The Old Curiosity Club discussion
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Barnaby Rudge
Barnaby Rudge
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BR, Chp. 01-05
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Alissa wrote: "Ami wrote: "This may be premature, as it usually is, but I've read through the Author's Preface and am already smitten with both the content and allure of what is to come. I haven't read through th..."It sounds like Dickens was really attached to them.
I don't know why I'm so tickled by this, I thought much the same. He writes of them as if I would of my dogs. :P It's sweet...and I may want a pet raven, I think.
Mary Jones’s story was also impactful, I found it highly disturbing the fate that found her in the end, and hated that people knew her punishment to be extreme but convicted her anyway to make an example of her. Public hangings are so gruesome to read about.
Mary Lou:Thank for the insight of the names
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As to the Maypo..."
Sorry to be keeping you waiting all that time, my friends, but as I told our moderators, the week before last week I started experiencing typer's cramp and couldn't really use my right hand for writing or typing and that's why I kept my contributions here quite slim. Apart from that I was away for the weekend - it being a long weekend due to a religious holiday in Germany.
I'll open the new pub thread as soon as I've read through the first two BR threads :-)
And yes, it'll be the Maypole, of course. I hope John Willet will not bully us too much.
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My fingers were itching to note down all the mistakes the students made, but I had to rely on the minute-writer for that, and found him less minute than myself in that respect.
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I work with two strings to my bow: On the one hand I still use a laptop, and will continue doing so, for all the longer texts that I type. At the moment, for instance, I'm sitting at my laptop, catching up with all the discussions I missed in the past few days, and I also write my reviews on the laptop. Then there is the iPad, and this I use in order to write shorter comments. I normally use it for my job, e.g. with Notability, which also allows me to write with the Apple Pencil. I couldn't very well type longer texts on that small keyboard. There would soon be knots in my fingers.
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Mary Lou,
I am feeling much better by now, and my hand seems to have fully recovered. I can tell you it's unpleasant to wear that kind of splint to steady your wrist, especially when it gets hot. I also enjoy being back in the fray of animated Dickens discussions and I'll take up the gauntlet for the wonderful Dolly any time, Kim ;-)
You are right about Sim: He may be causing trouble sooner or later. I mean, he is already whetting his tools, and maybe his appetite for revenge. Still, I think there are worlds between Mr. Tappertit, who is rather full of himself - just remember the passage quoted by Kim, where he tries to "eye" Dolly into submission and everyone else at the table thinks he has swallowed on some piece of bread -, and Uriah Heep, who is scheming, cold and smooth as a snake. I would certainly enjoy a pub-crawl with Simon but never with Uriah. Saying that, I am long past pub-crawls, of course ;-)
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Thanks a thousand times for going through all that trouble of collecting so many various illustrations, and for defying your obstinate computer. I can't write anything critical about mine because I am sure he can understand what I write, so I'd better keep a straight face.
You gave us quite a variety of artists, and again I can and must say that I am so much used to Phiz that to me Barnaby Rudge partly comes to life through Phiz's illustrations even though they do have their weaknesses - one being, I think, the fact that Barnaby does not always look like the same boy in each of them. Did you notice, though, the elegance and grace and beauty, the charming semi-comical coyness of Dolly in the illustration you posted in message 40? Her girlish laughter, and the gossamer magic expressed in how she turns away her head, which rests on her slender hand? In case you didn't, I did :-)
I noticed that Mr. Furniss is back in Lord of the Rings for his Barnaby could be an older version of Legolas, and that Dudley Tennant utterly fails in doing justice to ... you know whom.
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Barnaby - means "son of consolation; son of exhortation; son of comfort" - Barnaby was a Christian apostle and missionary compan..."
I love that name-game, Mary Lou! I might add to what Alissa said on the name of Willet that "let" is also an old word for "hinder, stop", and that old Willet is therefore the man who will constantly let his son, with let and hindrance :-)
Tristram wrote: "Did you notice, though, the elegance and grace and beauty, the charming semi-comical coyness of Dolly in the illustration you posted in message 40? Her girlish laughter, and the gossamer magic expressed in how she turns away her head, which rests on her slender hand? In case you didn't, I did :-)..."Will someone please grab that bucket of cold water? Tristram seems to be in need of a good dousing.
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Since you are such an admirer of Dolly, some of these may appeal to you much more than they did to me, looking at Dolly illustrations and other Dolly things has me tired of her already:
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Kim
These Dolly Varden products are delightful. Somewhere there must be a collector of all things great and small concerning Dolly Varden. The first image of Dolly Varden apples was grand. Did you notice the fish at the top of the ad? Julie posted a link a little while ago to a site that identified there is a fish called a Dolly Varden. So now, as we look at that image, we can read both its obvious Apple appeal and also understand why a fish is on an advertisement for apples from the State of Washington.
I may not live just down the road from the Maypole, but Lake Chelan is just over the mountains. :)
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Julie: it looks like the Lake Chelan Apple label is vintage. Do you know if the orchard is still in existence? While you may not be able to make it to the Maypole you could be the only one of us to take a bite of an apple named after her. :-)
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
So, weirdly, or not so weirdly considering where I live and who I'm married to, I have a fair amount of esoteric knowledge about apples, and my botanist husband and I were just talking yesterday about how different popular varieties tend to wash out after a while. So it's unlikely I will ever encounter a Dolly Varden to sample. But if I come across one at the heritage fruit tree festival they have up the road each fall, I'll be sure to try it and let you all know!They are definitely still growing apples in the Lake Chelan area, though. Apple exports are a major economic engine in the eastern half of Washington State.
Given the prominence, if you will, of the Maypole Inn in this book, it struck me that someone could do a book or dissertation on "The Inns of Dickens." Perhaps it's been done?It seems to make perfect sense as an aspect of his literary sensibility, if that is the right phrase. I started here with Our Mutual Friend and it's been a "inn hopping" ever since.
John wrote: "Given the prominence, if you will, of the Maypole Inn in this book, it struck me that someone could do a book or dissertation on "The Inns of Dickens." Perhaps it's been done?It seems to make per..."
This sounds like a really good premise for a vacation tour.
Julie wrote: "John wrote: "Given the prominence, if you will, of the Maypole Inn in this book, it struck me that someone could do a book or dissertation on "The Inns of Dickens." Perhaps it's been done?It seem..."
I would say the lightbulb over my head went off very belatedly, but the centrality of the inns struck me. Not just as a location where things could take place, but as fixture to certain characters. I like the vacation premise.
John wrote: "Given the prominence, if you will, of the Maypole Inn in this book, it struck me that someone could do a book or dissertation on "The Inns of Dickens." Perhaps it's been done?It seems to make per..."
There is this, focusing exclusively on Pickwick:
https://books.google.com/books/about/...
And this walking tour:
https://www.dickenslondontours.co.uk/...
But this seems the closest to what you're talking about, and it's free on gutenburg.org!
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42908/...
Of course, the fact that it's available from Project Gutenburg means it's not exactly current. Perhaps it's time to write a new one for the 21st century? Perhaps it can be a group project. Who's up for heading to London to do some extensive research? :-)
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It seem..."
Mary Lou
Yup. Sign me up.
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Ah, Dolly Varden products! Thanks for the inspiration, Kim! I am normally bored by the women characters Dickens creates - with the exception, of course, of the more comical characters, and of Edith Dombey - but Dolly Varden is quite different.
I generally like Wilkie Collins's heroines much better, e.g the resourceful Marion in The Woman in White, who even eavesdrops while lying on verandah roofs in the rain, or the diabolical Lydia Gwilt. And then there's always my favourite Thackeray heroine, Becky Sharp. Even Trollope creates better female characters than Dickens, like the rather cunning adventuress in The Eustace Diamonds - I can't remember her name, though -, and then who would not feel enthusiastic about Tess?
Dickens, on the other hand, did not succeed in creating female characters on a par with those I named, Edith Dombey, and Dolly (!!!) being the exception.
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It seems to make per..."
I am sure there must be a book like The Inns of Dickens. It' also quite remarkable that for every novel written by Dickens, there can at least be named one pub or inn, sometimes many more, that play a role in that respective book. Can a similar thing be said of Trollope, Collins, Braddon, and others?
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Tristram
You forgot to list Nell Trent.
:-)
Tristram wrote: "Kim wrote: ""Tristram wrote: "Did you notice, though, the elegance and grace and beauty, the charming semi-comical coyness of Dolly in the illustration you posted in message 40? Her girlish laughte..."He's got good supporting women. Nancy, Miss Pross, Madame DeFarge. Estella was better on re-read than I remembered her. Guess they're not exactly multidimensional, though.
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No, Peter, I assumed everyone would put her into the boredom-originator category :-)
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Yes, you're right. Nancy is quite a complex character when you come to think of it, and so is Estella, and Pip's sister. I think it is only the idealized women in Dickens that are flat and uninteresting. But then there are quite a lot of them.
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How do you feel about pancakes?
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Yes, but that would be another list, and there would be Ruth Pinch, Lizzie Hexam, or that niece from Oliver Twist, whose name I forgot, on it ;-)
I read the Preface too, and I loved the part about the pet ravens. It sounds like Dickens was really attached to them.