Dickensblog

From the book pile

Slow reader that I am, I've only just finished a couple of the many recent books about Dickens that I've been telling you about. Here's my take on them:

• Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women by Jenny Hartley (Methuen Publishing, 2008).
  
  This book covers a little-known aspect of Dickens's life: Urania Cottage, the home for "fallen women" that he co-founded with wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts. In many ways, the project was the first of its kind: Most women who had "lost their character" had nowhere to go but prisons, workhouses, or the streets. Even servant girls who found themselves between jobs could easily end up homeless.
  
  Though most people thought they were a lost cause, Dickens wanted to prove that these women could be helped and redeemed. With typical energy and exhaustive attention to detail, he launched a project that offered a homelike atmosphere, job training, religious and moral instruction, and eventually the chance of emigration to Australia to start a new life. (When you read in this book about how there was an absolute "mania" for emigration at the time, you start to understand Dickens's enthusiasm for shipping his characters off to Australia, as at the end of David Copperfield.)
  
  The home was small -- the better to keep it like a family, and also the better to keep the often rambunctious women under control -- and Hartley discovered that in the end, about 100 women went on to live successful lives. Her verdict is that, even with only a relative few helped, the project was "worthwhile," especially as it helped serve as a model for similar institutions that would follow.
  
  Hartley's attitude toward Dickens himself, though, comes across as a little astringent. She seems to blame him for everything that ever went wrong with Urania, even when she really has to reach to do it. (After all, the man may have been smart and even powerful, but he wasn't omnipotent.) All the same, she's done a valuable service with this book, and done a very thorough job with her research, and it's well worth a read.

• Wanting by Richard Flanagan (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009).
  
  This book ties together three historical events: the collapse of Dickens's marriage; the tragic end of Sir John Franklin's expedition to the Arctic and his widow's requesting Dickens to help clear his name; and the Franklins' botched attempt to adopt a little Aboriginal girl named Mathinna. As that order of events suggests, the novel doesn't proceed in chronological order, but flashes forward and back, weaving together what the author calls "a meditation on desire."
  
  There's a trend right now for historical novels to be written more like history books than actual novels. At least, I think it's a trend. They say it takes three to make a trend, and I've only read two such books -- this one and Ron Hansen's Exile -- but they're so critically acclaimed that if they're not already a trend, they probably soon will be. But I'm in the minority here, because it's a subgenre that I don't take to, I'm afraid. You get lots of long and detached descriptions that bring to mind the old elementary school dictum "Show, don't tell!" Thus, instead of trying to help us feel like Dickens might have felt, to help us get inside his mind, the book gives us "He was so alone. He resolved to endure. He would sacrifice all. He could not bear to talk to his wife. He was forty-five." I think I can understand what Flanagan is trying to do, but too much of this simply gives a choppy effect. Similarly, the dialogue has to do the job of providing lots of exposition, so it creaks and rattles.
  
  (Nor am I on board with the notion that an author should keep calling people by their full names. At a certain point I found myself talking back to the book: "Yes, thank you, I know Ellen's last name was Ternan. I heard you the first forty-six times.")
  
  It's not that Flanagan is a poor writer -- on the contrary, he's a very good one, though a bit sloppy with the historical detail at times. He's capable of keen flashes of insight (when his daughter Dora dies after he killed the fictional Dora in David Copperfield, Dickens has "the horrid sense that the world warped to his fancy"). And the occasional scene can be deeply real and moving, but these scenes stand out as oases in long stretches of dry narrative. Although the pace and the flow do pick up somewhat as the book nears its end, and the fate of Mathinna elicits true sympathy for her and true anger at those who used her and hurt her, the author has picked a technique that I think just doesn't serve the story well, and that fails to fully connect the main events or drive home his points. What is he saying about desire -- that it's good? That it's bad? That it's a little of both? He does seem to be showing that unrestrained desire has the power to rip apart people, families, and entire civilizations . . . but he doesn't seem to have made up his mind whether that's a result to celebrate or deplore, especially as he seems to find restraint suffocating. Possibly we're expected to make up our own minds -- but from this muddled meditation, we don't really come away equipped to do that.

Meet Disney's new star!

 Finally got those character-morphing photos from the Christmas Carol train. Here's me as Scrooge:

 

Me as Marley's ghost:

And me as Tiny Tim:

. . . Yeah, I'm thinking I'd better stick to my day job.

(All pictures © Disney)

Uh-oh

Bad news about the touring Christmas Carol play. Tim Hutton (one of the two people I most wanted to see) is out, as is Stockard Channing. And even worse, it turns out the producer has a history of making some pretty deceitful claims about his actors. Let me tell you, if I paid good money to see James Garner and he turns out to be some sort of recording or projection on the wall, I will be one royally ticked-off Dickensblogger.

Stay tuned and I'll post more if I hear anything . . .

Uncle Charles wants YOU

So if you're in Southwark, get moving!

(But if you happen to be in Portsmouth, no worries -- they can use you there too.)

A tour of 'A Tale'

Check it out -- it's the Manettes' house!

 

Or at least, it's the house that is believed to have inspired the Manettes' house. (However, I would like to think that the Manettes wouldn't have had that weird-looking whatever-it-is on the wall.) Formerly it was a house for the homeless; now it's been turned into a "swanky members' lounge" that will still be raising money for the homeless.

Reading about this place made me think that one could put together a nice little Tale of Two Cities tour in London, if one were so inclined. (Though I suppose that if you didn't include Paris, you'd have to call it a "Tale of One City" tour.) For one thing, I've also recently heard of a pub that's believed to have been the model for the place where Carton took Darnay after the Old Bailey trial.

 And you could throw in the Old Bailey itself, and the Temple, and probably quite a few other spots. I just might have to try it sometime . . .

Dickens on stage

My Google Alert regularly turns up news about various Dickens-related plays being performed all over. Here are a few of the more interesting ones that have come up recently:

• This article tells the story behind that Christmas Carol play starring James Garner and F. Murray Abraham that I'm going to see in Baltimore. It will also be playing in Philadelphia, Boston, Minneapolis, and Chicago.
• An off-Broadway play called Penny Penniworth sends up Dickens in a way that even he might have appreciated, according to these reviews. (Tell me he wouldn't have chuckled over Malodorous Dump and Miss Havasnort.) The play runs through November 1 at the TADA! Youth Theater.
• On October 17, the Kent Congregational Church, near Dickens's old home, will present the play The Nightwalkers, a new adaptation of his story "The Signalman."
• And here's a brief report on that Simon Callow performance of Dickens & Me.

A diminished 'Dorrit'

I've finished listening to the BBC Radio Little Dorrit dramatization, and I'm sorry to say I didn't think it as good as their Tale of Two Cities. For one thing, there's too little of it. There's no Tattycoram or Miss Wade, no Cavalletto or Mrs. Plornish, no Mrs. Gowan, no Mrs. General, and -- oh, travesty! -- no Mr. F's Aunt. Affery, Mr. Meagles, Pet, Gowan, and Mr. Casby have their parts slashed to the bone. Even Blandois has only four scenes, all of which are at Mrs. Clennam's house. I can see how the adapter might need to pare down the book for a radio drama, but the stripping out of so many characters and subplots, and the simplifying of others (e.g., Blandois simply strolls into Mrs. Clennam's house and steals the box he wants), result in a rather colorless production on the whole.

The characters who are there manage to hold things together fairly well. Jasmine Hyde does fine as Amy, and Julian Wadham is an adequate Arthur for the most part, though he's entirely too chipper towards the end. His voice never convinced me that he was a sick and broken man. Ian McKellen, as you might expect, makes an excellent narrator. Most of the cast is quite competent, but there aren't any other real standouts. This Little Dorrit isn't a bad way to while away a few car trips, but I didn't find it nearly as enjoyable as the miniseries.

The 'Our Mutual Friend' meme

By popular demand, and with a list supplied by Nibs (many thanks!), we present the Our Mutual Friend meme. Rules are the same as before: Describe each character in only one word. (I'll join in later, after I've had some time to bone up on the characters!)

John Harmon:
Bella Wilfer:
Noddy Boffin:
Mrs. Boffin:
Silas Wegg:
Mr. Venus:
Betty Higden:
R.W. Wilfer:
Jenny Wren:
Mr. Dolls (Jenny's father):
Riah:
Eugene Wrayburn:
Lizzie Hexam:
Charley Hexam:
Bradley Headstone:
Mortimer Lightwood:
Rogue Riderhood:
Albert Lammle:
Sophronia Lammle:
Mr. Fledgeby:
Mr. Podsnap:
Georgina Podsnap:

The catacombs

We haven't had a quote from Pictures from Italy in a while (I'm getting close to finishing, but still have a little way to go). I thought this was a pretty memorable one.

A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by which we had come: and I could not help thinking "Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness, he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!" On we wandered, among martyrs' graves: passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which lives between it and the sun. [Note: Anyone who read Drood will be having major flashbacks at this point. --GRD] Graves, graves, graves; Graves of men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, "We are Christians! We are Christians!" that they might be murdered with their parents; Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood; Graves of some who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and walled up: buried before Death, and killed by slow starvation.

"The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid churches," said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. "They are here! Among the Martyrs' graves!" He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how, perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken -- how they would have quailed and drooped -- if a foreknowledge of the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire.

Pictures from Italy, "Rome"

The Dickensblog Order of Merit

. . . is hereby awarded to Rosalind Mariconda for faithfully teaching and promoting the works of Charles Dickens to her students.

At least, it would be if we had an Order of Merit. Anyone who's this determined to help "keep his works alive" deserves some kind of award. Well done, Ms. Mariconda!