Cricket, Pickwick and Seymour

 

On Saturday I found myself on a village green watching a cricket match.  I had not planned to watch it, I just happened to be there and soon became wrapped up in the great contest.  I did not know the teams involved, but after a short while spectating the various characters of the players emerged.  Batting was obviously the team’s star player, and boy did he know it: he strutted arogantly, prodded the pitch with his bat as if he were at Lord’s cricket ground during a test match.  When he received a ball he treated the bowler with disdain and struck it cleanly to the boundary of the field.  If he happen to miss a ball (which happened more often than he probably realised, and certainly more often than he would recount in the bar later that evening) he would admonish himself by smacking his bat into his pads and screaming some expletive.  Every cricket team has one of these players.

Eventually he hit a ball to the deep and started to run, his partner at the other end responded but our alpha male wanted a second and turned to run again.  There was a mix up! Both batsmen at the same end!  Shouts from the fielding side, ball thrown in, wickets broken and  with a cheer our hero had to depart from the field of play.  Oh his exit was spectacularly angry!  His erstwhile partner walked towards him to offer a word of apology and consolation, but he was rebuffed and ignored as the bat inflicted damage to the turf.  I am sure that when he reached the pavilion we would have thrown his bat against the wall and screamed abuse to all and sundry, and no doubt the rest of his team  giggled and exchanged glances as they lounged in the sun and prepared to watch the next stage of the game.

Anyway, the match went on and the batting side seemed to accumulate a good total, although wickets fell regularly until suddenly, and without ceremony, everything stopped and the players trooped back to the pavilion for tea.

It was a scene that was being repeated throughout the nation and in a world of political strife and uncertainty it provided a splendidly reassuring sense of normality.

I have loved cricket since I was around 10 years of age, I played it at school and at club level and followed both the Kent County Cricket Club and the England team through thick and thin (mainly the latter).

I am aware that many of my readers are from the United States of America where cricket is not a popular sport, indeed your knowledge of cricket is probably as extensive as mine is of what you call ‘football’ (a sport where the ball is predominantly thrown and the ‘foot’ seems rarely to come in contact with the ‘ball’ but that is just me being pedantic).

So, let me try to explain. The most important contests, internationally, are the test matches and these are played over 5 days (yes, that’s right – FIVE days).  Each team has 11 players and the side that is batting (let us call them a) has to try and amass as many runs as possible until the opposition (for arguments sake let us call then b) has got them all out, at which point they swap over and it all starts again.  When each team has had one innings the first team (a) goes in again and scores more runs, leaving their opponents (b) a target to score in the final innings.  If team (a) gets all of team (b) out before they have reached the target then (a) has won, but if (b) reaches the target amount of runs then they win.  However, if team (b) do NOT reach the target, but are NOT all out, then the match is a draw!  Yes, after 5 days of playing it is often the case that a match has no result!

For a much simpler and more concise explanation of our national game allow me to quote from tea towel which was in wide circulation during the days of my youth:

 

Cricket as Explained to a Foreigner 

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

Simple.

What, you may ask, does all this have to do with the works of Charles Dickens?  Well, in Chapter 7 of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club Mr Pickwick and his friends, Mr Tupman, Mr Snodgrass and Mr Winkle, travelled to the town of  Muggleton where  a great cricket match was to be played against the team from Dingley Dell.

The scene was much the same as the one that I witnessed on Saturday:

The wickets were pitched, and so were a couple of marquees for the rest and refreshment of the contending parties. The game had not yet commenced. Two or three Dingley Dellers, and All– Muggletonians, were amusing themselves with a majestic air by throwing the ball carelessly from hand to hand; and several other gentlemen dressed like them, in straw hats, flannel jackets, and white trousers — a costume in which they looked very much like amateur stone-masons — were sprinkled about the tents, towards one of which Mr. Wardle conducted the party…..

….All–Muggleton had the first innings; and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins and Mr. Podder, two of the most renowned members of that most distinguished club, walked, bat in hand, to their respective wickets. Mr. Luffey, the highest ornament of Dingley Dell, was pitched to bowl against the redoubtable Dumkins, and Mr. Struggles was selected to do the same kind office for the hitherto unconquered Podder. Several players were stationed, to ‘look out,’ in different parts of the field, and each fixed himself into the proper attitude by placing one hand on each knee, and stooping very much as if he were ‘making a back’ for some beginner at leap-frog. All the regular players do this sort of thing; — indeed it is generally supposed that it is quite impossible to look out properly in any other position.
The umpires were stationed behind the wickets; the scorers were prepared to notch the runs; a breathless silence ensued. Mr. Luffey retired a few paces behind the wicket of the passive Podder, and applied the ball to his right eye for several seconds. Dumkins confidently awaited its coming with his eyes fixed on the motions of Luffey.
‘Play!’ suddenly cried the bowler. The ball flew from his hand straight and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. The wary Dumkins was on the alert: it fell upon the tip of the bat, and bounded far away over the heads of the scouts, who had just stooped low enough to let it fly over them.

‘Run — run — another. — Now, then throw her up — up with her — stop there — another — no — yes — no — throw her up, throw her up!’— Such were the shouts which followed the stroke; and at the conclusion of which All–Muggleton had scored two. Nor was Podder behindhand in earning laurels wherewith to garnish himself and Muggleton. He blocked the doubtful balls, missed the bad ones, took the good ones, and sent them flying to all parts of the field. The scouts were hot and tired; the bowlers were changed and bowled till their arms ached; but Dumkins and Podder remained unconquered. Did an elderly gentleman essay to stop the progress of the ball, it rolled between his legs or slipped between his fingers. Did a slim gentleman try to catch it, it struck him on the nose, and bounded pleasantly off with redoubled violence, while the slim gentleman’s eyes filled with water, and his form writhed with anguish. Was it thrown straight up to the wicket, Dumkins had reached it before the ball. In short, when Dumkins was caught out, and Podder stumped out, All–Muggleton had notched some fifty-four, while the score of the Dingley Dellers was as blank as their faces. The advantage was too great to be recovered. In vain did the eager Luffey, and the enthusiastic Struggles, do all that skill and experience could suggest, to regain the ground Dingley Dell had lost in the contest — it was of no avail; and in an early period of the winning game Dingley Dell gave in, and allowed the superior prowess of All–Muggleton.

 

The original idea behind the Pickwick Papers was not Charles Dickens’ at all; he had been approached by a famous illustrator and caricaturist by the name of Robert Seymour who had built his reputation on creating either political or sporting cartoons.  Seymour’s idea was to produce a series of sporting prints chronicling the adventures  of a club called The Nimrod Club.  Rather than just publish the illustrations Seymour set out to find a young author to provide witty captions for his work.  Dickens, using the name Boz, was the succesful candidate.

Far from being a submissive junior partner 24 year old Charles rather took the project over and convinced Robert Seymour that a full-length serialised novel was the way to go, suggesting that comic prints were too old fashioned, the sort of thing William Hogarth had been producing a century before.  The idea of a club appealed however, but why not make it a corresponding society?  That way the members could travel throughout Britain and the book would be made up from their written accounts.  The subject matter could be so more far reaching than simply sport.

As to the clubs name?  How about the Pickwick Club?

Seymour’s involvement did not last long, he provided the illustrations for the first monthly instalment, including the famous picture  Mr Pickwick addressing the club, but during the preparation of the second month’s adventures Dickens and Seymour had a disagreement over an illustration entitled The Dying Clown.

Dickens (remember very much the junior partner, unknown and writing under a pseudonym) vigorously argued that the face of the clown was too grotesque and terrifying, and suggested in no uncertain terms that Seymour should return home and produce a new picture that was more suitable.  Charles did send him on his way with a glimmer of hope, offering a grain of faint praise, for he suggested that the proportion and perspective of a little table in the foreground had been ‘achieved admirably’.

That night Robert Seymour committed suicide.

Chapter seven of The Pickwick Papers contains not only the account of the cricket match but also a brilliant description of Mr Winkle trying to shoot rooks, but only succeeding in wounding Mr Tupman.

Above all others Chapter Seven represents Robert Seymour’s forgotten dream.

 

 

 

 

Catching my Breath

Following the show in Hitchin last week things have calmed down as I am now entering a quiet month or so.  One performance which was due for a couple of weeks time has been moved to later in the year, leaving me with a fallow period in which to relax.

So, there is not a huge amount to report this week, but there a couple of things that may be of interest:

 

The Lost Portrait

A snowy December day in The Berkshires seems like a long time ago now, but it was there that I wrote a blog post called ‘What Did Charles Dickens Look Like?’ in which I described the discovery of a long lost portrait of my great great grandfather and the fundraising efforts of the Charles Dickens Museum in London to purchase the miniature and put it on permanent display.

The target was £180,000 and at that time the sum seemed huge and unobtainable, but I am delighted to announce that this week the museum issued a statement:

 

A portrait of Charles Dickens that was lost for more than 130 years is “coming home” after a successful fundraising campaign.

 
The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street in London said the target of raising £180,000 had been reached to buy the painting by Margaret Gillies of the writer when he was 31.

 
It was once a famous image, displayed at the 1844 Royal Academy summer exhibition. But Gillies said in 1886 that she had “lost sight of the portrait”. It remained lost until, covered in mould, it was improbably spotted in a cardboard box of trinkets at an auction in South Africa.

 
The museum said it had received substantial grants from the Art Fund and the lottery-funded Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, as well as donations from admirers of Dickens.

 
Cindy Sughrue, the director of the museum, said: “We are so excited to be bringing the lost portrait home and we are extremely grateful, and touched by, the generous support that we have received.

 
“It is a magnificent affirmation of the enduring appeal of Dickens’s writing and the worldwide fascination that he continues to inspire.

 
Dickens was already an emerging literary star when Gillies painted him and would have been in the thick of writing A Christmas Carol. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning saw the portrait and remarked how it “has the dust and mud of humanity about him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes”.

 
It re-emerged when someone paid the equivalent of £27 for a tray of stuff at auction in in Pietermaritzburg, which also included a metal lobster, an old recorder and a brass plate.
After some online research, the buyer realised the painting had the look of Dickens and contacted the art dealer Philip Mould.

 
Mould said its re-emergence was astonishing. “It is an epic tale with a supremely happy ending,” he said.

 
The Gillies portrait will go on display from 24 October and be a regular part of the programme although, to help its preservation, there will be times when it is not on display, the museum said.

 

Excellent news!  Thank you to all who supported the appeal, whether financially or just by sharing posts via social media and spreading the effort across the world.  I still haven’t actually viewed the portrait and I cannot wait to set eyes on it later this year.

 

Christmas

My other job this week has been to finalise my Christmas calendar and get the dates posted on my website.

This year my travels to America are divided into three different trips, one in September, one in November and one in December and there are a few interesting titbits within those dates.

The saddest omission from this year’s trips is The Inn at Christmas Place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  This year the dates just didn’t work in such a way to allow a trip to Tennessee and I certainly hope that this is a temporary hiatus and that I can return next year.

 

Regular readers will know that the Inn has become a regular feature of my travels over the last ten years or so and I have forged close friendships with Kristy, Dwight, Debbi and the rest of the team at the hotel.  Not only have the staff become friends, but many of the audience too and it is with a heavy heart that I will not be enjoying myself in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains.

Whilst one Inn does not feature this year, so another returns and it is with great excitement that I can announce that I am scheduled to perform at The Williamsburg Inn after a year off in 2018.  The surroundings of the Inn are spectacularly elegant and I have enjoyed many wonderful times there.  It will wonderful to be back.

Some venues find new dates and even new shows, for example I will be performing both Mr Dickens is Coming, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cites during my September sojourn.  On that trip I will be at Winterthur and Byers’ Choice both of which I will return to in December, but I will also be performing at The Broad Street United Methodist Church in Burlington, New Jersey and at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee both of which have only had A Christmas Carol before.

The November hop takes in my Mid-Western venues in Missouri with my old friends at the Mid Continent Public Library Service and a return to Omaha, Nebraska to perform with the Douglas County Historical Society (you may remember that there were fears that last year may be my last in Omaha).

Beyond the American venues there are a few exciting additions to my UK dates too, most particularly a performance at Highclere Castle (the filming location for Downton Abbey).  Anyone who watched the episode in which Dame Nelly Melba performed for the Grantham’s will know what I will be doing and where I will be doing it!

I will also be at the beautiful St George’s Hall in Liverpool again, the Lit & Phil in Newcastle and back at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons for a second time.

For a full run down of my 2019 dates take a look at my website:

 

http://www.geralddickens.com

 

Girding my lines….and coming up short

As you know the last two weeks was  spent on my two current projects, the preparation of a new Nickleby script and the new play which describes my father’s assistance in creating ‘The Queen and the Commoner.’

The latter project took up my time at the start of the week before I suddenly realised that my performance of Nickleby was imminent so I had to concentrate on that instead.  I put ‘The Queen and the Commoner’ down and returned to ‘The Life and Adventures….’

The issue with my original two act script was at the very start.  When I first wrote Nickleby it was as a one act play and it lasted a little over an hour but a few years ago the theatre producers who promoted my work in the UK suggested that I lengthen it so that theatres could make bar profits in the interval.  As a short term solution I wrote a long passage about how Dickens actually wrote Nickleby, referencing Sketches by Boz, and quoting Pickwick and Oliver Twist, before moving on to his visit to Bowes where he saw a gravestone that inspired the pathetic character of Smike.

It’s all very interesting, but it was a very clumsy and unwieldy way to start the show and didn’t really match the fast-paced frivolity of the story itself, so my plan was to ditch it all.

In my last blog post I mentioned the new passages that I was including (the job interview with the MP Mr Gregsbury, and Smike seeing the dark withered character of Brooker watching him), but both of these come into the second half, meaning that without the original preamble Act1 was left in a very emaciated  state.  My answer to this was simply to move the interval, placing it later in the novel at the point when Smike and Nicholas begin their arduous trek from Yorkshire to London, which actually is a more suitable place to break and gives the audience a sense of the journey’s true length.

Having re-jigged the script it was time to start learning the new lines.  The main chunk was the three page Mr Gregsbury section and to my horror I just couldn’t learn it!  I read, I put the script down, I tried to repeat and nothing was there.  Back to the script and try again, still nothing.  This was rather a scary moment for it seemed as if my ability to learn new lines had deserted me which would not be good news in the years ahead.  I ploughed on and little by little the gist of the lines started to embed themselves and this is an important moment, for if I know vaguely what I have to say it is then easier to perfect the words themselves.

The most productive morning of learning came on a sunny day after I had completed the school run.  Instead of heading straight home I walked around the North end of the town using a network of little paths (we used to call them ‘twittens’ back in my childhood home in Kent).  For over an hour I walked and muttered, muttered and walked, getting a few strange looks along the way.  Maybe it was being away from home, but that hour really put the words into my memory and from that moment I could concentrate on perfecting the sentence structure.

With the new words memorised it was now time to slot them into the script, so I started to rehearse the whole show and it was with horror that I discovered that even with the interval moved the first act was only 25 minutes long!  That is just not long enough: an audience would settle into their seats, the lights would go down and they would get comfortable ready to enjoy the show, or to have a discreet snooze, when suddenly the lights would be up again!

It was too late to introduce any new passages, and anyway there really isn’t anything else I’d WANT to include in the first half.  I would still have a little bit of preamble to introduce the show, but that would not be enough.  I thought the problem through and the only solution I could come up with was to suggest to that the theatre that I forgo the interval altogether and perform it as a one act show, knowing that this would mean a huge lack of bar income.  I emailed and waited for the angry reply….which didn’t come; instead the theatre manager Glynn said, ‘that’s fine, we do a lot of one man shows here and they are all 1 act!’   I wish I had know that ten years ago.

The running time was still a bit short, but I suggested to Glynn that I would do a little meet and greet session in the theatre bar afterwards, and all was settled.

I continued to rehearse as the week went on until the new passages felt comfortable and on Wednesday afternoon I loaded the car up and set off for The Market Theatre Hitchin.

It is a great little theatre run by a collective of young actors.  It nestles in a little yard in the centre of Hitchin, next to a busy pub which, in previous years, has been showing major football finals meaning the cheers from the patrons could be heard from the auditorium but fortunately this year there are no football tournaments in progress.

I was greeted by Ollie and quickly got my set onto the tiny stage ( the roof is so low here that I was rather worried that as Ralph Nickleby climbs up a small step ladder to ‘hang’ himself at the show’s conclusion he might also give himself a nasty bump on the head.

Glynn arrived soon after and we set the lights to give me a nice warm sunny glow and a cool melancholy one, as well as a couple of ‘specials’ for certain specific scenes.

When everything was set I spent some time on the stage going through the new passages again and then retired to the little green room, which is actually a store room, wardrobe and workshop all rolled into one.

My performances at The Market Theatre are part of the Hitchin Festival and over the last few years I have performed ‘an Audience with Charles Dickens’, ‘Great Expectations’ and the double bill of ‘Doctor Marigold’ & ‘The Signalman’.  The shows always sell well and this year was no exception, the audience began to arrive early and took to their seats as Liz’s CD ‘Play’ serenaded them.

At 7.30 the house lights dimmed, Liz’s beautiful playing faded and the stage lights came up, I walked to the centre of the stage and an unexpected round of applause broke out, which is always a good way to start!

I went into my Nickleby preamble, and the audience responded well giving me the confidence that this would be a good evening. With all of the changes and additions it was important for me to remember that Nickleby is a well established show which has been successful for me over many years. Sure enough through the first ‘half’ all of the familiar business worked well and the audience responded just as I like them to.

The plot rushed to Yorkshire with Nicholas, a brief interlude with Kate Nickleby in London, and then back North as Nicholas beats Mr Squeers before running away with Smike.  This is where the interval should have been but now I plough straight on into my new scene, the job interview with Mr Gregsbury.  The words came to my lips easily (a couple of vocal fumbles and stumbles, but I’d built that into the characterisation anyway as an insurance policy), and before I knew it the two and  half pages that caused me so much grief in the last couple of weeks came and went and I was back to familiar territory in the company of Mr Crummles and his troupe of actors.

The rest of the show passed in a blink, although my ‘hour and 10’ turned into an ‘hour and twenty-five’ so I felt that after all I hadn’t short-changed the audience.  I took my bows, re-used the ‘chapter 2’ gag that I’d introduced in Rochester and after the laughter died down announced that I would be in the bar for a chat in a few minutes time.

Back in my dressing room/green room/store room/workshop I towelled myself down, re-shevelled myself a little and then headed to the little bar.

On the way I was waylaid by an impressively bearded gentleman (who reminded me of the actor Griffith Jones who played Tim Linkinwater in the old RSC production of NickNick), who took great delight in studying the coin on my watch chain and deducing that it was a copy of a commemorative coin struck for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, and then asking if my cufflinks represented the red rose of Lancashire.  I was able to correct him on the latter point explaining that they are a representation of a scarlet geranium, the emblem of the International Dickens Fellowship.

In the bar there were only a few people but we had a lovely chat about the show (one lady had actually been at my Rochester  performance a few weeks ago and loved the additions, in particular ‘the job interview’ which made me feel very good).  I showed them some original monthly instalments of Nickleby, bound alongside the blue (they were green when new but have faded slightly over the years) covers.  Everyone was fascinated by the advertisements which not only give a snapshot of 1838 society but also ensured that Charles Dickens had an extra income stream over and above the sales of the book.

Time and Tide wait for no man, and soon we all said our goodbyes and I returned to the auditorium to change and load the car.  As I said goodbye to Glynn and Ollie we chatted about the possibility of returning next year and Glynn said that having me perform during the festival was always ‘an easy sell’.

With those uplifting and cheering words in my mind I started the journey home.

Now it is back to The Queen and the Commoner, as well as starting to write a show based on ‘The Pickwick Papers’ and re-learning Great Expectations….

 

BOZ FOR HOW LONG?

An interesting question popped up on my Twitter feed this week, and that was ‘did Charles Dickens still use the name of Boz all the way through the Pickwick Papers?’  The simple answer to this was ‘yes’, but it set me scurrying around the internet to discover exactly how long he did publish under his pseudonym. This research is by no means academic and if anyone wishes to put me straight then I am happy to be corrected, but as far as I can tell the monthly instalments continued to be ‘Edited by Boz’ right up to and including Martin Chuzzlewit, which was published between 1842 and 1844.  However he did use the name of Charles Dickens for American Notes (1842) and the Christmas books which began with A Christmas Carol in 1843.