth (at the beginning of the novel) - was due to her "not making an effort" - thus proving without a doubt that she was not a real Dombey, with the admirable Dombey marks of character. There is Susan Nipper, initially an unpleasant and objectionable, waspish, sharp-tongued character, but as Florence's maid she proves to be a loyal and stout-hearted friend, who has the reader cheering from the sidelines when she tells some home truths to Paul Dombey. There is the gouty retired Major Joe Bagstock, put in for comic relief, as the objects of his amorous inclinations seem to change so very easily. Lucretia Tox too, switches her matrimonial attentions with equal alacrity - to our great entertainment once again. Another entertaining cameo role is played by Mrs Pipchin, the cantankerous operator of a boarding house in Brighton where Paul and Florence are sent for Paul's health. Never a comment goes by without her referring to her late husband, who had been killed 40 years earlier, in the Peruvian Mines. Dickens apparently modelled Mrs Pipchin on Mrs Roylance, who had been his landlady in London when his father was imprisoned for debt. There is the grotesque witch "Good" Mrs Brown, in a frightening and shocking fairytale passage in the book which is extraordinarily redolent of "Hansel and Gretel" or "Baba Yaga". Incredibly unpleasant and bizarre, she is one of the few actual caricatures in the book. Yet she returns later on, more fully fleshed out, and is revealed to have a profound connection to the main storyline. There is the portly scholar Doctor Blimbers, his wife who, "was not learned herself, but she pretended to be, and that did quite as well" and the Doctor's daughter, the ghoulish Cornelia, "dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages". Kind but misguided, their strenuous disciplined instructive routine in their cramming Academy causes their little pupils such long-term distress. Minor characters add to the book's enjoyment. There is Toots, little Paul's scatterbrained classmate, who becomes the humble admirer of Florence, permanently worried about his absent-mindedness and addled brain. There are many more quirky characters dotted around the novel, and several subplots, such as the hidden mysterious secret between the Carker brothers. Why is Carker's older brother John called "the Junior" by James, having a low position at the firm of Dombey and Son, and why is he looked upon generally with scorn? There is the sister of both brothers, Harriet, who for some unknown reason has elected to live with this less successful brother, John. Then there is the feisty, aggressively enigmatic Alice Brown - what is her secret? There is the good-natured aristocrat cousin Feenix, who makes everything all right in the end, Doctor Parker Peps, Sir Barnet, Lady and Master Skettles and the wonderfully named Reverend Melchisedech Howler. There are many more characters who come to mind, but I cannot leave the topic without mentioning Florence's only true friend and sole companion at one point, a scruffy mutt, Diogenes the dog, "Come, then, Di! Dear Di! Make friends with your new mistress. Let us love each other, Di!' said Florence, fondling his shaggy head. And Di, the rough and gruff, as if his hairy hide were pervious to the tear that dropped upon it, and his dog's heart melted as it fell, put his nose up to her face, and swore fidelity ... Diogenes already loved her for her own, and didn't care how much he showed it. So he made himself vastly ridiculous by performing a variety of uncouth bounces in the ante-chamber, and concluded, when poor Florence was at last asleep, and dreaming of the rosy children opposite, by scratching open her bedroom door: rolling up his bed into a pillow: lying down on the boards, at the full length of his tether, with his head towards her: and looking lazily at her, upside down, out of the tops of his eyes, until from winking and winking he fell asleep himself, and dreamed, with gruff barks, of his enemy." We have this absurdity, this humour. We have our entertainment, our mystery - and sometime our horror. And we also have, perhaps for the first time, literary gravitas. For instance, the motif of Time constantly rears its head, with timepieces, clocks and watches, all present at decisive moments of the story. Another noticable device is the sea, waves, and running water. A sense of "waves", or a kind of unsteadiness often seeps into the story just as a character is delerious or beginning to be seriously ill, when an enormous eventful change is in the air, or some thing or idea is to be swept away. There is so much symbolism with ringing and bells tolling the death knell. There are both overt and subtle references to earlier literary works. Is it not deliberate that Dickens has created three witches in the novel? First comes the kidnapper and thief, the ogress "Good" Mrs Brown. The second is the abominable Mrs Skewton, whom Dickens facetiously refers to throughout as "Cleopatra" because of her artificiality. This description is of her as her maid attends to Mrs. Skewton's dress as she retires at night, "... her touch was as the touch of Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the form collapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed to scanty tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose, an old, worn yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra's place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a greasy flannel gown." What an eye! The third hag, is a fortune-teller, or tramp, "a withered and very ugly old woman ... munching with her jaws, as if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were impatient to get out". Scowling, screaming, wrathful, and "going backwards like a crab, or like a heap of crabs: for her alternately expanding and contracting hands might have represented two of that species, and her creeping face some half-a-dozen more: crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, pulled out a short black pipe from within the crown of her bonnet, lighted it with a match, and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her questioner." This narrative complexity marks a subtle change and expertise in Dickens's novel-writing. Dombey and Son is a book which can be read on many levels. During 1844 to 1847, the railways were starting to be developed, and the impact this has on London life is also a major aspect of the book. Several of the characters can been seen as representing one age or another. Dombey epitomises the older age of traditional values, stymied by the new exciting upcoming age which was to clear away the stuffiness with more opportunities for all. Yet this new age was also to impose mechanisation and a lack of individuality. Dickens sees it all, and see the faults inherent in both. His powerful descriptive passages describing the coming of the railroad to Camden Town, conjure up a hellish place, ""The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood ... Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way" Dombey and Son was Charles Dickens's seventh novel, published, as his earlier ones had been, in monthly parts initially, between Oct 1846 and Apr 1848. He was between 34 and 36 years old when he wrote it. The first parts were written in Lausanne, Switzerland, before Dickens returned to England, via Paris, to complete it. He also published one of his Christmas books, "The Battle Of Life", was directing and acting in various theatrical productions, and set up "Urania Cottage" (for "fallen women") with his friend the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, all within the space of time when he was writing Dombey and Son. As always, he was a literary dynamo, pushing himself to the absolute maximum. Dickens asked his great friend, Hablot K. Browne, or "Phiz" to illustrate Dombey and Son. He was not sure how it would sell, as he had new publishers, Bradbury and Evans. As it turned out, he had been worrying quite needlessly. Before long the installments were selling at up to 40,000 copies a month. This was eight times as many as his main competitor, William Makepeace Thackeray, whose monthly installments of Vanity Fair were being issued by the same publisher, but only selling only 5000 copies a month at the most. Interestingly Vanity Fair is probably the more popular novel of the two nowadays. This is yet another example of how immensely popular Dickens was. He really could do no wrong in the public's eye. Whenever considering a novel by Dickens it is always as well to bear in mind that what we now read in one book, was never read this way by the initial audience. It is serial fiction, and the structure has to take this into account. Those earlier readers may have forgotten a character or episode; equally, they may need a very dramatic or comic interlude to sustain their interest for the month ahead. This sort of imposed spasmodic reading is mostly alien to us now. Having said that, the writing is masterly. Dickens now has a much surer touch when describing his characters. Unlike Thackeray's or Trollope's, they range throughout the upper and lower classes, so that the reader gains a very clear picture of society in his time. There are fewer outright caricatures, but many outrageously funny ones. The female characters have far more depth than ever before, and the novel is devoted proportionally far more towards female characters. Critics consider Dombey and Son to be Dickens's first artistically mature work. After this novel was published, his reputation had grown so much that he was by then considered a world class author. This is the first one for which he planned properly with notes to outline how the novel would progress. He called these notes "mems". All Dickens's novels up to this point had been created free-form, from a germ of a suggestion. Frequently they developed into something different from what the author originally had in mind, yet all are inspired pieces of writing. It would be hard to say when Dickens first started to conform to what we now think of as a novelist, rather than an observant recorder of life, taking his inspiration from the notes he made on what happens in the street, brilliantly embellishing them and throwing in a few sarcastic diatribes on the way. Mental giant though he undoubtably was, his writing often strikes the readers as a series of momentary farces. With Dombey and Son Dickens had made it clear in his letters to his friend and mentor John Forster, that he had resolved to be a serious novelist. This novel is more consistent, and has a sounder structure, with less discursiveness in the middle seeming to go nowhere. It has themes and subplots to which he returns again and again. It has pathos which has more emotional appeal than before; nothing seems quite so frivolous. "Nicholas Nickleby" had represented Dickens's first attempt at a true novel. In that there is the unforgettable portrayal of a school, "Dotheboys Hall" with its ogre of a headmaster Mr. Squeers. Yet that part of the book is merely an episode, albeit an inspired, hilarious, scandalous, hugely entertaining episode. Nothing which happens there affects the main character very much. On the contrary, the character Nicholas Nickleby seems to exist merely in order to tell us about Dotheboys Hall. But when little Paul Dombey goes to Dr. Blimber's, we get a real sense of the characters there, the kindly but old-fashioned cramming teachers. Little Paul's pathos is highlighted not by extreme contrast with some exaggerated cartoon character, but by contrast with old dusty pedantry. There is a real sense of predestination and tragedy throughout. Paul's childish innocence and extraordinary wisdom is eventually perceived and appreciated by all, and his departure from that school is one of the most affecting parts of the book. Dombey and Son has all the satirical indignation readers relish so in his early novels, but it has new shades of darkness and a new narrative complexity. There are so many nuances and grim metaphors. To take a tiny example, think of the loss of the Walter's ship "The Son and Heir", and think of an alternative applied meaning. After Dombey and Son were to come Dickens's greatest novels. These are darker still, and even his absurdity was to be more grave. I did not weep for Little Nell, in "The Old Curiosity Shop", but I wept for little Paul, that wise child, with a philosophical air lifting him preternaturally out of his small body. I was in good company. When that episode was first published, the entire nation of England was apparently prostrated by grief. William Thackeray, in the middle of serialising his own novel, "Vanity Fair", was consumed with envy, expostulating, “There’s no writing against such power as this - one has no chance!” And that in itself, is a measure to me, of just how far Dickens's writing has by now gained in mastery and stature. ...more |
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Kindle Edition
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| 0861127749
| 9780861127740
| 0861127749
| 4.08
| 852,607
| Dec 17, 1843
| Sep 01, 1992
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it was amazing
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This edition from 1992 is simply my favourite modern edition, of my favourite novella. It is a large format book, and the illustrations by Eric Kincai This edition from 1992 is simply my favourite modern edition, of my favourite novella. It is a large format book, and the illustrations by Eric Kincaid are superb. There is a nod to the original illustrator John Leech in the portrayal of both the elderly Scrooge and the Spirit of Christmas Present, but mostly they are gouache paintings in a naturalistic style. The facial expressions are lively, and the demeanour of the characters extremely well observed. There is a colour illustration on every page: perhaps down the side of the text or at the top, with some full page illustrations too. Yet the entire original text of the novel is included, in a good bold font. The endpapers depict a street scene, with the back being the front double page spread reversed. From the glossy green cover, with its large gold lettering and illustration of Christmas Present, to every turn of a page, this edition is a delight, and just can't be bettered in my view. For my review of the text of this wonderful book, please link here ...more |
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Jul 26, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 49
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Jul 26, 2015
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| 1838
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Oct 31, 2002
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Jul 15, 2015
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Bionic Jean
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Sep 17, 2015
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