Dickens at Christmas

On Christmases past, we've read A Christmas Carol together as a family, but this year we settled for watching the old classic Alastair Sim movie as we have to finish Pickwick papers read-together. It was interesting to discover here that Dickens commissioned the artist John Leech to produce 4 hand-colored etchings and 4 wood engravings for the volume. Leech had been forced to abandon his medical studies (he excelled at anatomical drawing) because of the bankruptcy of his family, but was able to support himself as an artist and became the chief cartoonist for Punch.

Recently for our son's Veritas Press Omnibus classs he had fun with the challenge of writing in Charles Dickens' maximalist style. The assignment was to expand a sentence in a Dickensian fashion (for those of you who are curious, Dickens was not infrequently paid by the number of words...)

The starter sentence: "Beebo Appleby walked into the room, looked out the window, and patted his jacket pocket. He heard his mother's footsteps approaching and turned to the door to greet her."

Our son's: "Beebo Horatius Appleby wheezed and puffed through his plump, pursed lips as he waddled his massive girth into the narrow parlor of his cozy country cottage. In the dim light cast by the fireplace, one might almost have mistaken him for a great bespectacled Christmas goose (a goose, by the way, ample enough to feed a very large, and very hungry family.) His chubby face was ruddy and moist with perspiration, but the haunted look in his sunken, squinting eyes suggested this was less a product of physical exertion than of some secret strain. As his inertia carried him over to the window and he absently gazed at the gently drifting snow, glowing eerily in the moonlight like a ghost-filled graveyard, his hand moved, almost unbidden, to his breastpocket. In it was his father's last will and testament, which he realized, much to his discomfort, that he would have to discuss with his grieving mother. All of a sudden, he heard a rap-tap-tapping coming down the hall in his direction. He steeled himself in preparation for what he was about to endure, and turned towards the door."

Merry Christmas everyone!