Tag: David Copperfield

The Last Of The Cemeteries Project

I experienced another of what I now recognise to be barometric pressure headaches through the night and morning, so the first part of the day was a washout.

After lunch and a doze through an Antiques Road Trip recording I perked up enough to watch the Wimbledon women’s singles final between Ashleigh Barty and Karolina Pliskova, and employ my scanner to produce images, first of Charles Keeping’s inimitable illustrations to my Folio Society edition of David Copperfield, and subsequently of the last few slides from my cemeteries project.

First the memorable drawings:

‘An ugly old man rushed out and seized me by the hair of my head’

‘I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a side-saddle, ride deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front of the house’. As always, this portrait is faithful to one featured earlier in the book.

Keeping’s particular mastery of perspective is demonstrated in ‘He stood at the pony’s head, looking up at us in the chaise’

‘We found Annie lying on the hall floor’ displays the artist’s flowing lines.

‘It was Mr Micawber!’

Now the memorials found in Tower Hamlets Cemetery in March 2009:

The third image shows a pigeon perched atop the Cowderoy gravestone; the fifth displays an example of the genealogical research that has enabled symbols of family trees for those stones that have succumbed to time’s erosion. Bigification by accessing the gallery with a click is recommended.

This evening we dined on tasty lasagna garnished with basil and plentiful fresh salad with which Jackie drank Blue Moon and I finished the Cotes du Rhone.

Breathing Space

On another rather sultry morning we made good progress in

weeding the Rose Garden, thus giving breathing space to blooms such as

roses peach/orange Mamma Mia; pure white Margaret Merrill; pinkish Alan Titchmarsh; the recently righted New Dawn; and plants such as penstemon put in for variety.

Later, I read four more chapters of David Copperfield and scanned a page containing a Charles Keeping illustration for each one.

‘It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was’

Readers who have been following this series of Keeping’s illustrations to Dickens’s novels will know that the artist uses larger figures in the foreground to indicate receding perspective. In ‘Still, nobody appeared to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone, Suffolk’ the diminutive such figure shows how small is the boy.

‘The wooden-legged man turned me about again, with my face to Mr Creakle, and posted himself at Mr Creakle’s side’

‘ ‘I take my leave of you’, said Mr Mell’

This afternoon I watched the Wimbledon Tennis match between Dan Evans and Sebastian Korda.

We dined this evening on the last portion of Jackie’s splendid beef pie, amplified by minced cooked with onions, mushrooms and peas; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; and tender runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Cotes du Rhone.

I then settled down to watch the tennis match between Andy Murray and Denis Shapovalov.