Tag: Little Dorrit

A Greasy Spoon

Barry, of New Forest Chimney Sweeping and Repairs continued today with his work on our kitchen extension roof.

Painstakingly he removed the spent lead flashing and prepared the surfaces for the replacement material.

Only when he was satisfied that he had firm bases did he begin to lay the new lead. This is tough work for one man. The care he takes is patent.

This evening Barry sent me his own photographs of his work, including his earlier project on the Velux window.

Just after lunch, Ronan from Tom Sutton Heating visited to fix a minor central heating problem.

Four chapters further into ‘Little Dorrit’ I have scanned four more of Charles Keeping’s exemplary illustrations.

Unusually, the text of the page containing ‘A dirty shop-window in a dirty street’, describes a different building, the home of the character in the next illustration. Here we have a poor man’s eating house, the Victorian equivalent of a greasy spoon, namely ‘a small, cheap eatery – either an American diner or coffee shop, or a British or Irish cafe – typically specialising in fried foods and/or home-cooked meals.’ (Wikipedia). During my running days I was a connoisseur of London’s wide-spread finest, such as The Martin Café

“Mrs Merdle was magnificent’ – and proud of it.

Tobacconists, such as ‘It was a very small establishment’ have all but disappeared from London’s streets except for the West End.

With ‘He was surprised to see a bonnet labouring up the step-ladder’, the artist has split his drawing, and consequently the text, into a diagonal across the spread. It is a measure of Keeping’s consistency that these three characters are each recognisable from their earlier appearances.

This evening we dined on breaded cod and oven chips; cod, asparagus, and pea fishcakes; petits pois; pickled onions and wallies; with which we both drank Western Cape Sauvignon Blanc 2020

Walking in Aquitaine

With five more chapters of Little Dorrit under my belt I now present five more of Charles Keeping’s splendid drawings.

‘Mr Flintwinch held the candle to her head’.

‘It was a charming place, on the road by the river’ is reminiscent of the paintings of John Constable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable

In ‘He applied spoons to his eye’, Keeping has ably depicted that Young Barnacle had not exactly engrossed the assembled company.

As the artist shows with ‘Now or never was the time to speak to her’ never would have been preferable.

Charles Keeping will not be constrained by the blocks of type on his pages.

‘The brothers, walking up and down the College-yard, were a memorable sight’, gives him the opportunity for a double spread.

This afternoon I scanned and labelled another set of recently rediscovered colour slides. These are from France in April 2009.

During my sojourns in Sigoules I walked many miles in and around the town.

The blossom trees in the first picture were in the garden immediately across rue St Jacques from my front windows; the white blob receding in the far distance of the garden collecting tyres was on regular five mile circuit; for a while cattle in the field behind the supermarket were displaced for development; the church and war memorial are at Ste Innocence, near Eymet; I would pass the ploughed field on another circuitous ramble. What was built on the development site and the trip to Ste Innocence are described in https://derrickjknight.com/2012/06/10/le-code-bar/

I passed these rape fields on my fairly regular 8 mile walk to Eymet. It was probably a little after this particular time that I began to struggle with this one. The general advice when encountering the marathon runners’ “wall” was to run the through the pain. I had never experienced that particular difficulty, but surely, it seemed, the pain in my left hip would benefit from such an effort. Not so. 6 months later I was fitted with a new one. Although I continued walking very quickly after the operation, I never ran again.

Chris, Frances, and Elizabeth were staying with me that spring. We took the opportunity to visit Chris’s long-term friend Mike Ozga and his wife Oonagh who lived about 30 miles away.

A walk in the Dordogne woodland ensued. I wondered whose fossilised skull had been covered in moss.

This evening we reprised Jackie’s scrumptious beef pie dinner with similar beverages.

Bleeding Heart Yard

After two more chapters of ‘Little Dorrit’ I scanned two more of Charles Keeping’s excellent illustrations.

In ‘He ate all that was put before him’, Keeping has accurately depicted the character Christopher Hibbert described as the ‘one truly evil character in the book’.

‘You got out of the Yard by a low gateway into a maze of shabby streets’. Keeping has accurately represented the yard that Dickens knew.

‘Bleeding Heart Yard is a cul-de-sac leading off Greville Street, near Hatton Garden. The yard’s name probably derives from an old inn sign, the Bleeding Heart of Our Lady, which depicted the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced through by swords. However, the sanguinary imagery has inspired several colourful legends, which Charles Dickens summarises in Little Dorrit (1855–7) – where he also suggests that the name actually relates to “the heraldic cognisance of the old family to whom the property had once belonged.”

One tale has it that a lovelorn young lady, imprisoned in her bedchamber by her cruel father, pined away at her window, murmuring ‘bleeding heart, bleeding heart, bleeding away’ as she expired. Dickens says that this story was “the invention of a tambour-worker, a spinster and romantic, still lodging in the Yard.”

The goriest fable suggests that sometime in the early 17th century the much-wooed Elizabeth Hatton was murdered here by the Spanish ambassador – whom she had jilted – and was found at dawn with her heart still pumping blood onto the cobblestones. Another angle on this story, this time featuring Sir Christopher and Lady Alice Hatton and the Devil, was set to verse by Richard Barham in his Ingoldsby Legends.

“Of poor Lady Hatton, it’s needless to say,
No traces have ever been found to this day,
Or the terrible dancer who whisk’d her away;
But out in the court-yard – and just in that part
Where the pump stands – lay bleeding a large human heart …”

Richard Barham, ‘The House-Warming!!’ (1840)’ (hidden-london.com)

The Elizabeth Hatton story is thoroughly dismissed in https://d33c33.wordpress.com/elizabeth-hatton-and-the-legend-of-bleeding-heart-yard/

My own acquaintance with this historic street is detailed in https://derrickjknight.com/2017/12/06/changes/

The lamp in my photograph is very similar to that in Mr Keeping’s drawing.

This afternoon, the winds of three day storm Christoph having desisted, Jackie drove us to Ferndene Farm Shop. So smooth was the shop that my wait in the car was just a four page one, after which we diverted on our journey home via Forest Road, giving me the opportunity to wander among the ponies in

the soggy woodland alongside.

The damp, muddy, matted shaggy haired animals bore the effects of days in the wind and rain,

one adding the battle scars of torn out tufts.

Jackie photographed a helicopter flying overhead as I approached the ditch I needed to cross to enter the woodland.

The minute I returned to the car heavy rain set in once more.

This evening we dined on roasted sturdy chicken thighs, extremely tasty parsnips, and crisp potatoes; Yorkshire pudding, sage and onion stuffing; firm carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli, and flavoursome gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank vin de Bourgogne Macon 2019.

An Unknown Soldier

Just before I spent the week in Eymet with Maggie and Mike in September 2008, culminating in agreeing to buy their house in Sigoules, I enjoyed various locations with Mike and Heidi, Emily, Oliver, and Alice. One of these was at

Onesse in Les Landes. Oliver doesn’t seem to be in this family shot from the selection I scanned today from the recently recovered colour slides.

I am not sure where this beach was, but I remember picnicking on the bank in the foreground.

We took a number of walks in the sun-dappled forest with its tall pines, red-brown streams, and sandy banks of bright purple heather.

The farmhouse and its field; the nodding sunflowers; and the village perching above it are all outside Eymet, while the colourful garden and the church spire behind the rooftops are probably inside it. Without notes I am a little hazy after twelve years.

I really regret not being sure where this wonderfully sensitive sculpture of an unknown soldier adorns a war memorial. Maybe someone will enlighten me.

Having read another four chapters of ‘Little Dorrit’ I now present four more of Charles Keeping’s skilful illustrations.

Here we have a ruined uncle well portrayed by the artist;

‘My eldest daughter and my son Mr Clennham.’ The essences of one weak and one haughty captured by the artist’s pen;

‘Oh, Maggy, What a clumsy child you are!’ Drawn to perfection is Dickens’s portrait of this simple soul, including her clothing’s ‘general resemblance to seaweed’;

‘He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait all the days of his life’. Keeping has caught Dickens’s vivid description of the aptly named Tite Barnacle, down to his very clothing.

This evening we dined on a second sitting of Hordle Chinese Take Away’s excellent fare, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Recital.

The Father Of The Marshalsea

This morning I received my Covid vaccine invitation in the post and booked my appointments at a centre less than eight miles away by telephone. The first jab will be in one week’s time. The whole process went very smoothly. The service has been quick and efficient.

I have now read the first 6 chapter’s of ‘Little Dorrit’ and this afternoon scanned five more of Charles Keeping’s drawings.

The artist faithfully describes Miss Wade’s appearance and aloof manner;

his rendering of the Clennam home is most evocative of a neglected edifice;

the diminutive Mr Flintwinch shakes his much taller wife out of a nightmare;

our first sighting of our eponymous character is rendered exactly as the author described;

‘the Father of the Marshalsea’ enjoys a good number of perks from departing residents.

This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away fare, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I enjoyed a Recital encore.