THE DICKENS NEWSLETTER MELBOURNE 38th Year of Publication ISSUE No. 407 July 2019 TWO DOLLARS

Elisabeth Neales at 90

Photograph by Lyndsey Burton

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A Message from the President Dennis Marriott Pickwick Dear Fellow Dickensians There have been some memorable black and white films based on the works of Dickens, most memorably George Cukor’s 1935 , David Lean’s 1946 and his 1948 . Masterpieces they were, but I must confess, the one I enjoy most is Noel Langley’s 1952 , and yes I am serious, the operative word here is enjoy. © Renown Film Productions Mr Pickwick The 1952 Pickwick Papers was produced by Renown Film Productions who also produced the 1951 Scrooge, based on starring Alistair Sim in the title role and Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley’s ghost with an appearance by Hattie Jacques as Mrs Fezziwig. Noel Langley wrote the screenplay for Scrooge and The Pickwick Papers which he also directed. Langley (1911-1980) was a South African (later naturalised American) novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director. He was one of the three credited screenwriters for the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. The Pickwick Papers became the first British film to be shown in the Soviet Union after World War II. Costing £10,000 for the distribution rights, it premiered on 29th July 1954 in a number of cities with a dubbed soundtrack. The film was followed a month later by a Russian reprint of Dickens's book, in 150,000 copies. The film was awarded The Golden Bear in the Soviet Union in 1954. James Hayter was nominated for the BAFTA, Best British Actor award in 1953 for his portrayal of Samuel Pickwick, and in 1956 Beatrice Dawson was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White for the film's costumes. The film was released in America in 1954. Langley did a marvellous job at scaling down the book. It flows very well and received good reviews on its release. The production was a commercial success despite its low budget. It was filmed at Nettleford Studios in Walton on Thames in Surrey. The casting was spot on and is the strength of this marvellously humorous production. Assuming a knowledge of the plot, a good way to appreciate the film is through a look at three of the very talented leading actors. James Hayter (1907-1983) as Mr Pickwick was outstanding. Hayter had previously been cast in the 1947 Alberto Cavalcanti-directed , playing both brothers Cheeryble. A disappointing film, it was relieved by Sir Cedric Hardwicke ably playing Ralph Nickleby and an excellent performance by Stanley Holloway as Vincent Crummles. Again with Dickens, Hayter played Mr Jessop in the 1968 film of Oliver Twist. He was a perfect fit as Pickwick, producing benign-cum-innocent expressions and other facial mannerisms that so suited the Dickens character. He also made a very good Friar Tuck in two films and became a better known Tuck in the Richard Green television series of Robin Hood.

2 Nigel Patrick (1912-1981) filled the role of Alfred Jingle admirably. Patrick, on stage and in films, often played a debonair character and was voted the seventh most popular British film actor in 1952. His delivery of Jingle’s telegraphic-like dialogue was performed so well and accompanied by such a caddish air that he could not fail to amuse. Patrick’s most impressive scene was when he was found in the Marshalsea in a bad way. Devoid of his self-assurance, the pathos he brought to this scene was truly inspiring. Henry Fowler (1926-2012) played the jaunty Sam Weller. Born in Lambeth, London, Fowler was the quintessential cockney actor, once referred to as English Pickwick, Jingle, Mrs and Miss Judkins © Renown Film Productions as suet pudding. A former paper boy, he became a child actor and had a 60 year career in film and television including performances in The Longest Day and Lawrence of Arabia, both in 1962. He was made for the role of Sam Weller and grabbed the reins with great gusto. He created a great style of walking that so suited the uniqueness that was Sam and was so amusing enacting all the other foibles of this most popular character. Really, one could continue with most of the cast because they put in such solid performances. Of note were: James Donald as Nathaniel Winkle, Lionel Murton as Augustus Snodgrass, and Alexander Gauge as Tracey Tupman. I must mention Joyce Grenfell who had a brief cameo as the awful poet Mrs. Leo Hunter performing ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog’. Her performance was, as you can imagine, highly amusing. It is not a great film, but it is a classic film. The stellar cast has been given colourful characters to play in this lively adaption of Dickens’s much loved comedy. The visual humour as well as the verbal is a treat. I would have loved to have been on the set watching this coming together. Uriah’s Utterings

Our cover girl for this number is newly minted nonagenarian and recently retired, long-serving secretary Elisabeth Neales. Elisabeth has been, and still is, of inestimable worth to our branch and, as you can see from Lyndsey’s photo, she is still healthy and vigorous.

Dennis’s President’s message concerns a wonderful summary of some early cinematic representations of Dickens novels, particularly The Pickwick Papers.

Our very distinguished past President Alan Dilnot continues a tradition I am trying to promote by providing an abstract of his June presentation to our branch meeting. It is a shame that for years our members’ splendid efforts have not been adequately recorded for posterity.

There is much more in this issue and I hope you all enjoy it. 3 Miss Nipper’s Notes Miss Nipper loves to go snooping through history. She likes trawling through old documents and telling people about them.

Mr F.C. Sides was president of the Melbourne Branch of the Dickens Fellowship from 1954 until 1957 and again from 1965 until 1968. He had, however, joined us years before and once presented a paper on Dickens And The Weather signed by the author in December 1914.

He chose the subject not just because, he assures us, the winter had been ‘much at variance with the generally accepted idea of the winter season’. In fact, Australia was experiencing its Forgotten Drought, extending from April 1914 to May 1915. Eclipsed in memory by the earlier, longer Federation Drought and the start of WW I, this drought caused record low wheat yields and was the worst rainfall failure Australia would experience until 1982. A further reason to choose this topic was his observation that weather is a neglected theme in commentaries on Dickens. Weather, he observes, is a mundane, default topic of conversation with strangers. In Dickens, it is something more. ‘He used it to complete his scenes and to assist or deter the ambitions of his characters.’

Noting that Dickens makes ‘common things appear wonderful,’ Sides firstly cites the autumn leaves in , rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols [in] the wind’s malicious fury.

The representations of weather, says Sides, are not just fanciful, but true to nature. Dickens uses lyrical descriptions for his own literary purpose, as in . Fog is in eyes and in throats, it creeps, hovers, droops, pinches and pours. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green meadows; fog down the river where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Finally, fog the metaphor: Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep to assort with the groping and floundering condition which the High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, hold this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

Sides reminds us that there are, of course, descriptions of clear skies, green fields and orchards and he quotes from : Corn-fields, hedge-rows, fences, homesteads, and clustered roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the water-mill .… Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised their drooping heads, fresh scents arose … the blue expanse above extended and diffused itself;… a rainbow, spirit of all the colours that adorned the earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its triumphant glory.

4 Inevitably however, the energy of dramatic weather is best remembered and it prepares us for events both tragic and exciting. Sides quoted from the scene-

The Storm by Fred Barnard Scanned by Philip V. Allingham for the Victorian Web.

setting introduction to The Haunted Man where the lighthouse is solitary and watchful, from Great Expectations where damp is a goblin crying all night outside Pip’s window and dismal weather is the prelude to the destruction of Pip’s great expectations. Powerful, dramatic weather is precursor to the tragic deaths of Ham and Steerforth in David Copperfield. …it blew harder and harder and as they neared the salt spray rained upon them…the first glimpse of the sea showed it a mass of rolling abysses.

Sides is right. The weather really works to earn its place in Dickens. His weather is not just meteorology, but a phenomenon with human moods . It is almost a character. Sides was not simply a fan of Dickens, but a careful, engaged reader of his work. We are fortunate that upon his death, his daughter passed on to our archive a set of the papers he presented over the years. This was his first.

5 Why does Dickens leave us cold? By Lyndsey Burton F.C.Sides’s presentation on Dickens and Weather triggered a memory. The post-war baby boom took the Victorian Education Department by surprise. Consequently, there came a time when Pascoe Vale Primary School was not big enough for its enrolment, so the entire population of grade 3 was relocated to The Annexe. We were delighted. It freed us from the reign of a terrifying infant mistress. We moved down Cumberland Road to the Melbourne School of Textiles, formerly a migrant hostel, into a grungy, shabby bungalow of classrooms with easels and blackboards. We pupils didn’t care, but I expect the teachers were less than delighted. December arrived bringing that final week of school in which we were allowed to play cards, knit, talk, read and generally relax in our classrooms while the teachers tied up all their administrative work. One afternoon, Miss Walker said, ‘I’m going to read you a story.’ It was one of those stinking-hot Melbourne afternoons when the mercury climbed and the north wind blew. We sprawled at our desks, heads resting on our arms and she began, ‘A Christmas Carol by '. Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! … The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue;…A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin… he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. I do not exaggerate. At that moment, in that un- Illustrator: P.J.Lynch insulated, sweltering classroom, we shivered. No one does cold like Dickens, but why is this so? Dickens was born in 1812, a very cold year for England and Europe. It was the year in which Russia’s traditional ally, ‘General Winter’, helped to shatter the retreat of Napoleon’s army from Moscow. The Central England Temperature record, begun in 1660, tells us that in 1814, the year Dickens turned two, the winter was the coldest recorded. London had its hardest frost for centuries and the Thames its last frost fair. Demolition of Old London Bridge changed the flow of the Thames ensuring there would never be another. The Year Without Summer, 1816, was part of a three-year period of low temperatures. A world-wide phenomenon it probably had multiple causes. The Dalton minimum, an episode of low solar activity still prevailed and Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. Europe, depleted by the Napoleonic wars was hit hard. There were crop failures, epidemics and civil unrest. England had a cold, wet summer. The decade 1810 to 19 was England’s coldest since 1690-99. The warmest year for 40 years was 1822 followed by a severe winter in 1823. 1828 was the warmest overall year for 45 years. On the other hand, in January 1838, London 6 had its lowest recorded temperature for the entire 19th century. December 1843, the month A Christmas Carol was published, was an exceptionally mild month in the warmest year overall for 100 years. was published one year later in 1844, one of the coldest winters, it is no surprise that Trotty Veck finds himself in punishing cold, ‘A breezy, goose-skinned, blue nosed, red-eyed, stoney-toed, tooth- chattering place’. People can say rude things about Melbourne’s weather, ‘four seasons in one day’, but ‘variable’ has long been a defining feature of England’s weather. During Dickens’s lifetime, coldest and warmest years succeeded each other. Bitterly cold weather was not the norm, but undeniably Dickens experienced a number of very cold winters, although none was as cold as the winter of 1962-63 would be. For the first years of Dickens’s life, between 1812 and 1820, six Christmases were white with snow or frost and we all know how well Dickens recalled his childhood sensations, well enough to chill children in a Melbourne summer. Dickens: Magnates, Mill-Owners and Workers By Alan Dilnot Pickwick Papers: Birmingham and Mr. Winkle Senior Charles Dickens was born in the South of England and spent his formative years there. He knew the sea ports of Portsmouth and Chatham because his father worked in the Navy Pay Office, and from the age of 10 Charles got to know London very well. It is significant that in , written between 1833 and 1836, all the pieces are set in London and its suburbs, except for one, ‘The Tuggses at Ramsgate’ – there is nothing written about any part of England north of the Home Counties. Outside of London, the England of Dickens’s childhood was maritime or rustic. Modes of transport were pedestrian, on horse-back or in a boat. Dickens’s first forays into other parts of England came when he was a reporter for the Morning Chronicle and followed politicians around the country to record their speeches; and Dickens made those journeys on horse-back or in a carriage. The Pickwick Papers reflects this background. It is a novel of London and the open roads out of London. When Mr. Pickwick and the Pickwickians go to Birmingham to plead with Mr. Winkle Senior to look kindly on his son Nathaniel Winkle, who has fallen in love with Arabella, they travel there by horse-drawn coach. Mr. Winkle is the first wealthy self-made man we encounter in Dickens’s works, and we do not warm to him at first. Mr. Winkle is not an aristocrat. He is actually a wharfinger and has built up a thriving business. He has developed his own brand of family pride and he would rather have his son Nathaniel marry into the gentry. However, in due course he thinks about what Mr. Pickwick has said to him and decides to make his own investigations in London. He sees Arabella, is charmed by her, and blesses the marriage of the two young people. That suits the theme of achieving harmony in The Pickwick Papers, where the emphasis is always upon the need for reconciliation. Rioters and a Furnace Minder in the Midlands. Now let us switch from an employer to an employee. It is only three years later, in 1843 when appeared. The novel begins in London, but Little Nell and her grandfather wander away from the capital and after a passage on a canal boat, arrive in the Midlands. There, people are rioting in a scene reminiscent of the French Revolution because of poverty and especially starvation. Nell and her father 7 take refuge in a steel works, and Nell is kindly treated by a man who feeds a furnace fire. There is strong sympathy for the working poor. The man who tends the furnace fire lives in squalor with no hope of improvement in his conditions which are little better than Hellish. Yet he has preserved his kind heart and his consideration for others. He is Dickens’s first picture of an industrial worker. Interestingly, he seems to have no employer to whom he might appeal – it is almost as if he is a victim of an economic system. After The Old Curiosity Shop Dickens shows us several businessmen of various kinds – Ebenezer Scrooge, Anthony Chuzzlewit and Paul Dombey among them – but they are all South of England men, who deal in money and property rather than with machinery. A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent. In the article ‘A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent’ published in in 1850,we see another side of Dickens’s outlook on business, and particularly on the exploitation of mechanical contrivance and invention. For Dickens was not an enemy of business or of invention. In fact, he was a very good man of business himself, and was probably more inventive than any other English writer. This article shows he has a deep sympathy for anyone who invents a device which has the potential to benefit all mankind. From this standpoint it is the parasitical aristocrats controlling the reins of government who prevent progress.

Coalbrookdale by Night 1801 Philip James de Loutherbourg Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

8 The Ironmaster and His Premises. The Pickwick Papers gave us a master who was brisk and cold on the surface but warm and kindly on the inside. The Old Curiosity Shop gave us a worker who had to toil in terrible, oppressive conditions, but who had not been dehumanised. ‘A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent’ featured a man who was not able to develop his invention because of government regulation. Moving on to Bleak House, which is set partly in London, especially in the legal area, partly in Lincolnshire where Chesney Wold is situated amid lush parkland, and partly further north where mills and factories are placed. The latter part occupies only a few pages of the narrative, but they are of great importance in helping us to form a picture of England in the mid-nineteenth century. The key figure here is Mr. Rouncewell the Ironmaster. Like his brother George, who ran away from Chesney Wold to become a dragoon, Mr. Rouncewell grew up at Chesney Wold, but very early on he showed an aptitude for construction. His own account is voiced when he comes back to Chesney Wold with the object of taking Lady Dedlock’s maid Rosa away to be educated to become a fit wife for Rouncewell’s son Watt, named of course after James Watt, though Sir Leicester thinks rather of Wat Tyler. Rouncewell is justly proud of his commercial success, and he knows that power is gradually passing away from the traditional rulers of the country, the Dedlock class, to the new masters such as himself – and Rouncewell and his class are on their way to becoming a new ruling class based on their industrial wealth. It is difficult to judge where Dickens’s sympathies lie. But George Rouncewell, the ironmaster’s brother, chooses to stay loyal to Sir Leicester Dedlock and Chesney Wold rather than to go to work for his brother at the Ironworks. It is almost as if Dickens is preferring a semi- feudal England to the new Industrial England. Bounderby and His Works This prepares us to look at and the mill-owner Mr. Bounderby. But before we do, consider Dickens’s article ‘On Strike’, written for Household Words after he had visited Preston when there actually was a strike going on, and the workers and their families were close to starvation. Dickens was impressed by the moderation and peacefulness shown by the people, and he carried his sympathy forward into Hard Times, almost as if he has carried over the sympathy he felt for the furnace minder back in The Old Curiosity Shop. However, something very interesting has happened to Dickens’s outlook. First of all, Stephen Blackpool, the factory operative, a kind, peaceable, hard-working, steady and trust- This Northumberland union banner is worthy man, is made to stand out held at Burradon Primary School. 9 from the other workers, not because of his virtues, which are manifold, but because he has refused to join the Union. In fact, Dickens deliberately complicates the presentation of Stephen by making him not only a victim of the Unionised working class and the employing class but also a victim of the Divorce Laws (which actually were about to change). Not only that, but the workers are officially represented by Slackbridge, one of the most unpleasant, manipulative and self-serving characters in the whole of Dickens. At the other end of industrial society Dickens has made another important change. Mr. Bounderby has had all the advantages to help him on in his career – a kind and caring mother, a good apprenticeship, and he has a shrewd business sense, just like Mr. Rouncewell – but there is one great difference: he pretends that he has done it all by himself. Where Mr. Rouncewell, with self-respect and pride dealt as a respectful equal with Sir Leicester Dedlock, Bounderby is keen to demonstrate his superiority to the upper-classes as Dickens shows in his detailed description of Bounderby’s relationship with Mrs. Sparsit. Whereas Mr. Rouncewell has begun to play a responsible part in the affairs of his society, Mr. Bounderby deludes himself when he thinks he has risen above the aristocracy. In fact, the aristocracy is seeking to attach him to its own interests. That is why James Harthouse is sent down to Coketown. Bounderby is in one way a failure at the close of the story. His true origins have been revealed, and he has lost his marriage with Louisa Gradgrind. Something Mrs. Sparsit rubs in. But Bounderby has an undeflatable ego. He does not found a new dynasty like the Rouncewells, but instead leaves money to support a charity where everyone who benefits has to take the name of ‘Josiah Bounderby’. Hard Times leaves us with the feeling that Stephen Blackpool, the working man, is a victim both of the employers and the Unions, and that the claims of the northern mill-owners to be self-made men are misleading, but Dickens is always shifting his position. In Mrs Gaskell’s North and South, which followed Hard Times in Dickens’s Household Words, the mill-owner, Thornton, under the influence of the heroine Margaret Hale, introduces more benign regulation into the conduct of his business, and there is a measure of understanding developed between employer and employee. Daniel Doyce’s Workshop. and Daniel Doyce bring together many of the things we have been talking about. Little Dorrit was the next novel of Dickens to appear after Hard Times. There is some haziness about its time-setting. Whereas Hard Times had the subtitle ‘For These Times’, Little Dorrit is in one sense, a novel of the mid-1850s, with its concern with the Civil Service and its reform, and with the investment mania that followed the speculations of Hudson the Railway King and which involves Merdle and many others in bankruptcy; but in other ways it is a novel of the mid-1820s, because that was the time when Dickens’s family was, like the Dorrits, in a debtors’ prison. The firm of Doyce and Clennam partakes of both time settings. What Dickens likes about Doyce is his dedication to perfecting his invention, rather like the man who tried to get a patent that we saw earlier on. Doyce is more interested in good, honest workmanship than he is in making huge profits. As far as we know he is a good employer, paying fair wages to his workers. He is charitable to Clennam after Clennam wastes the company’s money on speculation, saying only 10 that Clennam has simply made a mistake in his calculations. If we can isolate Dickens’s own views it is probable that he is nostalgic for the old days of small firms and workshops, perhaps like Fezziwig’s in A Christmas Carol, rather than the large undertakings that dominate the North. Mugby Junction. After Little Dorrit Dickens does not have much to say about industry and construction. In , we see the results of industrialisation in the four massive dust heaps in Mr. Boffin’s yard, but that is in London. And in Mugby Junction, the Christmas Story for 1866, the leading character, Barbox Bros., is a refugee from business who has somehow landed in the Midlands, now dominated by the railways. Barbox Bros. or Mr. Jackson is a kind of successor to Arthur Clennam, but without the romantic ending. We leave him without a business, without a family, and really without friends. And there are no more encounters with iron-masters or mill-owners, unless we count the paper-manufacturers where Lizzie Hexam works for a while – but that is situated on the Thames.Dickens has gone back to being a writer of the South, of London, the Home Counties and the River. That is where he leaves us, and where we shall leave him.

The Best of Times By Nita Jawary Thanks to Barbara Barrett, Saturday July 6th saw ten Dickensians attend the penultimate Adelphi Players’ performance of The Golden Pathway Annual. Six of the ten then partied on at Zagame’s for a meal and a chat. The Best of Times!

New Event: I seek expression of interest to attend the following event: Saturday July 20th, 3.30pm The Best of Times the Worst of Times-A woman’s lot in Charles Dickens Exhibition at The Stonnington History Centre, 1257 High St Malvern. (Behind the Malvern Library). We will take refreshments after the exhibition at a nearby café in Glenferrie Rd Malvern, about a ten minute walk from the History Centre. Please let Nita know if you intend to come.

MALVERN THEATRE CO. Sep. 14, 2pm, Ladies in Black. Nov. 16, 2pm, Twelfth Night. If you have not yet requested tickets, but wish to attend, let me know.

Reminder: Getting there TRAIN: Check that you can reach Caulfield Station. Rail works are creating changes to the normal timetable. Buses are replacing trains.

From Caulfield Station either walk (15-20 mins) to the theatre or take tram 3/3a as below. There is a stop just outside the station.

11 L-R: Barbara Barrett, Nita Jawary, Catherine Davison, Rhonda Blake, Anne Myers and Frances Hutson.

TRAM: The theatre is a short walk from tram stop no. 60, corner Burke Rd/ Waverley Rd. Take either the number 3 or 3a from the University of Melbourne. On the day, check for disruptions or diversions from the normal route.

BUS: Line #624 (Kew to Oakleigh Station) should stop at Caulfield Station. Check timetable for the day.

CAR: There are parking restrictions in the area, so read the signs carefully.

After the show, Zagame’s, is a short walk or tram ride away. Let me know if you are coming so that I can book. If you have a problem on the day, phone me on 0402137420.

From the Secretary Report on the June Meeting 2019

The president, Dennis Marriott, welcomed 25 members and one visitor, Rhonda Blake. Dennis then apologised for his erroneous quotation from Jane Austen in his message in this month’s newsletter.

The secretary, Lyndsey Burton reported on correspondence displaying newsletters from the Greater Riverside Area Dickens Fellowship in Los Angeles and Christchurch in New Zealand. There was also a reminder for people to start thinking about presentations for next year.

12 There were reports from the treasurer Karen Brkic, the social secretary Nita Jawary and from Sue Prior who reminded everyone that Ann Douglas is taking over as librarian.

The president reminded us that the next meeting is on July 17th. This is his night and he will be speaking on Dickens’s gallery of friends.

The main business was Alan Dilnot’s presentation on ‘Dickens &Industry: Mills and Mill Owners.’ The presentation was bracketed by our own band, The Copperfields, performing Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls.

Alan’s material extended well beyond Hard Times. He focused on industry and masters, Dickens’s attitude to work, invention and the changing social structure. A fuller account of Alan’s presentation appears in this newsletter.

Peter Spriggins and Nita Jawary performed Alan playing the harmonica the readings and at the presentation’s with the Copperfields conclusion, Brian Ruck proposed the vote of thanks.

The meeting was not over as we acknowledged the 90th birthday of Elisabeth Neales. Pat Amor spoke saying: It’s my great pleasure to wish Elisabeth Neales a very happy 90th Birthday! I believe it was actually yesterday, Elisabeth, and that you have already started celebrating. I am particularly happy to have been asked to do this because Elisabeth was instrumental in my joining the Fellowship many years ago. While always sharing her extensive knowledge and love of Dickens’s works, she has been a constant source of friendship and fellowship to me and to us all ever since. So, Elisabeth we wish you a very happy birthday and a wonderful celebration when you gather with your family in Tuscany early in July.

Pat’s words were followed by the singing of Happy Birthday and, cake with supper and the clean up managed by Warren Collins and Brian Ruck.

13 Degas and Dickens: Smoke and Steam by Barbara Sharpe I need to question a statement in the introduction to Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators (Ohio State UP, 1980). Jane R. Cohen notes that travels in Europe affected Dickens’s view of English artists – At the 1853 Paris Art Exposition, for example, he perceived that the innovative canvases of Corot, Manet, Courbet, and Degas excelled the ones by his Royal Academy friends like Maclise and Stanfield. (p.7) – and quotes from a letter of Dickens to Forster: There is a horrid respectability about most of them – a little, finite, systematic routine in them, strangely expressive to me of the state of England itself. In 1853 Dickens would have Henri Rouart in Front of his Factory seen paintings by Corot, aged 57 and experimenting By Edgar Degas with proto-impressionist ©Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, US short dabbed brushwork and Courbet, 34, he’d just startled the Salon with a ‘realist’ nude. Manet Aged 21, having dabbled at seafaring and drawing, had just left Paris to travel for three years. Graduated from Lycée Louis-le-Grand in March 1853, Degas was granted permission to copy at the Louvre and in the print-room of the Bibliothèque nationale. The next year he would abandon law studies, enrol briefly at the École des beaux arts, then study independently in Italy; he did not exhibit in Paris till much later, debuting at the Salon in 1864 with a medieval war scene in Romantic mode. I’ve found no other reference to Degas in Dickens’s life. Indeed, only after Dickens’s death are English critics aware of this artist. Degas visited London in late 1871. His eyesight was damaged during his volunteer guard-duty in the Franco-Prussian War, to attend an exhibition of the Society of French Artists at Galérie Durand-Ruel in New Bond Street. Sidney Colvin (Pall Mall Gazette, 28 November 1872) was delighted by the ‘subtlety of exact perception’ and ‘felicitous touch’ of two Degas works displayed 14 by Durand-Ruel (At the Races in the Countryside, 1869, and one of ballet girls training) ― ‘Without the slightest pretension, these are both of them real masterpieces’ (see endnote). Even in France, Degas ― 10th to finish and show his work ― was little known until, needing money, his father had died, leaving debts, he exhibited each year, 1874-86, with the Anonymes, bypassing the Salon. He was a founding and core member of this group of artists but did not identify with the ‘Impressionist’ label they were given: his bricolage works, crafted in the studio, may be called realist and proto symbolist. Dante Gabriel Rossetti visited one year and noted Degas’s monotypes as ‘surprisingly clever pieces’ (Academy, 29 April 1876). The Anglo-Irish novelist George Moore came from London to the 1886 showing and marvelled: ‘The effect is prodigious. Degas has done what Baudelaire did — he has created un frisson nouveau.’ By 1886 Degas had arrived. In 1881 his Little Dancer of 14 Years sculpture had caused a huge outcry. And before this last exhibition opened, over half of his entered works had sold. Thereafter the dim-sighted, eccentric, reclusive artist would live, as he wished, ‘famous and unknown’. Edgar Degas did know of Dickens. He was a young adult in the1850s, the Anglophile early years of France’s Second Empire, when Dickens, horse-breeding and horse- racing were among the enthusiasms to cross the Channel. Degas frequented racetracks; his horse paintings caught the gait of the animal as no others had. When his younger brother Achille, serving in the French navy, was preparing to sail to Africa and visit British territory inMarch 1859, he wrote to Edgar, then in Florence)saying he had bought a hunting gun (of course) and a novel in English by Charles Dickens, which he intended to translate during the ocean voyage (noted by Roberta Crisci-Richardson in Mapping Degas, Cambridge, 2015). In July 1872 the youngest brother, René, wrote to Edgar of his ‘infatuation with comical English words’ ― sparked by their reading Dickens, given an American twist when René worked in the family’s New Orleans cotton office. (A step aside: Dickens may once have disparaged his countrymen as artists, but at the 1867 Paris Exposition Degas’s attention was captured by the jewelled pastel palettes of the English painters whose works were shown, as well as by photographs, and the Japanese art he was seeing for the first time. All would influence his work) Degas knew Hippolyte Taine’s History of English Literature (1863) with its chapter on Dickens: There is a painter in [Dickens], and an English painter […] An imagination so lucid and energetic cannot but animate inanimate objects without an effort […] Imaginary objects are designed with outlines as precise and details as numerous as real objects, and the dream is equal to the reality. In Impressionist Quartet ‘The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt’, Jeffrey Meyers (NY: Harcourt, 2005) says Degas misread Taine’s words and identified with Dickens as artist and as painstaking worker whose creations required endless effort! Dickens had always to foot bills, support family and meet deadlines. The bachelor Degas was 40 before he had to pay his way and deal with his father’s insolvency. He was notorious for recrafting his never-finished work, most of which remained unglazed, uncast and unseen until his death. Both men were chroniclers of burgeoning 19th-century urban life, and ― though the industrial revolution came later and less drastically to France ― of iron, carbon and smog. As Alan Dilnot spoke recently on ‘Mills, Mill-Owners and Manufacturers’, let’s 15 look at Degas’s Henri Rouart in front of his Factory , c.1875 (oil on canvas. 65 x 50 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art: Rouart was at school with Degas; they met again when Rouart was Degas’s Artillery commanding officer in the Franco-Prussian War and became friends. In a way Rouart is a familiar figure: with his male middle-class uniform of top hat, dark beard, white collar, fine black broadcloth suit and look of assured prosperity, we could imagine him in a London club ― almost, perhaps, among the sleek gents whom Degas shows prowling backstage at the Opéra, cornering little ballet dancers. Degas has chosen to portray Rouart devant son usine ― immediately there’s a sense of ownership ― so the hat is at chimney level. He has Rouart’s shoulders framed by the railway lines that deliver materials and take products away. The rail lines converge at a structure spewing smoke. Yet this artist’s choices were always visual rather than socio-political: his concern was the play of colour, B&W and shining metal; the framing design which makes our eye draw Rouart toward his factory even as he stands apart; the high hat so right among the stacks.

Edgar Degas Factory Smoke 1877-9 Monotype printed in black ink on laid paper The Elisha Whittelsey Collection NY Metropolitan

Smoke and steam came to fascinate Degas, as they had Dickens: On smoke—people’s smoke, from pipes, cigarettes, cigars, smoke of locomotives, tall chimneys, factories, steamboats, etc., smoke confined in the space under bridges, steam. ― Degas’s, notebook, May 1879. For experimenter Degas, a new matter meant new material, new method ― all came together in his monotypes. He drew on glass with greasy black ink, (the main ingredient: lamp-black made from chimney-soot!) wiped, softened and blurred with his fingers; and the plate passed through a press to make a single print on plain or

16 laid paper, which could be left uncoloured or have pastel added. A monotype drawing had ‘a certain mystery, vagueness, fantasy’ ― and his fingerprints! As George Moore said, ‘prodigious’. Degas wished his epitaph to be ‘one who loved to draw’. He knew the fictional truth of the line ― ‘The line is not the shape; it is the way one sees the shape’ ― and enjoyed allowing volatile ink and rib-textured paper to be his unpredictable partners in deciding what we the viewers see. His great monotypes of the late 1870s include Beside the Sea, with a long black cloud of steamer smoke running flat above the horizon; In the Omnibus, with a woman’s half-veiled face reflected in a misted window; Women Ironing, a blur of steam and weary dogged bodies; and the semi-abstract Factory Smoke (Fumières d’usines is the more telling title): Three plumes of smoke have unseen origin (so many possible sources; smoke takes on a life of its own) while the distant smallest one rises from the sharp black tip of a funnel ― that tiny geometric contrast creates dynamic tension within the pale haze of smoke and smoky sky. I’m sure Dickens would have admired, and often recognised, Degas’s ‘innovative canvases’, had he seen them. And I’m grateful our NGV got in early, mounting the Winter Masterpiece Degas: A New Vision in 2016, so we Melburnians could see works acquired in Paris and New York for the 2017 centenary of Degas’s death. *

Note Sir Sidney Colvin (friend and love-rival of Robert Louis Stevenson) was variously Slade Professor of Fine Art, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum ― and victim of an art heist (or ignorant crime) when a hansom cab driver stole a swag of Old Master engravings. Sources in addition to those given in the text:

Samantha Friedman, ‘On Smoke’, Degas: A Strange New Beauty, ed. Jodi Hauptman, New York: MoMA, 2016. Ann Hoenigswald, ‘Degas the perfectionist’, in Gallery, ed. Donna McColm, Melbourne: NGV, July-August 2016. Henri Loyrette, Degas: A New Vision, Melbourne: NGV; Houston Museum of Fine Arts, 2016. Henri Loyrette, Degas: Passion and Intellect, London: Thames & Hudson, 1993.

17 Submission Guidelines

People are encouraged to submit material for our newsletter with the following firmly in mind:

➢ Articles should be less than 1500 words, exclusive of notes. This is negotiable, dependent upon space and quality. Illustrations are welcome for articles and other fellowship matters. If illustrations are to be included they should be sent as separate files and the author should indicate where they would like them to be placed. Please give them full captions indicating the artist especially. Photos or scanned pictures should be supplied at a minimum 300 dpi resolution. Contributors should ensure they have permission to reproduce any such illustrations for publication.

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➢ The possessive ‘s’ is added to ‘Dickens’ (i.e. Dickens’s) and to similar proper names ending with an ’s'.

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We will produce the newsletter for sale at our meeting on the third Wednesday of each month. If you would like something published that month, please send it by the first Wednesday of that month. Of course we will hold your piece over until the next month, if that is warranted.

The Dickens Newsletter, Melbourne, founded in October 1982, is published by the Melbourne Dickens Fellowship, monthly except in January.

The editor is Andrew Gemmell, Home Address: 15B Kipling Street Moonee Ponds, VIC 3039; Mobile: +61438655585. Email: [email protected] He is glad to receive contributions.

Annual Subscription to the Newsletter (11 Issues) is AUD$15 post-paid. We encourage subscribers to request an online version which we will provide without charge.

The Dickens Fellowship, Melbourne, was formed in August 1904, as Branch No. 24. It is now the oldest Branch of the Fellowship outside England.

The Melbourne Dickens Fellowship is incorporated, with the No. A00287 19W. Its website address is www.dickens.asn.au We warmly welcome new members to our meetings, which are normally held on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 7.30 pm in the Faichney Room, Toorak Uniting Church, Toorak Rd.

18 Global Dickens: For Every Nation Upon Earth

When we think of Charles Dickens we often think of a quintessentially British writer but Dickens wasn’t just inspired by London, his beloved ‘magic lantern’, Dickens was writing about – and writing for – the world.

This new exhibition presents a global picture of this famous author, exploring the impact of his travels on his life and his writing. Taking his own travels in Europe and North America as a departure point, it examines how Dickens was not only influenced by these places but went on to be a global cultural force, shaping the lives of people around the planet.

Using magnificent exhibits from the Museum’s unparalleled collection – including Dickens’s leather travelling bag; a Manga edition of A Christmas Carol; and a spectacular copy of David Copperfield that went to the Antarctic on the 1910 Scott expedition – we present Dickens as he saw himself: as a truly global writer.

19 Edgar Degas: Achille De Gas in Cadet Uniform 1856/7 © National Gallery London

Brothers Achille & René kept the family name De Gas which Edgar modified.

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