Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012


I couldn't resist posting Google's logo celebrating the bicentennial of Charles Dickens' birth.  In honor of the day, I would have loved to include a quote from one of my favorites, like Little Dorrit or Our Mutual Friend, but I'll have to go with this one from David Copperfield, which is readily accessible.  I'm lucky enough to have my most adorable sweet niece and SIL over for a visit, which has been more like a holiday, and the lovely rosy-cheeked girl is napping blissfully right next to my bookshelf stuffed full of Dickens and various other Penguin classics.  


It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account.  She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails.  When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite.  I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I've never actually read David Copperfield.  I've been reading it to baby A, giving him a good head start for an appreciation for Dickens.  In his seven months of life, we've gotten all the way to Chapter 4.  I think we're doing quite well.

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