Well, I have promised the start of a long Dickens reading marathon, beginning with his earliest published serial novel, but I confess that my current novel-in-progress, and a couple in gestation, have led me down… More
The Impact of Dickens: An International Conference
It was a joy to drop in this morning on the opening of the Zoom-based international conference on The Impact of Dickens, which will continue today and tomorrow, and to hear the introduction by the delightful Pete Orford, and that of Ian Dickens, the great-great-grandson of the great man.
Before getting ready for work, I was able to view a good portion of the first panel, including Katie Bell‘s presentation on the impact of Dickens on the southern gothic novelist and short story writer, Flannery O’Connor. She pointed out that the dark humor of both Dickens and O’Connor depends on “a delicate balance of comedy, violence and freakery.” I particularly loved not only the references of both O’Connor and Dickens to Cervantes, but the insight that both Dickens and O’Connor share the association of intense pain and violence with that of grace and redemption. Bell also draws attention to the fascination of both authors with characters who have physical–or even moral–impairments, and their proximity (whether because of or in spite of such characteristics) to the intersection of grace and redemption.
The one question I did pose before the first panel commenced was whether the presentations would be available for viewing later, as time off work was impossible during this difficult time in our wildfire-consumed southern Oregon. It sounds as though it may well be available, as it is certainly being recorded, so any who are interested might want to just keep an eye on the facebook page and the Dickens Fellowship website. Here’s hoping…
But for now, I leave the conference with reluctance, to get ready for work. Alas, yes, the work must go on. (Like Mr. Pancks, “What else am I made for?”) Have a happy Thursday, everyone!
Fulfilling Little Nell’s Wish During Quarantine
Our state, Oregon, went into full lockdown in the middle of March this year, and has been in the gradual reopening process over the past months. As I’m among those who was never able to work remotely, working as I do with superheroic adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (or, different-abilities!) in a group home setting, I’ve not been able to focus as much time and energy on writing and on research as I’d like. However, I have been delving into a big Dickens readathon ~ or, perhaps more appropriately, re-readathon.
I’ve recently started the renowned Dickens biography by Michael Slater, having wanted to read it for a long time, only halted by my intense attachment to the Peter Ackroyd biography. I’ve also been rereading ~ or relistening to audiobooks of ~ his novels. One of those has been The Old Curiosity Shop, which I hadn’t read in years. I love the atmosphere, although it’s never been among my top favorites; however, during one of my walks with my brother, I was very much struck again by how applicable Dickens is, even to seemingly disconnected parts of life.
One of our favorite places to walk is the picturesque, historic little town of Jacksonville, Oregon, about 30 minutes away from Ashland, and home to a number just shy of 3,000 residents, but with, at least in pre-Covid days, a relatively hopping little tourist economy, between its old-West downtown flavor and historic homes, surrounding woods and trails, the supposedly-haunted Jacksonville Inn, and the renowned Britt Festival in the summer.
The historic Jacksonville Cemetery is a beautiful 
place for a walk ~ at least, when it isn’t too hot, because it tends to have spots of intense sun, and a few too many inclines for some of us in the heat. We’ve walked there often over the years, but our walk only a couple of weeks into the strict lockdown last March was particularly memorable.
Although I didn’t take pictures to speak of at the time ~ those in this post were primarily taken since ~ I recall in those first weeks of total quarantine, when we could only go out for essential needs, or to walk, for example, that I was inspired by the quiet, social-distanced, but active presence of people at the cemetery…walking, visiting the graves of loved ones, or simply sitting under the shade of trees to read and nap. I don’t recall having seen so many people there before, although there were no gatherings, or anything else that went against the lockdown regulations. If there is one thing that, just perhaps, we might see more of in a time of shutdown and pandemic, is a beautiful sort of connection to the earth, to family, and to those who have gone before us. 
I kept thinking of Little Nell’s lament, when beautifying the little churchyard late in the novel, of the many graves that go unvisited, as though forgotten. She finally opens up about her thoughts to the kind schoolmaster:
“I rather grieve–I do rather grieve to think,” said the child, bursting into tears, “that those who die about us, are so soon forgotten.”
“And do you think,” said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she had thrown around, “that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a faded flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect? Do you think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these dead may be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy in the world, at this instant, in whose good actions and good thoughts these very graves–neglected as they look to us–are the chief instruments.”
“Tell me no more,” said the child quickly. “Tell me no more. I feel, I know it. How could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of you?”
“There is nothing,” cried her friend, “no, nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, and will play its part, through them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear; for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves!”
~ Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter 54
So, of course, the schoolmaster is right ~ it is our deeds, and our lives, by which we best remember those who have gone before. Who knows what hidden sparks of life, what dreams and moments of even heroic virtue, might have been inspired by one who died long ago? But still, I understand little Nell’s lament, and it is the peculiar sadness of the cemetery: not so much that it is a place to house the dead, but the broader fear that they are forgotten by the living. We know this isn’t so, but we are connected inextricably to the tangible. Fresh flowers left at a grave site; grass freshly mown and earth recently weeded; little pebbles left like secret messages at a headstone.
One might see it as “morbid,” perhaps, to keep part of one’s focus on the memory of the deceased; but I think there are few things that more awaken us to the living world around us, than the memory of those who are still so alive to us in a more profound way, although not physically present to our senses.
Perhaps for many of the visitors, like my brother and me, many were just in the cemetery for a beautiful walk, or somewhere to read with a vista of the surrounding town and hills, and not specifically to visit the grave of a loved one. But one can’t help but remember one’s own loved ones in such a setting, and one’s connection to the earth. Was it just my imagination, or had the quiet cemetery never seemed so full of life, and active memory, as it had during those early days of quarantine? I hope that those goods that have come from this time of universal lockdown are not too soon forgotten.
A Victober for John Henry Newman
“The heart is a secret with its Maker; no one on earth can hope to get at it or to touch it.”
John Henry Newman
Reading challenges have not often been on my to-do list, even though I can see how they could be great opportunities to find inspiration from others doing something similar. It’s entertaining and inspiring to see the different takes and offshoots from each challenge, and perhaps–just perhaps–one will find the Holy Grail: a real gem of a book that you otherwise might never have found.
While doing my own prep for NaNoWriMo this year–or was I just YT surfing?–I stumbled across a Booktuber who mentioned her participation in “Victober” this year. I’d heard the term before but had forgotten about it. It has been going for the past few years, and is hosted by four Booktubers, with the intention of focusing on Victorian literature during the month of October. Each comes up with a particular “challenge” for those participating, as well as a group challenge.
As if I needed any excuse to read more Victorian lit, but…
Okay, it is too much fun to resist. To some degree, I’ll be doing my own thing with the Victober challenge. For one, mine definitely has a theme, and I’m not sure how common this is. For a while now I’ve been wanting to dip back into the life and writings of John Henry Newman, and now seems the perfect time, as a kind of celebration of his upcoming canonization on October 13th. So, although not all of the books I’ve chosen relate to Newman, there is definitely a recurring theme.
John Henry Newman, Anglican priest and Oxford intellectual who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845, is one of the towering intellects in the history of the Church and of western literature, and a master of English prose. Newman’s life spanned almost the entirety of the Victorian period. His conversion from Anglicanism was one of the great scandals of his day, as he was such an influential figure among the Anglican faithful who flocked to his sermons, and was among the leaders of the Oxford Movement, which was intended to bring Anglicanism back to her Catholic roots and sacramentality. Interestingly, the more Newman plunged into the readings of the Church Fathers and into history, the more he became convinced that the church of Christ and of truth was to be found in the very Roman Catholicism that he had throughout his life been taught to treat with suspicion or reprehension. The decision to finally “cross the Tiber” came after a long and arduous time of soul-searching, intellectual rigor, and prayer. He knew that by taking this step, his influence would be completely undercut. He would lose friends, and hurt his family. (One of the reasons that I love John Henry Newman so much is his great capacity for friendship, and the value he places on friendship.) Such a conversion would not be seen as so earth-shattering now; but at the time, the bias against “popery” and “Romanism” was so strong in England that it was tantamount to a treasonous act.
The richness of Newman’s life and thought has led to a vast number of conversions, and his influence on the understanding of doctrine and also of the importance of the laity in the life of the church are among the reasons he has been called “the Father of the Second Vatican Council.”
In 2016, my mom and I, and two of my siblings, had taken a 20-year-in-the-making trip to England, with the heart of our stay being the 3 nights in Oxford, where we were able to visit St. Mary the Virgin and “Newman’s pulpit” where he preached the great Anglican sermons that were so beloved; and to nearby Littlemore, where he went on a kind of 3-year retreat after the censure of Tract 90, in order to pray and study and reflect on his position in the Anglican church and his leanings toward Rome. Our stop to Littlemore, and to his room and the little chapel where I held his Rosary for a few minutes, were easily the most moving and memorable moments of the whole England trip for me.
But, back to Victober. Here is a list of the challenges from the four hosts (click here for a link to the challenge video on the “Books and Things” page–she includes links to the rest of the hosts), along with an addition of my own:
- Challenge #1: A book written by a female author (with a bonus if the author is unfamiliar to you).
- Challenge #2: Reread a Victorian book.
- Challenge #3: Read a Victorian book under 250 pages and/or over 500 pages.
- Challenge #4: Read an underrated book published in the same year as your favorite Victorian book.
- General challenge: Read by candlelight, for at least some of a book.
- My own challenge: Read a book (not necessarily published during the period) about a favorite Victorian figure.
For Challenge #1, I decided to read Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe, published in 1853, a novel which is not greatly remembered now, but which was very popular in its day. (And yes, I do get the “bonus” because CY is not an author I’ve read before!) Focusing on the spiritual struggle of the main character, Guy Morville, the novel lifts up the virtues of self-sacrifice and piety and was very influential. The connection to Newman here is that Yonge, like Newman, fell under the influence of John Keble; Yonge has been called “the novelist of the Oxford Movement.” (Warning: Don’t read the introduction by Barbara Dennis if you don’t want spoilers! I had to stop reading the introduction almost instantly. I really want to read Dennis’ biography of Yonge at some point, but here Dennis continues the tradition which is a pet peeve of mine: in so many summaries or introductions of Victorian novels, or even on the back covers, the endings are constantly spoiled. And with no “spoiler alert” warnings! This pet peeve deserves a whole separate blog post of its own. Do they think that we either: 1. Already know the ending? or, 2. Don’t care about knowing the ending ahead of time, as though we are merely studying it for a class and not reading it for fun, as a good story that we want to be surprised by? Either way, I find it infuriating.)
For Challenge #2, I’ll cheat a bit, since it won’t be a full re-read. I had started Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent–usually just referred to as A Grammar of Assent–some time ago, but with school and work challenges, it fell by the wayside. So, in honor of the month and the theme, I will read/re-read it. It sounds like a daunting one, yes, and it’s certainly above me intellectually, but it is such an important work that I want to tackle it.
I’m combining Challenges #3, #4, and the Group Challenge in one book that is not Newman-related: It is a short novella (hence fulfilling the #3 requirement) and published in 1859, the year of my favorite novel’s publication (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities), fulfilling the #4 requirement. It is a George Eliot novella called The Lifted Veil, which sounds rather gothic–hence, it will be the perfect book to read at least partially by candlelight! I found a kindle version for free on Amazon.
For my final challenge, I’m also somewhat cheating, as I’m continuing a book rather than starting it during the month of October. It’s the first volume of Meriol Trevor’s biography of John Henry Newman, called The Pillar of the Cloud.
There are so many other books, Newman related and otherwise, that I’d like to read soon, but I’d better keep my Victober choices to those I’ve mentioned, since I also have other books on the immediately-to-be-read list, such as a reread of The Hobbit as the first of our reads for a newly-created local book group focusing on the works of the Inklings. (Of course, Oxford-based as the Inklings are, there is even a tangential connection to Newman there!)
So, in the midst of our other family and work duties, here’s to a month of snatching, when one can, a few cozy hours with a blanket and a hot drink, curled up with a good Victorian read. And just as Newman proposed a toast “to conscience first,” I propose a toast to John Henry himself, for the world would be a far poorer place without his great mind and influence.
