A Dickens of a Day events

Charles Dickens-Live! with Actor Joe Plummer

1:00 PM  -  1:35 PM

Charles Dickens-Live! was developed by Actor Herbert “Joe” Plummer as a one-man tribute to his favorite author.  Mr. Plummer, posing as the the great Victorian novelist on his reading tours of America, bringing to life some of Dickens’ most popular characters.   A Dickensian question and answer session will follow his performance.

A retired actor and teacher, Joe Plummer has been performing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as a one-man show for more than 40 years, including an off-Broadway run in 2001.

Reading Charles Dickens by Edward G Pettit

1:45 PM  -  2:30 PM

Edward G. Pettit presents, Reading Charles Dickens:  My Journey to Read All of Charles Dickens in One Year and Why Dickens Still Matters to Readers.  Mr. Pettit will read from his favorite book and regale us with tales of how his Dickens Ambassadorship has changed him and his many audiences.

An author, book reviewer and literary provocateur, Pettit is the Charles Dickens Ambassador, of the Free Library of Philadelphia for celebrations of the Bicentenary of Dickens throughout 2012.

Traveling Literary Theater’s Charles Dickens’ Readings

2:35 PM  -  3:35 PM

Producer Maggie Worsdale presents Traveling Literary Theater’s Charles Dickens’ Readings, commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of Dickens, performed by actors James Dyne and Tom Worsdale.  Dedicated to the enchanting craft of “characterization reading,” the actors will read the first chapter of Great Expectations, A Child’s History of England, and David Copperfield, in addition to treating the audience to an array of famous Dickens quotes.  The performance is capped with the perfect ending… conclusion of the beloved classic, A Christmas Carol.

For more info visit the Monmouth County Library site.

I read the poem with the rain pouring down outside my window, pipe-smoke filling the air of my small study.  This is my favorite reading environment.  I’ll stop almost anything I’m doing if it’s raining outside, to curl up in my study and read.  That insistent patter of the rain is like a soothing metronome gone wild.  Although I must admit that after 250 lines or so (it’s 392 lines in all) of Browning’s poem, I was a bit overwhelmed by it all.  Fra Lippo’s monologue is hard to comprehend in one read through.  It’s dazzling and tiring and exciting all at once; Browning has compressed so much character into just a few hundred lines.  Lippi describing the world he tries to paint–

The beauty and the wonder and the power,
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,
Changes, surprises

–is like the poem itself.  So many of the lines about Lippi’s approach to painting also comment on Browning as a poet, writing about his own subjects like Chaucer with all their warts and mild oaths (“Zooks!), in the frowning face of a public that wants only flowers and beauty.  I think my favorite lines that I’ll carry away in my head today are:

This world’s no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

I highly recommend this reading by Paul Giamatti.  Listening to his recitation after reading the poem made it come alive in a different way.  As a dramatic monologue, a great reading gives life to the poem.  And I highly recommend this piece by W.S. Di Piero on the poem, or you can listen to his podcast of it.

My week of reading Robert Browning was ultimately unsatisfying.  Not because of the poems I did read, but because I can’t devote myself right now to reading The Ring and the Book.  Too much Dickens to read (I’m not even half-way through my proposed Dickens reading) and a book to finish writing (Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia).  I always hate to postpone reading a work because the inspiration fizzles over time. So, perhaps I can return to Browning next year.  Perhaps I need a year long Robert Browning reading project?

Porphyria’s Lover

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight’s gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!

I’ve read this poem is credited as the first dramtic monologue Browning wrote, but the poem doesn’t seem to fit that form.  In the dramatic monologues there is an understood listener that is not the reader and there doesn’t appear to be one here.  The narrator simply recounts the murder of his lover.

Or does he?  I think one could make a case for a reading that she is not dead.  He opens her lids and her eyes are laughing.  The remaining lines could be seen as ambiguous, neither affirming or denying her actual death.  Or is it all just a madman’s fantasy of how he would strangle his lover?  I lean towards the actual murder reading.  He strangled her.  He’s nuts.   She’s dead.

I read the poem out loud at the Wesley Stace event at the FLP the other night and I think it went over well.  There was some laughter at the line when he strangled her, but I think that was mainly a knee-jerk reaction to the shock.  No one expected it to be a murder poem.  There is a definite thrill in reading it to a an audience, especially for me during the buildup to the strangling.

I mentioned Poe’s madmen tales in the last Browning  post.  ”Porphyria’s Lover” poem is far closer to that kind of imagining.  Except it is all so unexpected.  Well, unless you know that when Browning republished this poem in a book (it was originally published in a magazine), he added a title for it and another poem (“Johannes Agricola in Meditation”): Madhouse Cells.  So a reader could very much be prepared for a bizarre murderous confession.

I also wonder if Poe could have read it and been influenced.  He was a great admirer of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, borrowing the meter for “The Raven” from one of her poems and even dedicating his last volume of verse to her (which even she found to be odd, as she had never met nor corresponded with Poe).  Poe also reviewed her work.

Robert Browning did read Poe’s poems and short story “The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar,” but there doesn’t seem to be any connection between Browning and Poe’s madmen stories.

“My Last Duchess” 

Lucrezia de’ Medici, by Bronzino, thought to be the murdered wife of Ferrara

Ferrara’s casual indifference to his wife’s fate (that he has probably murdered her), is it feigned?  Is he so on guard that he can’t reveal his own black-hearted, malevolent pride?  Or is he truly a psychopath with no real emotional connection to his wife?  He casually alludes to her fate to the representative of a prospective new wife.  Does he believe he is so important that he can talk of disposing whomever he wishes, or does he not even realize how crazy this all sounds, like one of Poe’s madmen, assuring the reader that he is not crazy, then raving like a lunatic.  Except that Ferrara never raves.  He is casual to the end of the poem, coolly mentioning another work of art in his house as if his dead wife’s portrait is now just another piece of decoration.

Yet, Browning leaves all kinds of clues that suggest the ease Ferrara shows his interlocutor is a mask: that he is the only one allowed to remove the curtain covering the painting of his last wife means it is more important or more precious than the other artworks he possesses.

This is an endlessly chilling poem.  I continue to go in circles as I contemplate the character of Ferrara.

“Count Gismond”

At first reading, a straightforward poem of a wife recounting the chivalrous tale of how she met her husband.  And yet, there are moments of unease in the text.  It’s medieval setting masks the fact that her husband killed a man in front of her, after of course, forcing the man to apologize for insulting her honor.  That’s a grim beginning to any marriage.  Hey honey, remember that time when you murdered that guy for calling me a whore? However, the medieval setting almost makes this story seem less murderous: that’s how they did things back then.  But Browning gives a hint that we should be uncomfortable with this scene.  Immediately after killing Gauthier, Gismond leans over his wife to be and his bloody sword, swinging on his belt, drips on her:

“. . .  And scarce I felt

His sword (that dripped by me and swung)

A little shifted in its belt.”

What a first date, huh?

Later in the poem, the narrator notes the difference between her two sons.  One has a “clear great brow” and the other scornfully looks on him with his “black full eye,” suggesting perhaps that maybe they have different fathers and their opposing natures/characters is a reflection of their father’s conflict.

The narrator also lies at the end, when her husband Gismond enters, she tells him she was talking about something else.  Why would she lie?

What a great poem.  Like Duchess, I can keep going back and finding more clues that cast doubt on each new reading.

“Incident of the French Camp”

Reading these poems is like getting glimpses of particular moments of the past, like a time traveller who can oversee and overhear scenes from the past, but not interact.  And thrust suddenly into these past scenes unprepared.

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Clositer”

I love any poem that starts with Gr-r-r.  More poems should start with a growl, don’t you think?  And it’s hilarious, this monk’s envious fury of another monk.

“Chapter 1: I am born

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.”

Not quite in the same league as “It was the best of times, etc.” but still a famous opening, or at least the spirit of the opening, about the birth of the hero, is a well known trope, now considered a very Dickensian way to start a novel.  I can’t read the opening paragraphs and not think of Holden Caulfield, promising that his narrative in The Catcher in the Rye will emphatically NOT be Dickensian:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Everything I’ve read about Dickens describes Copperfield as an autobiographical novel, so I’ll be alert to situations, characters, ideas that relate to what I know of Dickens’ biography.  Usually, I am reluctant to read an author’s life into his/her novel because it is too easy to mistake fiction for real-life.  I see this so much with Edgar Allan Poe.  He writes about madmen, so he must be mad.  However, when we have a significant amount of biographical material that also correlates to an author’s fictional work, then I feel like I am on safe ground making the comparison.  And Dickens’ own autobiographical fragment, as well as his own comments on the novel, don’t leave much room for doubt that David is a fictionalized version of Dickens.  The hard part is discerning what is fantasy–what has Dickens created especially for David that is not true of himself–from what we know about Dickens’ life and character.

Random notes about Chapter 1

Betsy Trotwood is another wonderful character of Dickens.  Her arrival promises great things for this novel.  I hope she sticks around.

I also love the line “Let us have no meandering” from the old woman who wins David’s birth-caul in the lottery and then David/Dickens promises not to meander in his story, as if a nine hundred page Dickens novel could do anything but meander at times.

So why not crack out the Browning and read him, too?  Well, as I’ve noted already, my reading schedule is a bit hectic.  But maybe it’s a bit unfair of the other Victorians that I devote so much time to Dickens.  Well, for this week, to honor Browning’s Bicentenary, I’m going to read as much of his works as I can.  Of course, that will be the tiniest of fractions, but at least it’s a start.

And I don’t think I’ll be alone.  There have been several more pieces about Browning in the press: Hannah Rosefield in Prospect, Allan Massie in the Telegraph, Stuart Mitchner in Town Topics, Stuart Kelly in the Scotsman and Margaret Reynolds in the Guardian.  I think all the Dickens hoopla (justly deserved) has created a little pushback to honor other Victorian writers.

Robert Browning by Michele Gordigiani 1858

Of course, Browning also had one of the greatest literary beards of all time.  His neck beard is my favorite (I wonder if I would look good with one of those?).  Browning continued to cultivate different styles of beards throughout his writing career.  You can even like his neck-beard on Facebook.

Join me (or just admire the beard).  Should be a fun week.  I’ll post my reactions throughout the week.  Zooks!

Some links to help you in discovering Browning:

The Browning Society

Browning on the Victorian Web

Some of Browning’s poems (and podcasts!) at The Poetry Foundation

You can listen to the crackly voice of Browning’s own voice in this Edison cylinder recording at The Poetry Archive (including his audience “Hip-Hip-Hooraying” the poet at the conclusion)

Wesley Stace

On Wed May 9, novelist Wesley Stace will be the Boz Bicentenary Speaker in a freewheeling talk about his favorite Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield.  Stace has published three novels and his first, Misfortune, is set in the Victorian age and features a walk-on cameo by Dickens himself.  Stace’s latest is Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer.  Don’t wait any longer to register for this event.

Then on Thu May 17, the Dickens Reading Salon at the FLP will be dicscussing Copperfield.  These salons take place on the third Thursday of every month.  They are free, but we ask participants to register, as space is limited in the room in which we meet (the beautiful Elkins room in the Rare Book Dept of the FLP).  Copperfield is already sold out, so don’t wait to register for next month’s book, Great Expectations.

More on Copperfield at David Perdue’s Dickens site.

The manuscript of David Copperfield at the V&A Museum.

And check out this massive internet resource for the novel: Remember,  resource and tribute to David Copperfield.

I did need to take a break for about a month from Dickens, but this was because I had so many other books that I needed to read.  I was reviewing for a newspaper a new David Goodis anthology of noir novels from the Library of America (add five short novels to my reading table).  I was also teaching a course this semester (Literature and Novels), so I had to finish up the assigned books: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Down There (another Goodis novel), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Watchmen (that’s four more novels).  I also belong to a couple Shakespeare groups that meet every month: a Shakespeare Book Club that meets at a local library to discuss a play and I am the president of  the Oak Lane Shakespeare Club (founded 1908) which meets twice a month to read a Shakesplay aloud (that’s two plays).  I also felt the need to cleanse my reading palate, so to speak, and read a couple crime novellas by Anthony Neil Smith and The Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland (that’s three more books).

I’ve left out the rest of the work I do in teaching, leading another book club, taking care of my kids as the at-home parent, planning and leading Dickens’ events at the Free Library of Philadelphia, reviewing movies and, of course, writing my book about Edgar Allan Poe’s life in Philadelphia (manuscript due next month, so it can be published in the Fall).  So where, oh where, do I fit reading Dickens into my life?  The short answer is that I don’t.  Nothing fits.  I just manically try to do everything and hope nothing important gets left in the dust (and I rely on lots of reminders from others about my due dates).

So a break seemed in order.  I had just finished Matthew Pearl’s The Last Dickens, a historical thriller about the fate of Dickens last unfinished mystery, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Pearl spoke at the FLP in March) and had started Barnaby Rudge, but was having trouble getting into the flow of things, so with all the other books needing my attention, I put Dickens down for a month and read some other books that couldn’t be postponed any longer (well, except for the Sutherland and the crime novellas).  When April rolled around, I plunged headlong  into the Dickens pages once again, but started with an appetizer: The Disappearance of Edwin Drood by Peter Rowland, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in which the detective solves the mystery.  I really wish I had time to read some of the other Drood adaptations like The D Case by Fruttero and Lucentini or Drood by Dan Simmons, but after a month it was time to get back to Dickens proper.  I began reading David Copperfield (our FLP literary salon is on Copperfield in May), but had to stop halfway to read A Tale of Two Cities because I had been invited to lead another local book club on Tale at the beginning of May.   Now I’m back into Copperfield, which I hope to finish today.

A crazy life, this reading life.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

For more on Old Curiosity Shop check out David Perdue’s Dickens site.

I find Daniel Quilp, the manical, anarchic, demonic villain of the novel, as fascinating a character as Dickens has created.  Letters Editor of The Telegraph picks Quilp as his favorite Dickens character.  When Quilp is present in the novel, the scenes and language itself just crackles with intensity and vitality.  He’s a brillaint creation.

Quilp by Joseph Clarke

In Dickens’ final incomplete novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when Drood goes missing it is assumed that he has been murdered.  Edwin’s uncle and guardian, John Jasper, is the choirmaster of the Cloisterham Cathedral, but Jasper is also secretly in love with Edwin’s fiancée, Rosa Bud.  To cast further suspicion on Jasper, he is also an opium addict, often visiting the squalid opium den of Princess Puffer.  However, many of the other characters in the novel are unaware of Jasper’s secret lives and when Jasper casts aspersions on Neville Landless as the killer of Edwin, some readily believe it.  Enter into the town of Cloisterham, one Dick Datchery, a white haired, eccentric newcomer to the town, who seems to be investigating the disappearance of Edwin.  Unfortunately, at this point in the novel, Dickens died, leaving his readers with just half the novel complete and all the mystery still to solve.

For more than 140 years, various authors and critics have tried to solve the mystery.  Many readers have always assumed that Jasper must have murdered Drood, so in 1914 he was put on trial.  On January 7, 1914, The Trial of John Jasper, with eminent writer and Dickens’ critic G.K. Chesterton as judge, George Bernard Shaw as foreman of a jury that included such writers as W.W. Jacobs and Hilaire Belloc, was held King’s Hall, Covent Garden.  The proceedings were published and you can read the transcript of the trial here.

The participants in this mock trial agreed beforehand that Mr. Grewgious could not be called as witness by either side (lucky for the defense) and that hearsay evidence would be allowed.  Opening statements were read and witnesses called: Durdles, Crisparkle, Helena Landless, Princess Puffer, Bazzard (who in this trial is assumed to have been Datchery in disguise).

At the close of the trial (after four hours and twenty minutes), the jury revealed that they had already come up with their verdict during the luncheon period: Jasper is guilty of Manslaughter, but not murder because no body had been found.  I love the way it all ends:

The Prosecutor: I should like to urge that the Jury be discharged for not having performed their duties in the proper spirit of the law. We have heard from the Foreman that the verdict was arranged in advance, and I decline to accept that verdict, and ask for your Lordship’s ruling.

The Foreman (GB Shaw) : The Jury, like all British Juries, will be only too delighted to be discharged at the earliest moment : the sooner the better.

Mr. Chesterton : I want to associate myself with my learned friend.

Judge : My decision is that everybody here, except myself, be committed for Contempt of Court. Off you all go to prison without any trial whatever !

Just a few months later, the Philadelphia Branch of the Dickens Fellowship decided to hold their own trial of Jasper at the Academy of Music on Apr 29, 1914, as a charity benefit for various hospitals  This trial was presided over by an actual judge, PA Supreme Court Justice John P Elkin.  The Attorney General of Pennsylvania and another judge were prosecutors and a congressman represented the defense.  George W Elkins (the father of William McIntire Elkins whose library is preserved in the Rare Book Dept of the FLP) was a member of the jury.

You can read it here.  The book also contains photographs of the participants.

The Philadelphia trial acknowledges the British trial adjudged by Chesterton, however Jasper had since escaped to America where he was caught and will now be retried in an American court of law.  Also, according to the introduction of the published transcript, the British trial of Jasper “instead of satisfying the public, only left confusion more confounded and added to the uncertainty already existing. Not only did the English people declare that the verdict meant nothing, but the entire Dickensian world protested that Jasper should have been convicted of murder, or else acquitted. He was guilty, or not guilty, and a verdict in the Pickwickian sense would never do, even if Bernard Shaw were foreman of the jury which rendered such a verdict.”

The Philadelphia trail began with the choosing of the jury.  Some prominent literary Philadelphians not chosen from the pool were Ellis Paxson Oberholzer, ASW Rosenbach and Charles Sessler.

The very funny proceedings are rife with in-jokes for those familiar with the novel  When the first witness, Canon Crisparkle, is called by Mr. Bell, the Prosecutor, Mr. Sapsea objects:

I protest against the Canon taking the stand, sir. I am the first citizen of Cloisterham.

Mr. Bell: Do you insist upon your prerogative, sir?

Mayor Sapsea: I do, most positively.

Mr. Bell : All right, Dogberry, take the stand.

(Mayor Sapsea takes the witness stand.)

Mr. Bell: What quadruped in the animal kingdom do you and Dogberry typify?

Sapsea: Not a jackass, like counsel.

After a five hour trial the jury retired three times to deliberate: 6-6 tie, 9-3 for acquittal, and finally 11-1 for acquittal.  After all, no body had ever been discovered.  The American jury did not believe Jasper could be convicted without first proving that Drood was really dead.

So, was Drood murdered?  Or would he have come back at the end of the novel in a surprise dénouement?  We shall always wonder.

Jasper with Princess Puffer in her opium den