Random Jottings

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

It is that time of year again. The time when I trot over to my bookshelves, check the letter D and take down a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Please note I say A Copy not My copy. This is because I have multiple copies of this book and today have just added to them with yet another edition.

I love Dickens. Always have but I do know those who cannot get on with him at all - I freely admit I find this difficult to understand but hey ho.  Over the years I have read an awful lot about the man himself and, quite frankly, he sounds a tortured individual and not very nice, in particular in his treatment of his wife which I thought was appalling.  I really should not like him at all but somehow I find it hard to dislike someone who has created Mr Pickwick, the Fezziwigs, David Copperfield, Uriah Heep et al.  I feel that underneath all that non stop frenetic genius, there was a troubled individual. 

And this afternoon when reading A Christmas Carol for the umpteenth time I discovered passages that struck me anew as being simply wondrous, conjuring up wonderful pictures:

"The poulterers shops were still half open and the fruiterers were radiant in their glory; there were great round pot bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy brown faced, broad girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the greatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by and glanced demurely at the hung up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeepers benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves..."

Glorious.

Which edition to read today?

There is the one illustrated by Quentin Blake which I could not resist.

A superb edition of A Christmas Carol and other Stories by OUP, a wonderful hardback with the original illustrations.

A Christmas Carol, the Graphic Novel which reminds me of when, as a child, I had this kind of illustrated version of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and other classics.

Then an edition I came across at a jumble sale and which I paid about 50p.  Inside it is inscribed, written in ink "for our dear Gloria with loving Christmas wishes from the Aunties at Ealing Village" It does not have the date of the particular Christmas which is a shame but this particular copy, which has no ISBN number or publication date to give me a clue, is published by Raphael Tuck & Sons "publishers to their Majesties the King and Queen & to her Majesty Queen Alexandra" which means it is Edwardian. This link https://tuckdbpostcards.org/history makes fascinating reading.  There is also a Wikipedia page about this company which was founded in 1866 and was granted the Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria. This copy has lovely illustrations and the title page is protected by a sheet of tissue paper, intact which is a miracle after all this time. I would love to know who once owned this and to reassure them that I am looking after it very carefully.

And finally, another edition which arrived just an hour ago from the Folio Society. I could not resist. I simply could not.  A glorious edition with illustrations by Michael Foreman which fit beautifully.  It was a pleasure to hold and read. They also sent me a free Folio diary which I thought was rather kind.....

Well you know how I am going to close this post don't you? Of course you do....

"...he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us and all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Don't forget Free Give away - Charles Dickens letters

Off blog for a day or two so just a bijou reminderette that I am giving away a copy of the selected letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Jenny Hartley.  All you have to do is tell me which is your favourite Dickens character and why and I will make a totally and completely arbitrary choice as the lucky recipient of this great edition, published by OUP and donated by them.

So either leave your reply on this post or the earlier one on Charles Dickens, OUP do it in style, and I will make the draw at the weekend - probably on Sunday, which is Florence's second birthday and seems as good a day as any.

What larks!

Back Home in Dickensland - a Guest post from Helen Rappaport

Today we celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens one of my all time favourite writers.  I am simply delighted to have as guest blogger, Helen Rappaport, historian and writer and author of my Book of 2011, Magnificent Obsession, who spent her childhood in Kent with all its associations with The Inimitable and has written this post for Random. So sit back, read and enjoy:

 
Chatham Dockyard in the 1890s

The view today across the rooftops of the modest Edwardian terraced houses of lower Gillingham down to the turbid waters of the river beyond is not what it was in my childhood.  Back then, I could see the funnels and masts of dozens of navy ships in port ­– and beyond, the marshy reaches and mud flats of the Medway Estuary. You didn’t need a clock in lower Gillingham in those days; you could time your day by the wailing midday siren that sounded off the statutory lunch hour for dockyard workers, and blared out again at 5 p.m. to mark the end of the working day. Virtually every household down our street had someone who worked at the yard; we saw the men every day toiling home up the hill on their bikes after work.

Summer holidays as a child were free of the sedentary electronic distractions of today; they were spent outdoors – rain or shine – running around getting dirty, scuffing knees and shoes. What we loved best was to go out roaming the sea wall beyond The Strand – the rather forlorn riverside recreation ground located on the Medway estuary not far from home. For many local children this was the nearest they ever got to the seaside – a kind of Gillingham-on-Sea, with its murky and mildewed boating and paddling pools, its model train and swings. Many of us learned to swim here, in the no doubt polluted and certainly dangerous tidal waters of the Medway.

 But as children we were fearless. Mean, and muddy, and at times dispiriting it may have been, but the Medway Estuary was our paradise. They’d told us in school, of course, all about the local connections with Charles Dickens’s ‘marsh country’. His early, happy and formative years were lived at Ordnance Terrace in Chatham and he died not far away in 1870 at Gad’s Hill Place at Higham – where, long after, local people ‘still felt the miss of him’, as they put it. The area held an important place in Dickens’s creative imagination:  there was something about the ineffable bleakness of the salt marshes and mud flats stretching for miles along the ancient Saxon Shore that lured him, as he remarked in The Uncommercial Traveller:

'There are small out of the way landing-places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water is favourable to day-dreams. And a strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine.'

 My own daydreams drew me there too as a child. I happily roamed the long expanse of the sea wall to Sharp’s Green, Horrid Hill and Motney Hill beyond with school friends on hot summer days, camping out by the water’s edge and frying eggs on a primus stove. We loved to sit there watching the ships in the estuary, and clamber over the huge concrete anti-tank placements along the beaches – a vestige of World War Two – imagining ourselves as intrepid and adventurous as the Famous Five – only no turkey sandwiches and ginger beer for us: they were posh and we were poor.

My childish imaginings of the Dickensland I knew of from abridged versions of his novels read at school found its incarnation in the wonderful rambling old vicarage garden and parish churchyard of St Mary Magdalene up the hill from The Strand, with its tumbledown grave stones and old Victorian gas lamps lining a walkway of great chestnut trees. It was perfect for games of hide and seek and always made me think of the overgrown garden at Miss Havisham’s.

Equally spooky was the little church on the marshes at Cooling; the little grey, Kentish ragstone lozenges covered in lichen and marking the graves of  the infant children of the Comport family of Cowling Court which were the inspiration for the opening scene in Great Expectations. Closer to  home was the still familiarly Dickensian High Street in Rochester with its old coaching inn, The Bull, a favourite haunt of  Mr Pickwick and his companions. Further down the north Kent coast, where we went for Sunday outings was the fishing port of Whitstable with its famous oysters so beloved by Dickens. Furthest away, on the periphery of my own Kentish childhood landscape, lay the white cliffs of Dover where David Copperfield first encountered his Aunt Trotwood, a scene ingrained in my mind by George Cukor’s 1935 film version of the book.  The landscape of Dickens’s novels was subsumed into my subconscious, inspired my reading and in the end my development as a historian and writer. 

In 1984 everything changed in the Medway Towns that I knew when they closed the Dockyard and thousands of men were thrown out of work. The demise of Chatham’s great naval tradition sounded the death knell of a once thriving and proud area. A long slow descent into decay and dereliction followed over the next twenty years. Lower Gillingham, never a pretty place even in my childhood, was virtually eviscerated of all its character. The old Victorian houses of the original working-class community along the river were demolished and with them the spit and sawdust dockworkers’ pubs that stood on every corner.

With the ships long gone and only commercial traffic out on the river, it was some time before eighty acres of the original site were redeveloped. The most attractive eighteenth-century buildings were refurbished as the Chatham Historic Dockyard, while the rest has by degrees been redeveloped into a mix of commercial port, shiny new apartment blocks, a posh marina and shopping centre.

In this, his bicentenary year, the traditional links with Charles Dickens will undoubtedly bring a resurgence of interest in this still economically depressed part of north Kent.  Taking centre stage in the old Chatham docks  – a stone’s throw from the original Cashier’s Office, where Dickens’s father John worked as a navy pay clerk for the Admiralty from 1817 to 1822 – a garish new Dickens World has been opened to celebrate the area’s ‘local boy’.  It is however geared not so much to a serious celebration of his literary legacy as to the popular, tabloid image of his works, which can be experienced in an indoor street cum theme park of ersatz Dickensian shop fronts that looks like the film set of Oliver!

Despite the long periods he lived in London between 1824 and his return to Kent in 1860, we have always felt that Dickens belongs to us here, on the Medway. Some of the great moments of his novels are rooted in the county: from Mr Pickwick’s Rochester  in his first, 1837 novel,  to the chilling encounter between Pip and the escaped convict Magwitch on the marshes in the opening pages of Great Expectations in 1861; to his final unfinished novel in 1870, where Rochester brings Dickens the writer full-circle with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, set in the gatehouse and precincts of  the cathedral.

Having long known and loved Gad’s Hill Place, which he had seen on his walks around the Hoo Peninsula, Dickens purchased it in 1856 and spent much of the last ten years of his life there. After his death in 1870 the house eventually passed out of the family and in 1924 became a private school. Restoration House, the inspiration for Miss Havisham’s Satis House, is located a short distance from the cathedral in Rochester; a fine Elizabethan building, it is as evocative as ever and is occasionally open to the public.

Whenever I go back to Kent, the nostalgia for the Dickensian world that was so much part of it tugs at me and I always head for the river. Dickens relied on the landscape around him as an important outlet for his restlessness. He often walked along the reaches of the Hoo Peninsula in sight of the Thames and Medway Estuaries on either side. It allowed him valuable thinking time in which to refine the characters and plotlines that crowded his overactive imagination. Most of the long, flat uninterrupted horizontal line of the river survives only in the descriptive passages of his novels now.

But we do still have the Saxon Shore Way that Dickens knew and loved and walking along it today, in sight of the river and the marshes that held such an important place in the great writer’s psyche, one can still sense his spirit – a man determinedly striding out, stick in hand, head up into the wind off the water, with the cry of the seagulls and plovers above him.

©Helen Rappaport, 12 January 2012

Celebrating Dickens - OUP do it in style - and a Prize Draw

In case you hadn't noticed it 2012 is the bicentenary of Dickens's birth and we have already had Edwin Drood and Great Expectations on the BBC and various documentaries with more to come.  I have loved Dickens all my life and am simply wallowing in all this and various publishers are putting out biographies and books all about Charles and his life and OUP have certainly come up with some great stuff.

Dickens and the Worekhouse - Ruth Richardson.  A copy of this arrived courtesy of my long suffering but perennially cheerful postman this morning who is now used to the packages that come my way, and it is now sitting by my laptop as I write.  A recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London work house triggered off speculation that this might be THE workhouse featured in Oliver Twist and this book is written by the historian who did all the sleuthing behind this discovery and, as always, is a gem of a little book with all of the production values that I associate with OUP - clear print, gorgeous paper and packed full of black and white illustrations.   Looking forward to reading this.

Sketches of Young Gentleman and Young Couples - This contains two collections of little known sketches by CD all illustrated by the wonderful Phiz. Here is a sample:

"The extremely natural young lady is always doing some out of the way thing, that she may appear simple and girlish. She is most particularly fond of romping; and when you are out walking with her, is sure to run after a small donkey or jump a ditch, or have her fortune told, or thrust herself bolt through a hedge; all which little exhibitions she esteems to be beautiful and touching pieces of rustic elegance"

Priceless.

The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens - edited by Paul Schlicke.   Not a lot I can say about this except that it is simply wonderful.   I keep dipping into it, to check a reference or look up the location of a book or anything and before I know it, one thing leads to another and I am off reading something entirely different.  If you love Charles Dickens and do not have this on your shelves then I urge you, go get - it will be, as it says, a Companion to all lovers of the Inimitable.

The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens - edited by Jenny Hartley.  Dickens wrote thousands of letters and if he had not decided to burn great swathes of his correspondence then we might have had even more.  Jenny Harley has had a labour of love on her hands as she has extrapolated some 450 letters out of this vast collection and made these accessible to the general reader, ie you and me, for the first time.

When I opened this and began to flick through I found I was on page 16 and in a letter dated 16 January 1835 I found this, and laughed:

"As the Election here had not commenced, I went on to Colchester (which is a very nice town) and returned here on the following morning.......if any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford. Though only 29 miles from town there is not a single shop where they sell Sunday Papers....here I am on a wet Sunday looking out of a damned large bow window at the rain as it falls into the puddles opposite.....there is not even anything to look at in the place..."

I tell you now, there are quite a few Colcestrians who still feel that way about Chelmsford!

Now as well as being publishers of wonderful books the Oxford University Press are a nice generous lot and they have given me a copy of these Selected Letters as a give away in a Prize Draw.

In order to win this I would like you please to tell me who is your favourite Dickens Character and why.  The winner will be chosen by Moi who will, quite arbitrarily, choose the answer that I love the best.  The sense of power creeping over me is quite scary already....

I look forward to all your responses.

My thanks, as ever, to the Oxford University Press.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - a re-read

The recent adaptation of Great Expectations screened by the BBC made me decide to revisit this book by Dickens, which I have not read for many a year.  I remember studying it at school for my English Literature O Level, a process which is the kiss of death to enjoyment, and then read it again a few years later.  Since then nothing.  However, the story, characters and quotes have stayed in my mind all my adult life so it obviously made an impression on me.

So I turned to it again, some forty years older and, I hope, wiser with more Dickens under my belt and more knowledge of the author from various biographies and crits I have read and found that this made a huge difference.  When I first read it I simply thought Estella was an unpleasant nasty spiteful little girl with no understanding of why she behaved that way, Pip a scared little boy who grew up to be rather snobby and unpleasant and ashamed of his origins, and I disliked them both.

Now of course it is impossible to read any of Dickens’s works that feature a childhood without realising how much of the childish misery and terror described was experienced by the young Charles.  David Copperfield is the most autobiographical of all his works and the author reacquainted himself with this work before he wrote Great Expectations. Pip’s sad childhood, with the exception of Joe, is similar in many ways to that of David Copperfield, both orphaned and both at the mercy of an unkind guardian.

Later when Pip is in London and is a ‘gentleman’ his treatment of Joe and Biddy is pretty unforgiveable, but now I view this with a more understanding eye.  Dickens, as we now all know, treated his wife shamefully and behaved appallingly and, in my personal onion, I think he knew that he had and suffered for it for the rest of his life. He made excuses  for his actions calling Catherine an unfit mother and saying the children disliked her also, a classic example of a guilty person trying to shift the blame to the victim.  It made Dickens miserable, though he would never admit it, and I believe his self knowledge left him feeling conscience stricken and unhappy for the rest of his life.

I find a reflection of this in Pip.  He is snobbish and weak and rejects Joe and is ashamed of him, and yet deep down he knows he is wrong and unkind in his attitude and seeks to constantly reassure himself that he means no harm.  As the narrative is in the first person, there are many passages when Pip tells the reader and reassures them what a fine fellow Joe is and that he really should appreciate him more. He admits he is treating him badly as if acknowledging this will bring some kind of absolution for his actions.      

Pip is an abused child, not only physically, his sister seemed to beat him regularly with ‘the Tickler’ but is also denigrated and made to feel worthless by all around, including Mr Pumblechook, and it is here that Joe is unable to help at all.  Joe is portrayed and accepted by most readers as a kind, almost saintly person, but I rather disagree with this when he is so passive at the treatment Pip receives as a child.  Though  Pip defends him stoutly it is clear that Joe belongs to the ‘anything for an easy life’ school of thought and he makes no attempt to stand up to his wife.  I think this is what makes Joe so forgiving and understanding of Pip’s later rejection – he knows that he let him down.

So we have one abused child and then we have another – Estella.  Adopted and brought up by Miss Havisham to hate men and to wreak revenge on the whole race on Miss Havisham’s behalf, she may have had all she wanted in the way of riches and education, but  personality was stunted and ruined by the mental abuse she unknowingly underwent.

The three main protagonists in Great Expectations, Pip, Estella and Miss Havisham are all, therefore, damaged people and it is this struggle against their upbringing and their search for happiness which is at the heart of this book. For me, at any rate.   This is what I found so fascinating about this latest read and which proves to me why a classic is a classic.  I have re-read many of Dickens, the Brontes, Eliot as I have grown up and matured and each time find something new in it which I did not spot before.   One example is Mansfield Park.  When first read, oh boring thought I, boring dreary priggish Fanny Price.   Then I read it a second, third, fourth time and many more re-reads and now I think it is close to being Austen’s most mature and finest book.  

But what else can I say about Great Expectations?  I could go on and on or hours I loved this so much.   Characters which I thought peripheral and only pop up once or twice, or not at all in dramatisations,  are here to be enjoyed.  Mr Pumblechook, pompous and full of himself who likes to tell everyone he was Pip’s friend and mentor once he was up in London and owning to this enhanced his reputation when, as we all know, he treated him badly.      Jaggers, the solicitor who I always remember washing his hands with scented soap, these little descriptions do stay with one.  Then Wemmick, lovely kind Wemmick with a mouth ‘like a post box’.   (Many years ago there was an actor Randolph Scott who always played in old Hollywood westerns who had such a mouth. It was square and like a slit and when I first read the description of Wemmick this actor popped into my mind and has stayed there ever since.  Very annoying).

Then there is the Aged P.  I called my mother this for years, with affection I hasten to add, and she understood why and liked it.  The relationship between Wemmick and his parent, his delightful little house altered to look like a castle which he kept totally separate from his City persona, is sheer delight and here Pip finds true friendship and support.

Herbert Pocket – a marvellous character, lively and humorous and a loyal and true friend. I love his nickname for Pip, ‘Handel’ because of that composer’s Harmonious Blacksmith, thus showing Pip that though he knows his origins it makes no difference to him. 

I was totally absorbed by this re-read.  I simply could not put the book down. Knowing the story so well I slipped into it straight away and was thus able to enjoy much more of the detail and humour than I had hitherto.  I also found the final scenes with Miss Havisham moving which I never had before as, alone and deserted by Estella, it becomes clear that she loves Pip;

“Oh what have I done?” she cried despairingly.....and so again, twenty, fifty times over. What had she done!

“Miss Havisham, you may dismiss me from your mind and conscience....but Estella is a different case....”

“Yes, I know.  But Pip, my dear” There was an earnest womanly compassion for me in her new affection”

And then after the fire which eventually kills her:

 “I leaned over her and touched her lips with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched ‘Take the pencil and write under my name’ I forgive her”

Pip now loses one of the mainstays of his life and he returns to London to face Magwitch for whom he now has great affection and, in the attempt to get him out of the country which fails, he then has to sit at his deathbed and lose him too.

“As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in his face, until some word of mine brightened it for an instant....”

“You always wait at the gate don’t you dear boy?”   “Yes, not to lose a moment of the time”

“Thankee  dear boy. God bless you! You’ve never deserted me dear boy”

I pressed his hand in silence for I could not forget that I had one meant to desert him”

I had difficulty in reading this last page as my eyes had filled up and were very blurry.  I found it all inexpressibly moving.

So at the end of the book Pip has lost everything. His two mentors, Miss Havisham and Magwitch. His friend Pocket has gone abroad for his firm (this is one of the most disinterested gestures made by Pip as it was he who provided the capital for this venture all unknown to Herbert), he has lost Estella who has married the vile Bentley Drummle, all his money has gone and he becomes desperately ill.   He is nursed tenderly by Joe  and I feel the wheel has now come full circle.  He cares and tends for Pip as he failed to do when Pip was a child, Pip learns to love and appreciate him once more and Dickens brings it all to a sombre and serene conclusion.

And what of Estella?   We know that Dickens wrote a very downbeat ending when Pip returns after many years from working abroad and they meet briefly and go their separate ways.  Though I can understand that this is more in tune with the final resolution, part of me is rather glad that  he was persuaded to write a happier ending though I am not sure that Dickens was ever comfortable with it.

“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place and as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her”

Oh how I loved reading this again.  I have endeavoured to remember what my OU tutor said when I was writing an essay and to put my thoughts into order and tie them all up at the end when writing this post.  I am not sure I have succeeded but if it makes you want to read or re-read Great Expectations then my tutor can go hang and I will be a happy bunny.

Why did I leave it so long to read this again?   Answer comes there none....

Wonderful, wonderful.

Dickens, Dickens, Dickens

I write this on 3 January 2012 and have already read a comment or two in the papers that we may have had too much Dickens and that we will be Dickensed out by the end of the year.  We have already had the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations which I loved though it seems to have divided opinion, an excellent programme presented by Sue Perkins on the way Dickens treated his wife Catherine Hogarth, and the other night somebody called Iannucci who I am told is a wit and a comedian fronting a prog on BBC2.   I watched and was forced to switch off after 20 minutes for the usual reasons - it was an excellent radio talk and I spent most of it watching with my eyes shut in order to avoid the endless shots of running water, clouds, ruined churches and endless shots of people walking around with carrier bags. I presume the latter was to emphasise Dicken's 'teeming' London.   Next week we have the Mystery of Edwin Drood about which I know very little so am looking forward to that.  Mark you, as I have already seen the trailer about 12 times I am beginning to wonder if I need to watch.

Well I am going to be doing my bit about Dickens this month before everyone feels they have had to much of The Inimitable.  A guest post will be up in a week or so by a distinguished author and I am delighted to say that OUP have promised me a Dickens books (of which more later) as a prize in a draw. They have also promised to send it anywhere in the world which means anybody can join in regardless of where they live, be it Bognor Regis or Ulan Bator. 

I love Charles Dickens and have done since I first read David Copperfield, a junior version which finishes with his meeting up with Aunt Betsy, when I was about eleven.   I did not find out that it was much longer than that until a year or two later and was thrilled to bits. I found parts of the adult book uninteresting but do remember Uriah Heep very well (who doesn't?) and the ghastly Mr Micawber who I always found acutely annoying even at that tender age.  I read Great Expectations when I was about 13 and loved the first part of the book, but not so keen on the later stages when Pip went to London and became obnoxious.

The BBC in those long ago days always had a Classic Serial at 5.30 pm on a Sunday afternoon. I remember watching Oliver Twist. It had 13 half hour episodes and I never missed one. I have fond memories of watching these as a child. Is there anybody out there who remembers Patrick Troughton, the first Dr Who, as Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop?  Wonderful stuff.   These adaptations were put out at this time as they expected the family and, particularly children, to watch them.  Can't see the Beeb doing that now somehow.

I have most of Dicken's books on my shelves and over the next 12 months am going to have a try at re-reading some of my favourites.   I might try Great Expectations as I feel a renewed interest after last week and see what I think about it again. Must be over thirty years since I last looked at and that is far too long.

I will also be rewatching some of the DVDs which I have on my shelves.  I have one of Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations with Ion Grufydd as Pip, two versions of Bleak House and a rather sweet edition of David Copperfield with a pre-Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, playing the young David.

Are any of you out there planning on any reads, re-read, or book group readings of Dickens? Do let me know.   I would also love to know your own personal Dickens favourite.  David Copperfield and Bleak House are neck and neck as far as I am concerned each one taking it in turns to draw ahead and then fall back as I have a rethink.   Both wonderful works.

We have a big year this year in the UK - not only all the Dickens celebrations, but the Queen's Jubilee which I am looking forward to with all its pageantry and fun, and the Olympics, which I am not.

But that is a rant for another day........

Great Expectations - BBC

Last time I saw Great Expectations on TV it was on the commercial side and starred Ion Grufydd as Pip. Rather toothsome I am sure you will agree but he paled into significance when set against the beauty of the actor playing Pip in the BBC version aired over Christmas.  Lots of Tweets along the lines of 'Pip is prettier than Estella' and 'difficult to believe in a hero who is prettier than the heroine' and they did have a point.  I will freely admit that I took enormous pleasure in looking at Douglas Booth's face, exquisite bone structure and general all round gorgeousness, but he was a good actor as well and, in fact, his beauty and his aristocratic bearing made his rejection of Joe Gargery all the more understandable.  I mean how can somebody as lovely as that have anything to do with a blacksmith?
Pip is not a likable person, neither is Estella.  He is a crashing snob eager to turn himself into a gentleman and put his rough relations behind him.   Estella has been brought up to hate men and to wreak vengeance on the whole race on behalf of the rejected and jilted Miss Havisham.  When I first read this book as a teenager I remember thinking how horrid Estella was and felt sorry for Pip.  Now of course, viewing with an adult eye, it is clear to see that she is a damaged and mentally abused child and, as with all children who have no love shown to them, are incapable of giving love themselves.

This version of Great Expectations has been streamed down to concentrate on the main story line and has been extremely well done.   The humour and wit of Dickens has rather been abandoned but as the adaptor was a scriptwriter for Eastenders, where humour is singularly lacking, this is hardly surprising. Much though I love Dickens I sometimes find his panoply of 'funny/grotesque' characters can sometimes grate (ditto 'rude mechanicals' in Shakespeare) ie Mrs Gamp, Mrs Jellaby et all and Mr Micawber who always fills me with a strong desire to wring his neck.   I love the Aged P in Great Expectations (used to call my mum this in her later years - with affection needless to say), but could understand that this character is rather superfluous to requirements when it comes to the main plot. So off they all went and we were left with Pip and his Great Expectations. 

I thought the acting was excellent, the scenery and settings spot on as you would expect from the BBC who are always a class act when it comes to this kind of drama.  David Suchet as Mr Jaggers was, naturally, wonderful - he really is a great actor.  Watching five minutes of the Poirot over Christmas, which I promptly abandoned for its dreadful script and funereal pace, rather makes you forget just how good he is.  I found the Miss Havisham of Gillian Anderson quite fascinating though I know others disagree (Helena Bonham-Carter is playing this role in a forthcoming film and I have fears she will produce her manic side a la Harry Potter), her white pasty face with cracked lips and sores very realistic.  I have already mentioned the actor playing Pip and good though he was the two stars of the show for me were, first of all, Herbert Pocket.  I do love this character and while the memory of Alec Guiness must always lurk I really thought Harry Lloyd brought out his sweetness more than hitherto. He also happens to be Dickens great great great grandson which is rather nice too.

And the other star? Well, Ray Winstone as Magwitch which I thought was an inspired piece of casting.  From the first time we see him struggling out of the marshes like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, to his death clutching Pip's hand, he was spot on perfect. I found his scenes with the grown up Pip intensely moving and had recourse to my hankie at the end as Pip realised his benefactor's true worth.  Wonderful stuff.

I know that everyone who reads Random think I have it in for the BBC as I do rant about them a lot.  I think they can produce excellent and imaginative programmes and, if you pick and choose, you can avoid the dross.  However, the proliferation of trailers for forthcoming programmes and the constant grabbing your attention by voice overs is acutely irritating.   BBC4 has show back to back episodes of The Killing for the last five Saturday nights. Aficionados of this programme will know that each episode leaves you screwed up in fear and anticipation and can hardly wait to see what happens next.  There is usually a two minute break between each episode.  Barely has one finished than a voice booms in DON'T GO AWAY.  Well, we are hardly likely to.  The other week at a particularly tense ending they  interpolated a gormless berk introducing a programme about campanology and waving a bell about. All tension and ambiance was totally lost.

So why am I going on about this when I am reviewing Great Expectations?  Because at the end, quite beautifully done, quiet and touching with Pip and Estella meeting at Satis House, barely had the scene closed when the credits were shrunk and the usual voice came in COMING UP NEXT and then proceeded to show an up and coming Mystery of Edwin Drood with flashing scene changes and loud voices.  When this was done, back we went to the credits and the music of Great Expectations.

I was simply furious.  Crass crass crass. If you listen to a piece of classical music on Classic FM you know full well before the last note has died away in will come the presenter - OK it's a commercial station so you pays your money and you takes your choice.  If you listen on Radio 3 there is usually a few seconds silence before the announcer will tell you, without saying Oh Gosh wasn't that a stonking verison of Mozart', what has just been played and who played it.  In other words you are allowed to take it in and reflect.

If the BBC can do this on the radio why oh why don't they do it on the television?   If I have watched a programme on BBC1 and following it I wish to watch something over on Channel 4 no idiot shrieking COMING UP NEXT from the tv is going to make me change my mind.   The wonderful feeling of joy and sorrow created by this excellent adaptation totally wrecked. 

I know I am ranting again. I do apologise but do not let my rant take away from my feelings about this Great Expectations which I simply loved.  If you have not seen it, then get the DVD when it comes out. A good start to 2012 which, as we all know, is going to be the Year of Dickens. I love Dickens so much that I am going to just wallow in it all.

I also think a re-read of Great Expectations is now required and will start on 1 January 2012.  Will let you know how I get on as I have not read it in 30 years.

Charles Dickens - Claire Tomalin

After reading Michael Slater's marvellous biography a couple of years ago I did wonder if there was anything more to say about Charles Dickens, but Claire Tomalin is such a wonderful biographer I just knew that I had to read her take on Charles and will say right now that I read it over a weekend and loved every moment of it.  So captivating was it that I had to ration my reading else all other things that were to be done would have gone hang. As it is, despite my closing up the book and determinately putting it to one side, precious little got done as I kept being drawn back to it.

Michael Slater concentrated on Dickens the Writer whereas Claire Tomalin gives us a more rounded portrait of Dickens as the family man, a good friend and mentor.  And once again, I am totally overcome and in awe at the sheer energy of Charles; if he wasn't in the throes of a book/books, he was writing plays and theatricals and staging them with himself in a  starring role, he founded and edited newspapers, he supported and founded charities as well as taking care of his vast and ever growing family, most of whom depended upon him financially all their lives.

We all know that Dickens abandoned and divorced his wife in very distasteful and cruel circumstances and I do not think that history and critics have been kind to Catherine Hogarth.  Dickens takes centre stage throughout their entire married life, we learn very little of her character and when she is mentioned in Dicken's letters, it is his slant on her that we receive.  No wonder she has been dismissed as a boring, dull, dutiful wife not worthy of Mr D.  I think this is totally unfair.   Being married to a mercurial genius such as he must have been incredibly difficult and she also seemed to spend most of her time being pregnant, giving birth, recovering and then being pregnant again. Her sister Georgina Hogarth came to live with them and took over the running of the household and totally overshadowed the role of the wife. She adored her brother-in-law and as she did not have the problem of permanent pregnancy and was bright and interesting, she probably spent more time with him than poor Catherine.

They married young 'Catherine was slim, shapely and pleasant looking with a gentle manner'.  Dickens decision to marry her was quickly made and he never afterwards gave any account of why he did so though he declared later it was the worst mistake of his life.   My feeling is that he yearned for a stable family life and a home of his own, something he had never enjoyed with the improvident John Dickens as a father who after moving from house to house, each more dreary than the last, ended up in Marshalsea prison where he was thrown after being unable to pay off his creditors.  Dickens had a dreadful childhood - each time I read the part of David Copperfield where he was put to work in a blacking factory and how he felt miserable, unloved and neglected, it wrings the heart and it is because Dickens is writing about his own experiences and it is true and real.   It shaped his entire life as he was always searching for the perfect family, the stories and games around the fire surrounded by his offspring, the world seeing him as the owner of all the familial virtues.  

Despite the implosion of his marriage in later years and his despicable repudiation of her, after 12 years of marriage he was still writing to his 'Dearest Kate' and saying he was impatient for a letter from her and he continued to write to her and address her in this vein throughout their marriage until he met Nelly Ternan. He then wrote to his close friend, John Forster:

"Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it.  It is not only that she makes me uneasy and happy, but that I maker her so too - and much more so'

At least here Dickens can see that he is at fault too but later when his infatuation for Nelly Ternan was at its height, he unleashed an appalling attack on her character and her attributes as a mother. He wrote to Angela Burdett-Coutts:

"....she has caused me unspeakable agony of mind.  She does not, and never did, care for the children and the children do not, and never did, care for her.   The little play that is acted in your Drawing Room is not the truth, and the less the children play it, the better for themselves ...they has always disconcerted her and she is glad to be rid of them and they are glad to be rid of her"

Much as I love Dickens this is really pretty unforgivable.  He made his feelings about Catherine public and the charge that the children did not love her is ludicrous and cruel.   The world now split into two camps, those who supported him throughout the separation, or at least said nothing, and his enemies who he thought were those who failed him.   But on reading these words and looking at his actions, it is not difficult to realise that deep down Dickens knew he was behaving badly and his actions made him very unhappy, but by then the die was cast and there was nothing he could do.  It was important to him to keep his good reputation in the eyes of the public and if Catherine had to be sacrificed then so be it "you can feel sorry for him as he struggles, but it is impossible to like what he did, or on occasion to believe what he said"

Georgina, Catherine's sister sided with Dickens in his separation from his wife which must have been deeply hurtful, but Georgina, who is not somebody I particularly admire, knew that if she didn't stick with Dickens she would have to return home to live with her parents and her life, as an unmarried daughter of the house, would have been boring and drab.  She knew which side her bread was buttered on but it certainly did not help Catherine's reputation to have her own sister leave her as well as her husband.

Because of this obsession with appearing as the good, noble man he had always presented himself to be, it was essential that his relationship with Nelly Ternan be kept secret. I will say no more about this at all but recommend that you read Tomalin's biography of her for a more detailed life.  I am not sure that this affair made Dickens or Nelly happy at all, he seemed to spend most of his time worrying about it and forcing her to skulk in the background and live in the shadows.

Despite his truly awful behaviour, I forgive Dickens and I am trying to work out why when I have been less generous with other writers and their peccadilloes.   I think it is because deep down I feel he was never happy. He always seems to be running and running, desperately hoping that true happiness would be just around the next corner but then when he turned it, nothing was there.   His genius drove him to the heights of joy and the depths of despair (a friend of mine has said that she has always thought he was bi-polar which is certainly food for thought), but there seemed to be very little calm or tranquility in his life.  He drove himself relentlessly until he wore himself out.

On the day of his final collapse 'Katey and Mamie were leaving for town the next morning......as they sat in the porch waiting for the carriage to take them to the station, Katey felt she wanted to see him (Dickens) again....when he saw her he pushed his chair away from the writing table and took her into his arms to kiss her, holding her in an embrace she would never forget'   Later they were summoned back to Gads HIll and arrived around midnight 'directly we entered the house I could hear my father's deep breathing. All through the night we watched him'.   Soon after six in the morning Dickens gave a sigh, a tear appeared in his right eye and ran down his cheek and he stopped breathing.

I am not ashamed to say I was in tears when I read the account of Dicken's death. Not yet sixty and yet worn out body and soul, weary and sad.  His burial in Westminster Abbey was a small private affair 'the great bell was tolled and the Dean and Canons met the mourners and the coffin, carried through the cloisters ito the nave.  The doors were closed. There was no singing and no eulogy, just quiet organ music as a background to the reading of the burial service'

Forster wrote afterwards: 'Nothing so grand or touching could have accompanied it, as the stillness and silence of the vast Cathedral'

This biography by Claire Tomalin is my Book of the Year.  I cannot think that I will read another between now and 31 December that will make me change my mind.  I was totally engrossed in it, was unable to put it down, found myself living and breathing with Dickens and his family and friends, overtaken with excitement at the reports of his readings and the audience reaction, angry with him because of his selfish behaviour, and also filled with sadness at his constant striving for the happiness that eluded him.  

My review will not make one iota of difference to Claire Tomalin's sales or to her stellar reputation as a great writer and biographer, and this makes the generosity of the publishers who sent me a copy when I sent them a begging email, even more so.  I am deeply indebted to them for their kindness.

If you read no other biography this year, next year or the year after, please make it this one. Quite, quite wonderful.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Other Random posts on Charles Dickens

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2009/10/charles-dickens-by-michael-slater.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/10/mrs-lirriper.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2009/10/unread-dickens.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/03/bleak_house.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/12/little-dorrit.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2011/10/claire-tomalin-charles-dickens-and-nelly-ternan.html

Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan

Claire Tomalin has a new biography out on Charles Dickens.  After reading Michael Slater's magnificent biography last year, reviewed here, I did wonder if anything more could be said about him, but Dickens is a source of endless fascination to biographers and, as the Slater biography concentrated more on his literary rather than his private life, then I am sure there will be more to be said. I shall be laying my hands on a copy as soon as I can as I am a huge admirer of Tomalin's writing.

In the latest edition of Slightly Foxed Ranjit Bolt writes about Tomalin's early biography of Nelly Ternan, Dicken's secret mistress in an essay he has called A Prisoner of her Time.  

"Mrs Frances Ternan and her three daughters,Fanny, Maria and Nelly (all actresses) were women of good character. That is, in Nelly’s case, until Dickens arrived on the scene.

It was not a glamorous life. "The Ternan girls and their mother worked like slaves. Often they would have to tramp home from a long stint at the theatre to dingy lodgings, late at night, through the ill-lit and rat-infested streets of London, Newcastle, Liverpool or wherever, braving the lecherous scrutiny, if not the attentions, of dissolute swells. But if there was less glamour and fewer shenanigans than the Victorian public imagined, there was a warmth, a solidarity, a sense of the company being a surrogate family (as there still is among the members of theatre companies today) which Claire Tomalin evokes with great tenderness and a marvellous flair for conjuring up atmosphere"

The title of Tomalin's ealier book is  The Invisible Woman.   Dickens kept Nelly well hidden away and moved heaven and earth to make sure that her identity was kept close and that nobody knew that she was his mistress.

"....one cannot but take deep exception to the double standards he showed in his treatment of Nelly. The spotless morality of his novels is in stark contrast to that of his private life, and his obsessive secrecy in his conduct of the affair has more than a touch of the sordid about it"

Dickens treated his wife and family pretty badly and poor Nelly did not seem to get much joy out of her relationship.  "As for Nelly, her main job seems to have been to maximize the great man’s pleasure, while leaving his public image intact – a conjuring trick he pulled off with as much dexterity as he must have used in the magic he performed to entertain his children"

I have made the point before and know I will again, that it is difficult sometimes to separate the author from his/her writing and personal feelings can change the reader's viewpoint.  It happened recently when I read a biography of P G Wodehouse, reviewed a few weeks ago, leaving me feeling not so fond of him as I thought I was.  A biography of Daphne du Maurier a few years ago made me feel the same.  Last year when I read the Slater book on Dickens I realised that for all his genius and brilliance, his good works, his supporting of his friends etc etc, he could be a rather mean little person.  I swiftly put this away because he is the creator of such a wonderful array of characters and I love his books so much. Not sure I would feel so forgiving if I did not care for his writing.  I know we should not expect our heroes to be perfect, why should they be, we are not, but sometimes this feeling of disappointment does creep in and in his dealings with Nelly Dickens showed himself at his most cowardly in keeping his liaison with her secret.

"Nelly’s existence as a key part of Dickens’s life could no more be acknowledged than the fact that, in the years before he met her, while he created his sugary heroines by day, by night he prowled the streets of Margate in search of what he called ‘delights’"

It was only in Victorian England that Dickens would behave in this way.  He visited Paris regularly and I don't suppose he spent most of his time climbing the Eiffel Tower.  Abroad, free from the constraints of home, he could probably be freer with less chance of discovery.

"Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the book is the feeling it gives of how much Nelly was a prisoner of her time and her society. As Claire Tomalin observes, had Dickens been a French literary icon instead of an English one, she might well have held her head high as the mistress of a great man. After Dickens’s death, she felt obliged to keep the relationship still hidden from the world, though threats of disclosure dogged her. Today she would surely have had her memoirs ready for publication. As Claire Tomalin puts it, ‘Poor Nelly, she was not to know that fashions in sin can change as much as other fashions.’"

This is a spot on essay and I hope will make you read The Invisible Woman. It is beautifully written and I have a real personal interest in this book as I will explain:

In 1869 Dickens was giving a reading in Hull and he went into a leading silk merchants in the city to buy six pairs of ladies silk stockings (presumably for Nelly).The assistant who served him did not recognise him and Dickens asked him what he liked to do in his spare time and receiving the answer that he enjoyed reading Dickens, and showing his familiarity with the novels, was presented with a single ticket for that evening's reading 'at which stage the young draper realised who his customer was'.

That evening when the draper attended the concert he found his seat was on the platform close to the reading desk from which Dickens delivered his reading. During his performance the novelist kept turning round to see how the young man was enjoying himself, and 'purposefully chose passages from the young man's favourite books'

And the name of the young draper? - Edward Simpson-Long my great-great-great-great (not sure how many greats) grandfather........

All Things Dickens

The Book page in the Guardian has lots of articles today on the Great Man, Charles Dickens. Vote for your favourite - go on. I have

via www.guardian.co.uk