̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Charles Dickens

̽��ֱ��forgotten poet of Fordham

sjr81 — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:45:15 +0000

Handwritten verses from a nineteenth-century Cambridgeshire poet – who died destitute despite royal patronage – have been saved by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

To the death

amb206 — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 10:34:48 +0000

Two of the most famous duels in English literature take place at the beginning and end of that giant among novels, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa.

In the first encounter, Robert Lovelace, Clarissa’s would-be suitor, is challenged to a duel by her brother, James Harlowe. Their antipathy dates back to a “College-begun” tiff and has been inflamed by Lovelace’s interest in Clarissa and her sisters. During their bout, Lovelace has the chance to kill Harlowe but “gives him his life”. ̽��ֱ��incident helps to establish Lovelace, “a finished libertine”, as a man who lives his life as a sort of extended duel, continually challenging fate itself.

As the book draws to a close, Clarissa’s cousin William Morden seeks to avenge her death in a duel with Lovelace. In doing so, Morden ignores Clarissa’s pleas that “vengeance is God’s province” and that her good-natured cousin should not risk losing his life to a guilty man. Letters are exchanged as the details of the duel are fixed; rapiers are chosen over pistols. When Morden kills Lovelace, the villain perishes but the victor risks carrying a moral burden that will never leave him. ̽��ֱ��lack of a winner is one of the great paradoxes of the duel.

In Touché: ̽��ֱ��Duel in Literature, Dr John Leigh (Medieval and Modern Languages) explores expositions of duelling in three centuries of writing. ̽��ֱ��first ever book devoted exclusively to the depiction of duelling in fiction, drama and poetry, Touché is pan-European in its scope and scholarly in its unpacking of contests that range from the comic stand-offs between Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Captain Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s ̽��ֱ��Rivals to the elegantly orchestrated cut and thrust of Dumas’s musketeers.

When Richardson wrote Clarissa, in the mid-1700s, duelling had long been illegal in Britain. With beautiful irony, laws renewed over the centuries made it a practice punishable by death. Arguments against duelling shifted over the centuries: framed in the 17th century as a theological wrong, it was condemned as barbarous (and non-classical) in the 18th century, and, finally, in the 19th century as an unseemly display of primitive urges. In his famous 1841 study of fashionable delusions, Charles Mackay likened duellists to “two dogs who tear each other for a bone, or two bantams fighting on a dunghill for the love of some beautiful hen”.

But its appeal endured, in literature as in life. Duels feature in the works of dozens of British writers: Tobias Smollett was prodigiously fond of duels (his sword-happy characters include the wonderfully named Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle) as were Sir Walter Scott, William Thackeray and GK Chesterton. Among the many French writers intrigued by duelling are Molière, Hugo and Maupassant. In Russian literature, Anton Chekhov and Alexander Pushkin (the latter an inveterate duellist) are masters in the telling of stories in which the duel plays a pivotal part.

̽��ֱ��sheer theatricality of the duel makes it an irresistible literary device, whether to demonstrate a gentleman’s valour in facing down a rogue or to mock the posturing of a foolish buck. ̽��ֱ��richness of the drama lies in the stage directions: the count-down to the allotted hour, the scene at dawn or dusk, the pacing out of the exact distance between opponents, the checking of weapons, and the sobbing of bystanders. ̽��ֱ��deeper fascination, for the reader, is with the process by which words become deeds and the freedom of the nobleman is enmeshed in an utterly inexorable, irrevocable process.

Duelling is a posh pursuit, imbued with notions of privilege and sportsmanship. Fencing and swordsmanship, like dancing and riding, were accomplishments that defined the wellborn young man. Likewise, many of the most celebrated bouts in fiction depict noble combatants seeking to uphold or defend family honour against slur or slight. As Leigh writes, the duellist is the “antithesis of the bourgeois, because he fights not for gain from his adversary but to declare who or what he is”.

But there are notable exceptions. Charles Dickens, most of whose characters are working or middle class, incorporates duels in several of his novels. In Pickwick Papers, duels generally assume the form of a comic set piece. “A duel in Ipswich!... Nothing of the kind can be contemplated in this town,” says the magistrate, summoned to halt plans for a confrontation between Samuel Pickwick and Peter Magnus. In Nicholas Nickleby, the protagonists are highborn but the message to the reader is that all life hangs on a thread. ̽��ֱ��tragedy of Lord Frederick Verisopht’s death, at the hand of Sir Mulberry Hawk, is set against the majesty of the rising sun and the running river - and the “twenty tiny lives” present on every blade of grass.

Leigh divides his text into themes, slotting duels into categories of ‘comical’, ‘poignant’, ‘judicial’, ‘romantic’ and ‘grotesque’. In a chapter devoted to the ‘paradoxes of the duel’, he explores the incompatibility of a pursuit steeped in style and swagger with the seriousness of its likely outcome – the finality of death. ̽��ֱ��elegant language of duelling, sometimes couched in French, and its insistence on carefully regulated protocol, seemingly elevates it from the notion of brutal murder. But, in the end, the calculated nature of duelling is perhaps even more chilling.

̽��ֱ��noblest of duelling weapons is the sword. Firearms bring a certain sense of anonymity; sometimes they gain an identity all of their own. In his poem Eugene Onegin, Pushkin describes in steely detail the mechanisms of the pistols loaded by Onegin and Lenski. “ ̽��ֱ��weapon,” writes Leigh, “acquires a sinister life of its own, as one action leads mechanistically and remorselessly to another, before the final, fateful event is triggered.” In stark contrast, as Lenski’s life ebbs away, the poet turns to nature to describe the slow fall of snow and the sudden grip of cold.

̽��ֱ��slaughter that took place in the muddy trenches of the First World War eclipsed the aristocratic notion of duelling as a test of nerve and a clean way of settling scores. But single combat remained, for some, an idealised form of warfare. Leigh writes that the Australian Spitfire pilot Richard Hillary recounts in his book ̽��ֱ��Last Enemy that: “In a fighter plane, I believe, we have found a way to return to war as it ought to be, war which is individual combat between two people, in which one either kills or is killed.”

Duels have been considered anachronistic for some four hundred years – but we remain fascinated by those who could take lives after taking exception.

Touché: ̽��ֱ��Duel in Literature is published by Harvard ̽��ֱ�� Press. John Leigh is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Inset image: French cased duelling pistols by Nicolas Noel Boutet. Single shot, percussion, rifled, .58 caliber, blued steel, Versailles, 1794-1797. Exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dr John Leigh has written the first book exclusively devoted to the duel in literature. In Touché, he offers a compelling picture of the ways in which novelists, playwrights and poets have used duelling as a trope to reveal the extent of manly valour, trickery and sheer foolishness.

̽��ֱ��duellist fights not for gain from his adversary but to declare who or what he is

John Leigh

G. Durand - Harper's Weekly

" ̽��ֱ��Code Of Honor—A Duel In ̽��ֱ��Bois De Boulogne, Near Paris", wood engraving by Godefroy Durand

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Novel Thoughts #7: Carol Brayne on Charles Dickens and George Eliot

lw355 — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 10:33:24 +0000

Having decided to become a doctor at the age of 10, Professor Carol Brayne’s love of the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot fired up her determination to tackle social inequalities in healthcare. Today she is Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at the ̽��ֱ�� of St Andrews by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

View the whole series: Novel Thoughts: What Cambridge scientists read.

Read about Novel Thoughts.

Is there a novel that has inspired you? Let us know! #novelthoughts

New film series Novel Thoughts reveals the reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists and peeks inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives. In the seventh film, Professor Carol Brayne explains how being able to experience life as lived by other people through the works of Dickens, Gaskell and Eliot has given a broader perspective to her work.

Novel Thoughts #7: Carol Brayne on Charles Dickens and George Eliot

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Nick Saffell

Carol Brayne

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Ever your affectionate Father, Charles Dickens

ns480 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:18:52 +0000

There are pivotal moments in family life when parents feel compelled to pick up a pen and share their wisdom with their children. It must have been just such an occasion when the author Charles Dickens, who was born 200 years ago today, sat down in a Liverpool hotel to write to his son Henry, who had newly arrived at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to study mathematics.

Henry Fielding Dickens, who was born in January 1849, was the eighth of the ten children born to the author and his wife Catherine. He was named after one of the 18^th-century writers whom Charles most admired – Henry Fielding, a humane and perceptive magistrate as well as the author of Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749) – and Henry Dickens was to follow his namesake into a successful career in the law.

̽��ֱ��letter that Charles wrote to Henry (My Dear Harry) in October 1868 was given to Trinity Hall in the 1950s by a great-great grandson of the author. It is held in the college’s Old Library.

In the present context of austerity and student debt, Charles’s letter makes fascinating reading. It begins with a list of practical matters relating to Henry’s allowance (£250 a year – “handsome for all your wants”), his requirements for furniture and clothing (“I strongly recommend you to buy nothing in Cambridge”) and the copious bottles of wine to be sent from London in order that the young undergraduate should enjoy life.

Charles tells his 19-year-old son that he has ordered by the same post “3: Doz Sherry, 2:Doz port and 3:Doz: light claret to be sent down to you”. A footnote adds “* and 6 bottles of brandy”, considerably upping the quota of alcohol. Having given the details of this generous supply, Charles then exhorts Henry to be prudent in his handling of money. “Now observe attentively,” he urges. “We must have no shadow of debt.”

Henry was the first in his family to study at university – and the decision to send him to Cambridge wasn’t taken lightly. As Claire Tomalin describes in her acclaimed biography (Charles Dickens, 2011), Charles had planned for Henry to take the Indian civil service examination – but the boy announced that he wanted to study at Cambridge. Not wishing his funds to be wasted, Charles consulted the headmaster of Henry’s school who advised him that his pupil was able. Henry was allowed to study for a further three years, and had private tutors in a number of skills, including mathematics and fencing.

Charles was keen to see rewards from his investment in his son and the letter is telling on this front: he reminds his son that he is benefitting from advantages in life that his father never had. “You know how hard I work for what I get, and I think you know that I never had money help from any human creature after I was a child,” he writes. Charles softens this expectation by instructing Henry to confide in his father: “If you ever find yourself on the verge of perplexity or difficulty, come to me. You will never find me hard with you while you are manly and truthful.”

Debt, and the importance of good accounting, is mentioned several times (a reminder of the prominence of ‘indebtedness’ as a theme of Charles’s fictional writing: on the one hand, the metaphor of ‘credit’ serves to illustrate important ways in which human lives are inextricably interrelated; on the other hand, Charles is always quick to suggest that while we should feel gratitude for what we ‘owe’ to others, we must remain fiscally independent and responsible). In the 19^th century debtors were imprisoned until they could pay off their debts (and the prison fees), and Charles’s own childhood experiences were formative: he had seen his father John falling into debt (he owed £40 10s). When he failed to repay it, he was taken to Marshalsea debtors’ prison in Southwark.

Charles was sent to the pawnbroker’s with the family books and much of their furniture: even more significantly for a sensitive child, he was sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory at around the age of 12, and for the rest of his adult life he regretted that his family had apparently been prepared to sacrifice his education – and indeed the happiness of his childhood – for their temporary economic survival. In an autobiographical fragment published in his friend John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens (1872-4), Charles sighed “I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber, or a little vagabond”. More poignantly, Charles recalled that his parents did not feel for his disappointment: “My father and mother were quite satisfied […] They could hardly have been more so, if I had been 20 years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.”

But Charles rescued himself from a possible life of penury and crime by the tireless efforts of his own labour. His Christian faith survived, too, and the letter to Henry speaks of the “priceless value of the New Testament” as “the one unfailing guide in Life”. Thanks to the brilliant productions of Charles’s prodigious genius, his own children were to enjoy a very different – and much more stable – childhood. As if fulfilling the alternative career that his father had imagined for himself, Henry, in particular, did well at Cambridge. After a year, he was awarded one of the principal scholarships at Trinity Hall, worth £50 a year.

In a memoir, Henry described telling his father about the award at Higham railway station in Kent. “He said ‘Capital, capital’ – nothing more.” Henry felt disappointed but in the pony carriage on the way to Gad’s Hill, the family home, his father broke down. “Turning towards me with tears in his eyes and giving me a warm grip of the hand, he said, ‘God bless you, my boy; God bless you!’ That pressure of the hand I can feel now as distinctly as I felt then, and it will remain as strong and real as the day of my death.”

Sadly, Charles died in 1870 (aged only 58) and he did not see his son’s subsequent success – but he would have been proud. After graduating with a good degree in mathematics in 1872, Henry was called to the Bar: after 20 years of successful advocacy in the Common Law Courts, Henry became Common Serjeant of London (a senior judicial appointment at the Old Bailey that he held until 1932). While his father’s fiction had engaged rather combatively with the work of the legal profession, regularly criticising the etiquette and ethics of the then newly-professionalised criminal Bar, Henry by all accounts excelled in his chosen vocation.

̽��ֱ��letter from Charles to Henry is dated 15 October, 1868, and the address at the top is the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. It was given to Trinity Hall by Christopher Dickens, one of Henry’s grandchildren, who was a student at Trinity Hall, matriculating in 1957.

̽��ֱ��time that Henry spent at Trinity Hall is just one of several strong connections between Charles Dickens and the college. Graham Storey (1921-2005), the editor of the ten volumes of the Pilgrim Edition of ̽��ֱ��Letters of Charles Dickens (1965-98), read law at Trinity Hall before becoming a Fellow in English in 1949. Generations of Dickens scholars have subsequently been indebted to his scholarship. Both the College’s current Fellows in English, Alison Hennegan and Dr Jan-Melissa Schramm, teach and publish on Dickens’s work. Trinity Hall has historically been known in Cambridge as ‘the lawyers’ College’, and like Graham Storey, Dr Schramm read law as an undergraduate. She has written on Dickens’s engagement with legal evidence and rhetoric in two books for Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press: the second of these, Atonement and Self-Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Narrative, will appear in June 2012 as part of the wider scholarly programme to commemorate the bicentenary of Dickens’s birth.

A letter written in 1868 by Charles Dickens, the bicentenary of whose birth falls today, to his son Henry, who had newly arrived at Cambridge, reveals a touching concern for Henry’s welfare in matters physical, moral and spiritual.

If you ever find yourself on the verge of perplexity or difficulty, come to me. You will never find me hard with you while you are manly and truthful.

Charles Dickens to his son Henry, 1868

Trinity Hall

Dickens letter

Full transcript of Charles Dickens' letter to his son Henry, 1868

Adelphi Hotel Liverpool

Thursday Fifteenth October 1868

My Dear Harry,

I have your letter here this morning. I enclose you another cheque for £25, and I write to London by this post, ordering 3 Doz: Sherry, 2 Doz: Port, and 3 Doz: light claret to be sent down to you*. I also enclose a cheque in favour of the Rev: F.L. Hopkins for £5..10..0.

Now, observe attentively. We must have no shadow of debt. Square up everything whatsoever that it has been necessary to buy. Let not a farthing be outstanding on any account, when we begin together with your allowance. Be particular in the minutest detail.

I wish to have no secret from you in the relations we are to establish together, and I therefore send you Joe Chitty’s letter bodily. Reading it, you will know exactly what I know, and will understand that I treat you with perfect confidence. It appears to me that an allowance of £250 a year will be handsome for all your wants, if I send you your wine. I mean this to include your tailor’s bills as well as every other expence; and I strongly recommend you to buy nothing in Cambridge, and to take credit for nothing but the clothes with which your tailor provides you. As soon as you have got your furniture accounts in, let us wipe all these preliminary expenses clean out, and I will then send you your first quarter. We will count in it, October, November, and December; and your second quarter will begin with the New Year. If you dislike, at first, taking charge of so large a sum as £62..10..0 you can have your money from me half quarterly.

You know how hard I work for what I get, and I think you know that I never had money help from any human creature after I was a child. You know that you are one of many heavy charges on me, and that I trust to your so exercising your abilities and improving the advantages of your past expensive education, as soon to diminish this charge. I say no more on that head.

Whatever you do, above all other things keep out of debt, and confide in me. If you ever find yourself on the verge of any perplexity or difficulty, come to me. You will never find me hard with you while you are manly and truthful.

As your brothers have gone away one by one, I have written to each of them what I am now going to write to you. You know that you have never been hampered with religious forms of restraint, and that with mere unmeaning forms I have no sympathy. But I most strongly and affectionately impress upon you the priceless value of the New Testament, and the study of that book as the one unfailing guide in Life. Deeply respecting it, and bowing down before the character of Our Saviour, as separated from the vain constructions and inventions of men, you cannot go very wrong and will always preserve at heart a true spirit of veneration and humility. Similarly, I impress upon you the habit of saying a Christian prayer every night and morning. These things have stood by me all through my life, and you remember that I tried to render the New Testament intelligible to you and loveable by you when you were a mere baby.

And so God bless you.

Ever your affectionate Father

Charles Dickens

*and 6 bottles of brandy

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