Early yesterday morning Jackie photographed some of our current garden blooms. Each is labelled in the gallery.
We decided to hold these back to today because of the quantity we had published of the St John the Baptist Cemetery photographs. Later, Elizabeth e-mailed me a selection of hers.
This is her take on the inserted death medals;
she also added her version of the House memorial carved lilies;
she was intrigued by the cremation plaques and their offerings from loved ones and from autumn;
I had refrained from photographing these daffodils, but she made the best of them.
I spent much of today finishing reading
Christopher Hibbert in his knowledgeable and informative introduction places this work in the context of Dickens’s time and his works. He tells us that this begins the writer’s focus on social ills.
This is a well wrought story which largely keeps a good pace and culminates in conclusions with surprises and revelations which I will leave open to anyone wishing to read the book for the first time. The descriptions are good. Despite the harshness of the theme the author’s wry humour is much in evidence. I felt that the dialogue of two characters was irritating enough for me to skim them. One was conveyed in the supposed vernacular; another wath ath thpoken with a thevere lithp. The first indicated the humble origins of the man; the thecond I imagine wath a clownith interval. (I do apologithe WP, but I ethpect you get my point).
Regular readers will need no introduction to the exuberant, animated, illustrations of Charles Keeping, ever faithful to the text, and unbound by the page formats.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s variation on Cottage pie, with the addition of mashed potatoes and cheese; crunchy carrots and cauliflower, with tender cabbage, firm Brussels sprouts and tasty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Shiraz.
Yesterday I finished reading the fifth and final of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books. This morning I scanned Charles Keeping’s faithful, first-class, illustrations.
Christopher Hibbert, in his informative introduction to my Folio Society edition, offers the insight that this work reflects painful experiences of the writer’s own life. Seeking freedom from his phantoms ‘The Haunted Man’ of the novella appeals for forgetfulness. The story reveals that forgiveness is really what is required. Once more this tale has been overshadowed by ‘A Christmas Carol’. It does, however contain much of Dickens’s splendid descriptive writing laced with his wry humour.
Highgate West Cemetery, in September 2008, when I produced the batch of colour slides scanned this afternoon, was nowhere near as oppressively gloomy as the heavy atmosphere that prevailed outside my workroom window.
John Turpin, who wrote the text for ‘The Magnificent Seven’, and I needed to join the above paying group to visit this fine example of London’s Victorian landscaped burial grounds. Although wealthy enough to have afforded these final resting places, I have gleaned no information about the various residents.
Steps lead down to these lower levels which also house the columbarium, from the Latin for pigeon-house, which contains niches for storing funeral urns.
I do not know who warranted this elaborate marker.
These three are memorable for their animals. His mastiff guards the remains of Thomas Sayers.
This is what Wikipedia tells us about him: ‘Tom Sayers (15 or 25 May[1] 1826 – 8 November 1865) was an English bare-knuckle prize fighter. There were no formal weight divisions at the time, and although Sayers was only five feet eight inches tall and never weighed much more than 150 pounds, he frequently fought much bigger men. In a career which lasted from 1849 until 1860, he lost only one of sixteen bouts. He was recognized as heavyweight champion of England between 1857, when he defeated William Perry (the “Tipton Slasher”) and his retirement in 1860.
His lasting fame depended exclusively on his final contest, when he faced American champion John Camel Heenan[2] in a battle which was widely considered to be boxing’s first world championship. It ended in chaos when the spectators invaded the ring, and the referee finally declared a draw.
Regarded as a national hero, Sayers, for whom the considerable sum of £3,000 was raised by public subscription, then retired from the ring. After his death five years later at the age of 39, a huge crowd watched his cortège on its journey to London’s Highgate Cemetery.’ His origins are also related in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sayers
John Atcheler, commemorated by a horse on a plinth, was reputedly horse-slaughterer to Queen Victoria. Maybe someone was indulging a wry sense of humour.
Menageries were popular in Regency and early Victorian England. The lion resting above the remains of George Wombwell represents a favourite exhibit of that individual who, according to Wikipedia
‘was born in Wendon Lofts, Essex in 1777. Around 1800 he moved to London and in 1804 became a shoemaker in Soho. However, when a ship from South America brought two boas to London docks, he bought them for £75 and began to exhibit them in taverns. He soon made a good profit.
Wombwell began to buy exotic animals from ships that came from Africa, Australia and South America, and collected a whole menagerie and put them on display in Soho. In 1810 he founded the Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie and began to tour the fairs of Britain. By 1839 it totalled fifteen wagons, and was accompanied by a brass band.
Wombwell bred and raised many animals himself, including the first lion to be bred in captivity in Britain; he named it William in honour of William Wallace. In 1825 Warwick, Wombwell, in collaboration with Sam Wedgbury and dog dealer Ben White’s assistant Bill George,[1]arranged a Lion-baiting between his docile lion Nero and six bulldogs. Nero refused to fight but when Wombwell released Wiliam, he mauled the dogs and the fight was soon stopped.
Over the years, Wombwell expanded three menageries that traveled around the country. Wombwell was a regular exhibitor at the annual Knott Mill Fair in Manchester, a venue he sometimes shared with Pablo Fanque‘s circus.[2][3] He was invited to the royal court on five occasions to exhibit his animals, three times before Queen Victoria. In 1847 the Queen Victoria noted the bravery of the “British Lion Queen”, the nickname of Ellen Chapmanwho appeared with lions, leopards and tigers. Chapman married Wombwell’s business rival George Sanger in 1850.[4]
On one occasion Prince Albert summoned him to look at his dogs who kept dying and Wombwell quickly noticed that their water was poisoning them. When the prince asked what he could do in return for this favour, Wombwell said, “What can you give a man who has everything?” However, Wombwell requested some oak timber from the recently salvaged Royal George. From this he had a coffin fashioned for himself, which he then proceeded to exhibit for a special fee.
Wombwell frequented Bartholomew Fair in London and even developed a rivalry with another exhibitor, Atkins. Once when he arrived at the fair, his elephant died and Atkins put up a sign “The Only Live Elephant in the Fair”. Wombwell simply put up a scroll with the words “The Only Dead Elephant in the Fair” and explained that seeing a dead elephant was an even a rarer thing than a live one. The public, realising that they could see a living elephant at any time, flocked to see and poke the dead one. Throughout the fair Atkins’ menagerie was largely deserted, much to his disgust.
George Wombwell died in 1850 and was buried in his Royal George coffin in Highgate Cemetery, under a statue of his lion Nero.
The book George Wombwell (1777 – 1850): Volume One recalls the lion and dog fight in Warwick with well researched evidence, but questions whether it ever actually took place. George Wombwell (1777 – 1850): Volume Two covers Wombwell’s life as the most famous showman, from his arrival in London around 1800 to his death in 1850.[5]
In 1851 a tapir broke out of its den at Wombwell’s Menagerie in Rochdale, causing panic among the spectators.[6]
The cedar of Lebanon in the second and third of these pictures is one of the cemetery’s original plantings.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s substantial, wholesome, chicken and vegetable stoup and crusty bread with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.
This morning I produced an A3 print of his choice for the paraglider from “Sunset Dancing”. Now we are back in National Lockdown handover will probably have to wait a while.
In the meantime Jackie photographed the farmer across Christchurch Road trimming his hedge. He didn’t really cause any disruption to traffic, although it was a little tight at times. The owls on our front fence were undisturbed. Note the thriving carpet rose.
Charles Dickens’s ‘Christmas Books’ is definitely a mixed bag. This afternoon I read ‘The Battle of Life – A love story’, first published in 1846. The narrative begins with a lovely bucolic description and a delightful dance giving us hope for joyful times ahead. There follows a rather boring sequence, more poetic word pictures, and a somewhat far-fetched conclusion, all featuring the author’s entertaining wry humour. Christopher Hibbert, in his introduction to my Folio Society edition, describes this ‘slight but dismal tale’ as a version of relationships and events in the author’s own life at this time. That rings true to me.
Beginning with the dance,
Charles Keeping’s wonderfully moving illustrations are as true as ever to the text.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s well-filled flavoursome beef and onion pie; crisp roast potatoes; crunchy carrots, cauliflower, and firm Brussels sprouts, with tasty, meaty, gravy, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Mendoza Malbec 2019
Of Charles Dickens’s 5 Christmas Books the best known, which needs no commentary from me, is ‘A Christmas Carol’. I have no need to read it again to scan Charles Keepings’s illustrations for my Folio Society edition of 1988. The introduction is by Christopher Hibbert.
Here are the illustrated pages.
This evening we dined on succulent chicken Kiev; crisp oven chips; firm cauliflower and runner beans, with moist ratatouille. Jackie finished the Cotes de Gascogne and I drank Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
When, in August 1898, Czar Nicholas II of Russia called for all ‘the nations to join a conference for the limitation of armaments’ cynics mistrusted his motives, believing this was because his nation was so far behind the major powers with whom he would never be able to catch up without such breathing space. We learn this from ‘The Steady Drummer – The Hague: 1899 and 1907’, being the 5th Chapter of Barbara W. Tuchman’s ‘The Proud Tower’.
Tuchman chronicles the two conferences that took place in these years, making it clear that every nation involved, including the US and European in 1907 supplemented at the insistence of the Americans by the Latin-American States, would put their own interests ahead of the others; the strong and better armed belligerents wanted it kept that way; disarmament and arms reduction were out of the question. Some progress was eventually made on the conduct of war, which, of course, would come to be blatantly ignored during the next half century. Humanity’s natural competition, territorial greed, and distrust prevailed.
I finished reading this section of the book this afternoon.
I don’t know when I last read Charles Dickens’s ‘The Adventures of Oliver Twist’, but it would have been before I began blogging, otherwise I would have scanned and featured before now my Folio Society edition of 1984 with
Charles Keepings’s inimitable illustrations sprawling across the pages, the first of which is the frontispiece.
Christopher Hibbert has written a useful introduction. I have not felt it necessary to review such an internationally well-known work.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy pasta arrabbiata with tender runner beans. The Culinary Queen finished the Greco di Tufo and I drank more of the Recital, involving an encore from another bottle.
My inspirational teacher, Richard Milward, featured in https://derrickjknight.com/2012/07/04/no-one-forgets-a-good-teacher/ stressed that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. As I have progressed through my reading life I have come to believe that the journey through a book has been more important to me than the focus on a satisfactory ending. Charles Dickens, however, would have followed Mr Milward’s mantra – and rightly so.
The exception of course was
This was no fault of the author who had panned out his tale in his even more than usually cryptic notes, but unfortunately fell to a fatal heart attack when only a third of the way through the work. Just three of the chapter instalments had been published and Dickens had been compelled to elide some of the text for the next two because he had written too much for their publication in their customary form. It was left to others to edit the rest and reintroduce the omissions.
Despite its gradual infusion of foreboding, the writer’s customary dry wit and humorous descriptions feature throughout the published sections. The characterisation is typical of the master, and has the promise of more complexity than usual.
I have to acknowledge a gradual slackening of interest in the last fifty pages or so: perhaps I did really need to know there would be one of my old schoolmaster’s favoured endings; perhaps the humour had lessened; perhaps the emphasis on the likely death of Edwin reflected Charles Dickens’s premonition of his own demise.
Would it not have served our great novelist’s memory better to have left the publication of Edwin Drood at the episodes he saw into print himself?
Christopher Hibbert’s introduction to my Folio Society edition is useful and informative, as is the publisher’s note on the text and reproduction of Dickens’s own outline plan.
The illustrations,
in the artist’s typically lively idiosyncratic style, are faithful to the text and refuse to be constrained by the same boundaries as the typeset blocks.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s Chicken and leek pie, which she photographed herself; creamy mashed potatoes; green peas; crunchy carrots; piquant cauliflower cheese; tender cabbage, and tasty gravy with which we jointly finished the Sauvignon Blanc.
‘The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club’ was the 24 year old Charles Dickens’s serialised debut novel. Such publications in 1836 were the soaps of the period before television and a more leisurely age when reading was a main source of entertainment. The monthly instalments of these comic capers were eagerly awaited by those in many walks of life. Those who couldn’t read gathered round their more literate friends and colleagues, having contributed to the costs of library borrowing.
Today’s promotional merchandise boosting sales for blockbuster films and best-selling books like the Harry Potter series are no new idea. Pickwick inspired items were on sale when Queen Victoria came to the throne. There may not have been a market for replica football kits, but there was for Pickwick hats and coats.
The novel itself is really a series of short stories stitched together with the thread of what Mr Pickwick himself terms his “rambles” which were taken by coach and horses with groups of friends around the South of England. Interest was a little slow to catch on and the young author seemed to be feeling his way before picking up the pace with gusto. Gradually we become attached the characters introduced along the way.
Every so often what appears to be an extraneous story is introduced in the patched garment. These I found of varying interest.
As usual with Dickens, we learn much about the social, economic, and legal aspects of contemporary life. The author writes with fluidity; with remarkable knowledge of human nature; and with considerable humour. But, then, the world has appreciated that for almost two centuries,
All the strands are neatly drawn together in the closing stages when we learn the outcome of various relationships and their prospective futures.
Christopher Hibbert’s introduction to my Folio Society edition is scholarly and informative – I owe Pickwick hats and coats to him.
I have now finished reading the lengthy tome and can complete my posting of Charles Keeping’s
lively line drawings leaping exuberantly from the leaves of the book. I have written before about the artist’s fidelity to the text. What is also striking is his expressive rendering of the author’s characterisation. Keeping conveys the nature of his subjects with humour and accuracy. Some are grotesque caricatures; others gentle and sensitive souls. Comparison with the first and last of today’s selection will indicate that Charles Keeping can produce consistent individual portraits.
This evening we dined on smoked haddock, cod fish cakes, very tasty carrots, tender runner beans, juicy ratatouille and Jackie’s piquant cauliflower cheese, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Syrah.
CLICK ON ANY IMAGE IN A GROUP TO ACCESS ITS GALLERY, INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF WHICH CAN BE VIEWED FULL SIZE BY SCROLLING DOWN AND CHECKING BOX AT BOTTOM RIGHT
The garden was looking very refreshed as I wandered around this morning. Most blooms bore baubles of raindrops.
Bees were making up for being confined in hives by the recent precipitation.
By lunchtime, I had finished reading
Hibbert’s well researched history is founded on the subject’s personal correspondence and contemporary observations. Like many great men, our national hero comes across has a man of two halves. Undoubtedly kind and generous to his men and to many others Nelson’s relationship with Lady Emma Hamilton was seen as folly by many, and, even as demonstrated by his own letters he must have treated his wife very badly. This Viking paperback of 1994 contains no identification of the painter of the cover portrait.
After lunch, Jackie and I visited the sites of the two scarecrows missing from our last visit. Prince Eric, now wearing a rain hood, perched on a hedge at Ramblers in Woodcock Lane. I am very pleased to be able to report that a rebuilt Frog Prince again sits outside 49 Ashley Lane. His creator informed me that his battered body had lain on the ground and his decapitated head had hung from a branch.
We continued on a drive through the forest. Near Ogdens, a herd of deer got wind of my approach, and, turning tail, slowly picking up speed, elegantly trotted across the undulating terrain to safety over the brow of a hill.
Clusters of pesky flies surrounded somnolent ponies gathered together at North Gorley.
Other ponies mingled with visitors to Ibsley ford, some of whom competed to establish who could create a bigger splash.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s splendid spicy pork paprika with savoury rice. The Culinary Queen drank Coonwarra Chardonay 2016; Elizabeth and I chose Villanyi Merlot 2015 and drank some of it.
