Dickensians! discussion

Illustration by Henry Matthew Brock , 1916

The The Holly-Tree Inn by Charles Dickens et al is the first of our seasonal reads for the end of the year. We will read this during the month between the dates of 15th November and 14 December 2021.

The complete work has 7 sections, and can be read here https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Ho...

Alternatively, you may already have a copy of The Holly-Tree (1855) by: Charles Dickens which usually contains just the 3 chapters which we know are by Charles Dickens.

ROBIN is hosting this read.
Each title below links to Robin's summary and comment on each section:

Part 1: The Guest - by Charles Dickens (2 posts)

Announcing Parts 2 and 3: The Ostler and the Boots

Part 2: The Ostler - by Wilkie Collins (possibly) or Charles Dickens

Part 3: The Boots - by Charles Dickens

Part 4: The Landlord - by William Howitt (Plus commentary by Connie 2 posts later)

Part 5: The Bar-Maid - by Adelaide Anne Procter

Part 6: The Poor Pensioner - by Holme Lee, a pen name for Harriet Parr

Part 7: The Bill

Thanks for setting this up, Jean!

Please see the note above about the 7 sections. We will be reading all of them. If you prefer to read just the 3 chapters that are usually in the The Holly-Tree, that is fine too. We just wanted to avoid
confusion.

**Proposed Reading Schedule

Nov 15- 21 - Part 1 - The Guest
Nov 22-28 - Part 2 & 3 - The Ostler and The Boots
Nov 29-Dec 5 - Part 4 & 5 - The Landlord and The Barmaid
Dec 6 - 15 - Part 6 & 7 - The Poor Pensioner and The Bill and wrap-up

This isn't strictly a Christmas story, but there is a lot of snow!

**Corrrection, I see it does take place at Christmas, even if the holiday isn't central to the story. The first "stave" occurs on approximately Dec 21-24. This accounts for the darkness. We in the US often forget how far north England is, which means the hours of sunlight at the solstice are relatively short. I like the dark humor of this section:

"The dead winter time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers forever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged, which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances."

In the first section, we meet our hero, who immediately tells us how bashful he is. Today we would say he is an introvert, or that he has social anxiety. Greg points out very well below that he throws in the fact that the woman he loves chose his best friend and that he understands that. But he has not forgotten or forgiven, in my opinion. He mentions his grief and "the desolate journey". His desire is to get as far away from those two as possible. In this case, he decides to go to America by way of Liverpool and Yorkshire, which entails driving north. And yet, he wants to revisit a place where he met his love.

The journey is wonderfully described - the gray outside, followed by snow (feathers from an old lady plucking a goose), the deserted countryside, the monotony of the horses' hooves - so that having to get out and help the horses through snow makes an interesting change. A detail I wouldn't have thought of was that the mechanical clocks on towers in villages were stopped because the hands were blocked by snow. .

At this time, the quality of roads was poor even in good weather and carriages had no shock absorbers - and no heat! Being inside rather than outside could protect you from the wind but it wouldn't be much warmer. He doesn't mention if they used hot bricks for their feet. In any case, the weather reflects his spirits,

As someone who has lived all my life in snow country, I love the description of the white world -

".. . the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us, was a snowy Sahara. . "

and the refrain
". . . it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing."

The traveler is the lone occupant of the coach, and when he is finally forced to stop at the Holly Tree Inn, with his portmanteau "still, like a frozen body", he is again the only guest. He has a huge space to himself. This isn't a luxury but an oppression. He finds the rooms grim, gloomy, and miserable but consoles himself that he will leave in the morning. However, the weather has other plans and the snow only deepens, leaving him totally stranded.

As readers, you may all identify with the discomfort of running out of things to read! (He calls himself a "greedy reader".) Having gone through all the books and magazines, our hero decides to spend his time remembering every inn he has heard about or visited.

His earliest memories seem to come from a nanny's tales intended to impress or frighten a child! These are familiar tales we might today call "urban legends". There is a Sweeney Todd figure who makes his guests into pies. There is a burglar identified by his missing ear. There are more "barbarous stories" of murder and blood.

He then moves to his own memories of the inn in the town where he went to school, of an inn where he thought of a dead friend, of a Druid he met near Stonehenge, of a body found in the woodpile of a Swiss inn, an inn on Mount Blanc, which the Americans insisted on calling Blank (it should be pronounced Blahnk), an inn where a giant pie reappeared at every meal, of a Cornish inn so full that the group moves to a house where the chairs are only frames. There was a Welsh inn where the bed of a suicide was never used again, and various inns in Wales, Scotland and England. He even describes inns in France, Italy and Germany. Dickens himself would have visited these places, but it seems a lot for our hero, who I thought was a younger man!

Having exhausted his memories, he thinks of training a mouse or spider, and finally is so desperate that he goes against all his instincts and decides to talk to other people and get their stories.

What do you think of our hero so far?
In this section, we see a common approach of Dickens, combining the fantastic/supernatural/eerie with the everyday. He wrote a number of ghost stories, with A Christmas Carol being the most famous. Do you think this juxtaposition works?

About the authorship of the different stories:
(from a description of an edition from 1900 on the website of Barnes & Noble) -

The Holly-Tree Inn was originally published in the Christmas 1855 edition of Household Words. There is some evidence that Dickens only wrote three of the sections and the framing story; the other sections are purportedly attributed as follows: ""The Ostler"", Wilkie Collins; ""The Landlord"", William Howitt; ""The Barmaid"" Adelaide Anne Procter; ""The Poor Pensioner"", Holme Lee.

Thanks for all of this, Robin.

Excellent plan, Robin. I'm looking forward to this :) I had to remind myself that "wrap up" in the USA means a concluding discussion - and not putting on warm clothes because of all the snow you mentioned!

We recognise some of these names from our summer reads, and noticed then too that although they were published as "Christmas Numbers", it was really the spirit of Christmas - family, kindness and good fellowship - which was the focus. Perhaps that will be the case here too :)

We begin today :)

I have the 3 staves version in my collection. I plan to read all 7 staves though - I'll read the ones I don't have at the online link (thanks Robin!) and the others in my collection.

For anyone who is going to do this too, a heads up. It looks like the last couple paragraphs from "Guest" are deleted in my version, and a couple sentences are pulled from the end of "Ostler" and inserted at the end of "Guest" to make it flow better into "Boots."

I also noticed there are a lot of spacing differences between my version and the online 7-stave version, especially in terms of where paragraph breaks are inserted. Not sure if that is a real change between editions or if there's just some sloppiness in the transcription of the spacing in the online wikisource copy?

These differences are all pretty minor. I just noticed them as I scanned the two.

I read halfway through "Guest" last night and am enjoying it!

The narrator strikes me as a little strange though. He insists "nobody would ever suppose" he was bashful, but then he lists all the people and social occassions he evades due to his bashfulness. What do people suppose I wonder then? I guess maybe they just think he's unfriendly?

Then soon after this, he explains that just before he was to marry Angela, she chose his best friend instead. Ouch. He says that he's not suprised because he'd always considered his friend Edwin "vastly superior" to himself. Double ouch. He says he forgives them, but this seems hardly possible so soon. So is he fudging things or is this just self deception? There's a little passive agressiveness in his waiting to deliver his apology letters until he's on the boat and beyond response. It seems a good way to make them feel gulity.

And he wrote to Angela overnight "lamenting ... urgent business" to make sure she doesn't seek him out before he can depart. This also seems strange. If she was supposed to marry him and told him she wants to marry his best friend instead, why would they still be doing nightly correspondence? Or possibly this "usual manner" of nightly correspondence was from before and she wasn't expecting him to continue it at all? Maybe he thinks she is expecting it to continue, but this is just social awkwardness on his part?

I don't know fully what to make of him, but I feel some oddness in all of that.

One thing I loved about the first half of "Guest" was the description of the freezing weather. Dickens is always so wonderful with this sort of thing. I can feel the cold and snow that the coach slogs through like a living thing!

I also enjoyed the humor. It made me laugh when the narrator says "... I began to ask myself the question, whether the box seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen in death."

Looking forward to continuing with "Guest" tonight!

We do tend to pick up these differences in different editions as we come across them in the read, thanks Greg. The Boots at the Holly-tree Inn is often published by itself for instance, and most editions think the stories not by Charles Dickens are not worth mentioning. Obviously this leads to an unbalanced read, and sometimes one which doesn't even make sense!

For instance, during the summer we read two of his collaborative works The Wreck of the Golden Mary: Being the Captain's Account of the Loss of the Ship, and the Mate's Account of the Great Deliverance of Her People in an ... Number of Household Words, Christmas, 1856. and A message from the sea (1860) by Charles Dickens (as well as others) which needed quite a bit of head-scratching to decipher which ones were original (these linked are) and which edited either later by Charles Dickens himself, or by other editors. The threads we have for those works make a fascinating read :) I'm sure Robin will cover these aspects in later weeks, when we come to them. The wikisource original edition linked is complete: the titles specified in the first comment refer to the different editions.

Thanks for starting off the discussion of "The Guest", which I'll pass over to Robin to comment on, since she chose this story :)

Robin - I'm not sure if you were intending to do an introduction/synopsis for each part. If so, I'll happily link it to the first comment, or (perhaps better) you could edit your second or third comments to put it there, so it comes at the beginning of the discussion?

Oh no, I didn't jump the gun, did I Jean?!

If so, sorry about that! Let me know if you want me to delete the comment and paste it back later.

When you said to wait for Robin to post first, I thought that was the posts in messages 2-3. I didn't know I was supposed to wait for the part intro. Oops!

Not a problem at all, Greg, excellent comments! I will add something to my comments above. I was waiting for it to be morning of Nov 15 here and then I ended up being on a long meeting.

Please see Message 2 for new comments.

Please don't worry - I wasn't specific as it's not really up to me ... I'm not absolutely sure how Robin wants to do this, but so far all our short reads led by members have started with summaries. It's not mandatory though, so let's see. No need to delete anything I shouldn't think, as it's easy enough to edit :) I love your enthusiasm Greg!

Edit - sorry both - cross-posted - but glad it's sorted out!

Thanks for being understanding Robin and Jean. :)

Robin P wrote: "We in the US often forget how far north England is, which means the hours of sunlight at the solstice are relatively short..."

Robin P wrote: "At this time, the quality of roads was poor even in good weather and carriages had no shock absorbers - and no heat!..."

Thanks for this background Robin - things I suppose I knew but didn't think of as I was reading. The short amount of daylight adds something to the overall ambience!

Love that detail you pointed out too about the snow stopping the clocks. There's an eerieness to that image in itself.

Totally agree that the journey is wonderfully and vividly described!

What do you make of the narrator writing Angela the "urgent business" excuse? Kind of weird he feels he needs to do that. After what she did, it seems doubtful she was expecting or needing it. Maybe it just goes down to the social awkwardness you talked about?

Just my view, but I think the "urgent business" is part of our narrator's overall denial "Who, me? I'm fine, I just have business to take care of." It actually fits with his being "bashful" that he doesn't confront Angela or the friend, and doesn't put up any sort of resistance, just assumes he would never be the chosen one. Quite sad, actually, but realistic in depicting how many people react to such circumstances.

It also appears to me that he has reached this conclusion by himself that Angela prefers his friend. Does she know she is meant to have jilted him? There is no recount of any discussion between himself and either Angela or Edward. If I were Angela and received his "regular note", I doubt I would know he suspects my feelings for the other man at all.

I am always so taken by Dickens' powers of description. Each of the inns he details come to life, and the journey itself is marvelous. I have spent some time in snow, but never in the kind that would require assistance by the men and boys of the town to help the horses move the conveyance. I hate that caged in feeling that being snow bound gives me, so I could really relate to his restlessness being alone in the oversized room and telling himself stories that would offer little or no comfort.

Sara wrote: "If I were Angela and received his "regular note", I doubt I would know he suspects my feelings for the other man at all...."

I agree Sara - I feel there's something strange about that note. I can think of many possibilities.

1. Angela has rejected him, but he can't let go of the way things used to be. In his mind, she still expects this nightly note, so he writes it. But in reality, she doesn't want or need it. This could be anywhere from endearingly sad to creepy, not enough information to tell.

2. He's not narrating things reliably. For example, maybe the engagement between him and her was exaggerated in his own mind, and she didn't even realize she was throwing him over so they're still corresponding? She might be partially in the dark as to what he's feeling.

3. In his last conversation with her, things were a mess, and he's trying to prevent her from coming to see him. He wants to avoid any confrontations or unpleasantness. But he's being reticent about narrating that.

4. Customs in this era are different than I'm thinking so I'm misunderstanding something.

Could be #4, I have no idea. But if I left my fiancee for his/her best friend, I would for sure not be expecting our polite nightly correspondence to continue!

I like what Robin says about avoidance though. For sure, he's avoiding confrontation with her and his "friend" in several different ways.

Agreed that the avoidance issue is certain!

Sara wrote: "I hate that caged in feeling that being snow bound gives me, so I could really relate to his restlessness being alone in the oversized room and telling himself stories that would offer little or no comfort..."

Once as a child, the snow went all the way up to the top of the door and we had to dig ourselves out, or I should say my parents did - I doubt we were much help! :)

How much fun it is to play in the snow when you don't have to shovel the driveway or break the ice on the car windshield to move the wipers!

What a villanous Nursery lady who tells him at her knee the story of a cannibalistic landlord creeping out of secret doors at night to make his tenants into meat pies. I would never have slept again after being told a story in Nursery like that!

But I like the dark humor of it. "Too much pepper!"

In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator is tortured by hearing the dead heart of his victim still beating. But I guess this evil landlord is more tortured by the idea that his meat pies aren't quite tasty enough! :D

I've just started reading from the Oxford Illustrated Edition which has only the 3 chapters (or staves) that Dickens wrote, and I’ll be sticking with just the 3: however, I think it’s worth noting that The Holly Tree was published in Household Words, so Dickens, as he did with just about every article for HW, will have no doubt hacked away at the other pieces to this Christmas Story - he rejected many other contributions because “the way they don’t fit into that elaborately described plan, so simple in itself, amazes me” letters 1855

Incidentally, in 1849, Dickens had set everything in place for the inauguration of Household Words, except the title, and one of the title options he proposed was The Holly Tree.


There’s a bit of bio in everything that Dickens writes, including the Holly Tree, the ‘bashful’ man is even called Charley. Although written in 1855 it’s set in the very early 1840s: “There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were stage-coaches”. And some of the Inns, both home and abroad (and most definitely Cornwall 1842) referred to are Dickens’ own reminiscences - the Holly Tree Inn is said to be the George and New Inn, Greta Bridge.

Charley is certainly conflicting, he’s "kept one secret in the course of his life”, in the same way Dickens kept his secret about his Blacking Factory history - but can you really keep being shy a secret? He says it all starts in the memorable year when he parted ‘for ever’ from Angela. ‘Forever’? And all on the way to the Devil. Why America then? He could far more easily go to ruin in England, America’s about prospects and making your fortune, and all that.

Even though he’s the one running away, he clearly sees Angela and Edwin as guilty parties, and I’m not sure that I agree he’s forgiving them. In fact, I think he’s unforgiving, as he says he ‘tried’ to forgive them, which actually implies he couldn’t forgive them. Then goes on to add that after resolving to write to each of them an ‘affecting’ letter conveying his blessing and forgiveness.

So many wonderful descriptions of winter conditions of the time, like this one:

“horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by.”

I'm just reading the beginning of the first tale about the freezing carriage ride. Thankfully, he got a seat inside the carriage. I was surprised that they surrounded him with straw for insulation against the cold. No warm blankets on the mail route!

"When I was seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey."

I enjoy hearing expressions from different locations, and there are so many ways to describe snow.

". . . I heard the guard remark, 'That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard today.' Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick." (After typing this, I see Robin also noticed the expression.)

Sean, Sara, Connie, and Robin, I think all four of us now have mentioned Dickens' descriptions of the snowstorm and the wintry conditions. It is indeed wonderful!

If anyone is curious like me as to what ballad of "Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene" the narrator refers to around the middle of the first stave, it's a ballad by Matthew Gregory Lewis. It sounds vaguely familiar, but if I'd come across it before, I had forgotten it. I can't do an external link here, but it's easy to find the text by googling it.

Not to hard to imagine why the narrator relates to it at the moment.

As in this stanza toward the end:

"'Behold me, thou false one, behold me!' he cried,
“Remember Alonzo the Brave!
God grants that, to punish thy falsehood and pride,
My ghost at thy marriage should sit by thy side;
Should tax thee with perjury, claim thee as bride,
And bear thee away to the grave!”

Sean wrote: "Charley is certainly conflicting, he’s "kept one secret in the course of his life”, in the same way Dickens kept his secret about his Blacking Factory history - but can you really keep being shy a secret? ..."

Sean, I wondered the same thing. Based on the way he says he's been avoiding all sorts of social occasions and social interactions, I suppose if people don't think he's shy, they'll end up thinking something even worse . . . that he's unfriendly or snooty. Hopefully for his sake he's keeping his secret much less well than he thinks!

Greg’s already nicely pointed out Charley’s allusion to stanza 13 Alonzo & Imogene - Dickens seems to be fixated by the imagery of the worms in the previous stanza, as he makes a couple of specific references “ wormy curtains creeping”, and “nest of gigantic worms”, and a direct reference: “worms in the Ballad of …”

All present then uttered a horrified shout,
And turned with disgust from the scene;
The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out,
They sported his eyes and his temples about
While the spectre addressed Angeline


“I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.”

I also went out and read the ballad. I have long wanted to read The Monk and now feel I must push it up to the head of the line. So interesting to me that Dickens cites him here and the poem is quite perfect for envisioning the wormy room.

“So acutely did I suffer from the ceremony…that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. But, she never spared me one word of it…Her name was Mercy, though she had none on me.”

The above is an extract from one Dickens’ letters to Forster regarding his nanny, Mercy. And although it must have been a most terrifying experience for the ‘child-Dickens’, it has no doubt turned out to be a wonderful legacy for the generations of Dickensians world wide.

She manifests in several forms right throughout Dickens’ works, and here she is in Holly Tree Inn, starting with his first impressions of an Inn visit dated from his Nursery days. It’s the longest paragraph in this first part, so I’ll just select a few parts:

He finds himself on the knee of “a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose” with a specialty of a dismal narrative of a landlord whose visitors “unaccountably disappeared for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them into pies”, after cutting their throats. He even had permanently boiling coppers underneath trapdoors.

It may also be the case that this ‘sallow women with fishy eye and aquiline nose’ saw herself as a bit of a beauty, and brave to boot, as she may be the brave and lovely servant-maid who ”chopped off “ a burglars ear one night - and she subsequently cheats death by terminating her now husband’s (but the then burglar's) career. She goes on with a further history of murdered parrots, sheets steeped in blood, dark men armed with dagger and chopper, sack and spade. Wonderful, just wonderful.

Great comments, everyone! It's amazing how much Dickens packs into a short story. I'm sure that everyone of the inns he describes relate to something he experienced himself. He must have had a great memory for detail, for instance, he walked extensively around London and then when he sat down to write, he was able to describe minutely various locations. He also seems to have remembered sounds, smells, and tastes. He would have made a great detective (and introduced one, Inspector Bucket).

Although his nanny's tales scared him, he retained a great interest in ghost/horror stories and included them in many of his writings, even if they don't always seem to fit.

Interesting Robin! Well, these techniques he used to make his descriptions of place vivid clearly worked!

And Sean, if Dickens were my child, I would've fired that nanny. :) But if it spurred his young imagination as you say, I guess it was good for the rest of us!

For me though, the story drifts a bit when he starts recounting inns. It flows from one tall tale or recollection to another so quickly, and I don't feel as engaged with it as what came before. It all starts to blur together. Several of the tales only last a paragraph of less.

Sara wrote: "I also went out and read the ballad. I have long wanted to read The Monk and now feel I must push it up to the head of the line. So interesting to me that Dickens cites him here and th..."

I haven't yet read that book either Sara, though I definitely want to someday!

I like his ballad / narrative poem. It's qute vivid and fun to read.

I was considering some of the possible sources that Dickens may have used for The Holly Tree Inn, and I was interested in the “sixpenny book with the folding plate: Murder at the Roadside Inn” that has the portrait representing Jonathan Bradford - notorious Newgate Calendar criminal - that he alludes to.

"These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the portrait of Jonathan Bradford"

There’s a fleeting reference to it in the Dickensian, here:

https://www.proquest.com/pao/docview/...

Though not the actual book, there are few Newgate Calanders featuring the roadside reprobate such as this Negate Calendar cover here:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vypmw8dUndA...


G A Sala writes about this, along with a few other gory things that Dickens liked to discuss, in 1894

I like the Newgate Calendar illustration very much, but can't access the other link. Could you link to the "Dickensian" journal some other way, do you think please, Sean?

Apologies, I’ve just been informed now that there’s only 3 ways to access the Dickensian online now:

Through you collage, school, university or education establishment - if it subscribes
Through your local library (that’s how I access it) - if it subscribes
The final way is individual subscribe to the Dickensian through the Dickensian Fellowship: it’s published 3 times a year, with cheapest option being electronic (from £15 annum, but a bit more if you opt for printed version as well - these costs have been relayed to me verbally, so there may be slight difference - give or take. Up to date details here:
https://www.dickensfellowship.org/ind...


Here’s the exact reference for the article for the Dickensian Index:

THE SONGS OF DICKENS'S DAY
Dickensian:  vol 28. Issue 222. 1932 p97

Thank for this Sean - it clears up something I've wondered about. I've read a few features from the "Dickensian" online from time to time, so it sounds as though these have been shared "unofficially" as it were. Whenever l have looked at the current volume, there has never been enough in it to tempt me to subscribe personally ... as you say each little booklet works out at over £5, even just to read online :(

Sorry Robin and everyone for the diversion.

No problem, this is useful information. I think I have tried to access that site myself. Jean, you might want to post the information about it in another thread as well.

Greg wrote: "Interesting Robin! Well, these techniques he used to make his descriptions of place vivid clearly worked!

And Sean, if Dickens were my child, I would've fired that nanny. :) But if it spurred his..."

I agree that my interest flagged during the listing of inns, seems like filler. Though it does give a sense of how bored he was.

Robin P wrote: "Jean, you might want to post the information about it in another thread as well."

I'll leave that to Sean, as I'm not a subscriber.

Sorry I’m a bit off topic here, but I was very unclear in what I put in an earlier post about access to the Dickensian online , so I’ll try a bit harder this time - and then get back on topic.

What I should have said is that you don’t have to necessarily be a subscriber (I’m not) to access the online version of the Dickensian. It’s FREE if:

your school, college, university or education establishment subscribes to Proquest (where you can access the Dickensian and other journals). It’s just a matter of signing in with your student number and password

Library access is also free if your local library subscribes to Proquest. You just need to type in your library card number at the sign in page.

The above also applies to Oxford learning, including the OED and Oxford Scholarly Editions Online

Does anyone understand why the strange old man (the "supernaturally preserved druid") at the Inn "down in Wiltshire" who appears at the narrator's bedside is shouting the Athanasian Creed? It feels like there might be something behind this but I have no idea what.

Sounds like the Athanasian Creed (which I'd never heard of) is similar to the Nicene Creed that I hear in church all the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athan...

At first I thought this passage might be part of an anti-Papist sentiment. But the Creed is used in some Anglican churches too I guess; so maybe not.

Or is this guy just doing something weird, and there's nothing special behind it?

Greg. My theistic or religious knowledge is considerably less than basic, but what I can tell you is that there’s an article in The Household Narrative (which was a supplement and monthly summary of Household Words) entitled The Three Kingdoms, which covers (or makes reference to, or at least mentions) the Athanasian Creed. I’m not sure Dickens meant any real meaning to its use in the Holly Tree, and I'm not sure if Dickens is the author of The Three Kingdoms and therefore I haven’t read the HN article. You can read from the beginning here:

https://www.djo.org.uk/household-narr...

If you want to go straight to ‘Athanasian Creed’ paragraph just type 244 to the ‘page’ field (top left) and click the arrow; and it’s about half-way down the page

Sean wrote: "Greg. My theistic or religious knowledge is considerably less than basic, but what I can tell you is that there’s an article in The Household Narrative (which was a supplement and monthly summary o..."

Thanks Sean!

Interesting article! Sounds like at the very least, the author of this article associated the Athanasian Creed with remnants of Romanism/Papism/Catholicism in the English Church as a result of church compromises from Elizabethan times. If Dickens agreed with the author of this article, he probably would've associated this Creed negatively with Catholicism. Sounds like it was part of low church / high church disputes of his day.

I was just curious, because it was such a weird thing Dickens had this old man doing, creeping about by the narrator's bedside in the middle of the night and shouting this creed randomly. I figured it must mean something.

This focus is reminding me of the Reverend Melchisedech Howler, in Dombey and Son (some here may remember this unusual gentleman from our group read) who:

"had announced the destruction of the world for that day two years, at ten in the morning, and opened a front parlour for the reception of ladies and gentlemen of the Ranting persuasion, upon whom, on the first occasion of their assemblage, the admonitions of the Reverend Melchisedech had produced so powerful an effect, that, in their rapturous performance of a sacred jig, which closed the service, the whole flock broke through into a kitchen below, and disabled a mangle belonging to one of the fold."

Charles Dickens had such a mischievous sense of humour and an eye for the absurd, and since his religious views were quite specific, he found easy targets for this.

Greg pointed out: "he probably would've associated this Creed negatively with Catholicism. Sounds like it was part of low church /high church disputes of his day."

Despite his strong Christian faith, Charles Dickens couldn't resist poking fun at either extreme. He had been born Anglican, and remained so for most of his life, but turned to Unitarianism in the 1840s as a Broad Church alternative, and associated with Unitarians until the end of his life. So by the time of The Holly-Tree Inn in 1850, he was a true dissenter.

Charles Dickens was equally unsympathetic both to evangelical zeal, doctrinal disputation and sectarianism (evidenced by the the portrait of the Ranter Rev. Howler) and to High Church Anglicanism.

”I was just curious, because it was such a weird thing Dickens had this old man doing, creeping about by the narrator's bedside in the middle of the night and shouting this creed randomly. I figured it must mean something.




Greg. Yes, Dickens is well known for using this type of ‘random’ device (Orwell mentions it in his essay on Dickens), and you’ll notice that he uses the same device time and time again right throughout all of his novels and Christmas stories. Here’s another example below:


“A man with a wooden leg, chewing a faint apple and carrying a blue bag in has hand, looks in to see what is going on; but finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and pegs his way among the echoes out of doors.”

Now, many 19c authors were witty enough to have used the same wordplay that focuses on the wooden leg ie ‘stumps off’, ‘pegs his way …’, 'echoes out'. They may have even had him humorously chewing a ‘faint’ apple (by the way ‘faint’ as in ‘rotten’, according to the OED is used for the first time by Dickens), but no one - only Dickens - would have the man carrying a ‘blue bag’ - yet, in itself, it has no purpose

Bionic Jean wrote: "Despite his strong Christian faith, Charles Dickens couldn't resist poking fun at either extreme...."

Ah, this makes a lot of sense to me Jean. Thanks so much, it helps a lot. This man creeping about in the dead of night shouting the creed is so bizarre and absurd that it makes much more sense to be intended humorously.

Whether he's poking fun at the bogeyman some low church proponents are making of Athanasian Creed supporters ... or poking fun at the supporters themselves by showing it used so preposterously, I can't tell. But either way, I get the gist now.

It comforts me what you say, that he was unsympathetic to all petty religious disputes and extremes. That matches well with the spirit of many of his stories that I love!

Sean wrote: "Greg. Yes, Dickens is well known for using this type of ‘random’ device..."

I get what you mean Sean. Sometimes humor is just humor or detail is just detail. This felt so specific and out of place that I felt something was there, but who knows?

Dickens, in his never ending, and unsuccessful, search for the illusive ‘other woman’ - the Agnes-plus-Dora type, as in David Copperfield - occasionally makes some form of reference to his older sister, Fanny (though her character is often portrayed as the younger sibling, as in Fan in A Christmas Carol) as half the ideal, and a Maria Beadnell type as the other ideal half .

Is he doing this, though somewhat more vaguely, in The Holly Tree Inn, when his says:

“ I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to distraction”, and then adds, “It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight”?

Fanny died about 4yrs or so before Dickens wrote the Holly Tree - and, of course, Charley is telling us that his sister is now dead

Nice :)

Another one of Dickens’ obsessions

“More than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put on up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to comfort me; always as being beautiful …”

And goes on:

“I had always ,until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one.”

And, just as it really happened (more or less). The writing of a letter, telling this secret purges him of the

“beloved figure of my vision”.

(Though, in his real world, it was the vision of her ghostly appearance at Niagara Falls that did the trick.)


And then, again as it really happened (kind of). Whilst in Italy he awakes from a dream which he’s not had for 16yrs, and remembers the voice:


“distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future Life [what faith to follow]”

As he’s left, hands "still outstretched" towards the vanished vision he hears a voice calling on “all good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead”. But in Dickens’ real world, this was were he was told Catholicism was the faith he should follow! Of course, he never did make the conversion.

Although the above seems as though it’s gone through the first round of Chinese whispers, there’s still not the slightest chance of the ‘dead friend’ being anyone other than Mary Hogarth

The part with the everlasting Yorkshire pie is hilarious! I sure hope the narrator didn't eat that "triangle" he took - probably not good for digestion at this point! :D

This is my favorite of the mini-tales strung together in the second half so far.

Robin P wrote: "He even describes inns in France, Italy and Germany. Dickens himself would have visited these places, but it seems a lot for our hero, who I thought was a younger man! ..."

Interesting point Robin, especially for a "bashful man." He has sure gotten around!

But then again, does all of this that he says at the end of the section sound like he's really a "bashful man"?:

"Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again, I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians . . . ."

Hmm. Well he does say that the "more dollarous the establishment . . . the less desirable." So maybe he isn't enjoying all this attention and is just concealing it really well?

One last question on the section: does anyone know what the word "finited" means the passage below? If I had an OED subscription, I could probably find it, but the verb form of finite isn't in any of the dictionaries that I have handy.

".. the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrences on the plot, at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars sir"

I guess from the context it means something like finished or made finite by being completed? Am I understanding it correctly?

Greg. Here’s the OED entry for ‘finite’, and below that is the entry for ‘finited’ as an adjective, the presumed Dickens’ use (my guess is he means ‘completed with’ or ‘finished with’ 'topped up with' etc?). He’s fairly up to date with the use, as it appears first recorded use as an adjective is 1846

In the UK (an this may apply in USA) if your library subscribes to OED online then you only need type in your library card no at OED.com: to access it. Also (again in UK) if your own local library does not subscribe you can join a library that does subscribe, but in this case your first visit must be in person, with the requisite documentation ie proof of residence, utility bills, license etc etc … - hope this is in some way helpful



OED

  transitive. To make finite; to subject to limitations.
1628   T. Spencer Art of Logick 47   The matter doth finite, and contract the amplitude of the forme.
1861   H. Bushnell Christian Nurture ii. v. 301   The Lord to be in them, there to personate and finite himself.
1867   Eng. Leader 20 Apr. 224   There are two sides—a divine side and a human side.. the latter being finited, attempered, and dimmed.




1846   Clissold tr. Swedenborg Principia i. iii. 81   In relation to things much finited and compounded, this finite is as it were nothing;..nevertheless it is a something and a finited ens.
1868   Contemp. Rev. 8 617   To find God finited in Nature.
1884   Gosp. Divine Humanity iii. 60   Man in his finited state is dust of the ground.

Sean wrote: "Greg. Here’s the OED entry for ‘finite’, and below that is the entry for ‘finited’ as an adjective, the presumed Dickens’ use (my guess is he means ‘completed with’ or ‘finished with’ 'topped up wi..."

Perfect! Thanks Sean for posting the OED definition for me!!

Looks like my guess by context was correct this time. I always like to check when I don't know because sometimes I'm missing a nuance.

Is there a free way to look up in the OED, do you know? Or is it a subscription thing? I miss the days when I was near the library and could just go over and open up one of the many satistfyingly giant books. :)

Greg wrote: "Sean wrote: "Greg. Here’s the OED entry for ‘finite’, and below that is the entry for ‘finited’ as an adjective, the presumed Dickens’ use (my guess is he means ‘completed with’ or ‘finished with’ ..."

Greg. OED is FREE if your library or education establishment subscribes, it's a matter of typing in your student ID etc, or your library card no: In the UK, if your library doesn't subscribe, you can join the nearest one that does, but you must go their in person first time as you will need to show the relevant ID and proof of residence. If you call you nearest reference library they'll give you better details - good luck