Happy Birthday, Mr. Genius!
To celebrate the birthday of Charles Dickens, here’s part of a post I wrote in December 2005: Snuggling Up to Genius.
…All this Dickens talk brought to mind something I read long ago in the introduction to Kate Douglas Wiggins’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
An excerpt:
There on the platform stood the Adored One. His hands were plunged deep in his pockets (a favorite posture), but presently one was removed to wave away laughingly a piece of the famous Berwick sponge-cake offered him by Mr. Osgood, of Boston, his traveling companion and friend.
I knew him at once: the smiling, genial, mobile face, rather highly colored, the brilliant eyes, the watch-chain, the red carnation in the buttonhole, and the expressive hands, much given to gesture. It was only a momentary view, for the train started, and Dickens vanished, to resume his place in the car next to ours, where he had been, had I known it, ever since we left Portland.
Shortly thereafter, the intrepid Kate slips into Dickens’s car, where she finds him alone and launches into a discussion of his “stories”:
“Well, upon my word!” he said. “You do not mean to say that you have read them!”
“Of course I have,” I replied. “Every one of them but the two that we are going to buy in Boston, and some of them six times.”
“Bless my soul!” he ejaculated again. “Those long, thick books, and you such a slip of a thing!”
“Of course,” I explained, conscientiously, “I do skip some of the very dull parts once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones.”
He laughed heartily. “Now, that is something that I hear very little about,” he said. “I distinctly want to learn more about those very dull parts,” and, whether to amuse himself or to amuse me, I do not know, he took out a note-book and pencil from his pocket and proceeded to give me an exhausting and exhaustive examination on this subject—the books in which the dull parts predominated, and the characters and subjects which principally produced them. He chuckled so constantly during this operation that I could hardly help believing myself extraordinarily agreeable; so I continued dealing these infant blows under the delusion that I was flinging him bouquets.
You can read the article in its entirety here.
Image via Wikipedia.
Phoebe says:
How utterly charming! Thanks for posting it again 🙂
On February 7, 2012 at 10:24 am
Kelly says:
Oh! I LOVE this! Thank you SO much for reposting.
On February 7, 2012 at 10:31 am
Miz Booshay says:
How charming. Thank you for sharing this on Twitter!!
(My favorite is Mother Carey’s Chickens)
On February 7, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Tabatha says:
Thanks for re-posting this! I’m passing it along to my kids.
On February 7, 2012 at 4:02 pm
Emily says:
Charming is the perfect word. Thank you for sharing – this made me smile today!
On February 7, 2012 at 4:16 pm
Rachel says:
Absolutely delightful, I can just picture one of my daughters doing this, I’m going to read it to them right now.
On February 7, 2012 at 6:54 pm
maria says:
Charmingly, delightfully wonderful! Oh what a treat! Thank you indeed for reposting this. 😀
On February 8, 2012 at 1:41 pm