The Old Curiosity Shop
It was an absolute joy to read The Old Curiosity Shop. The entire book was saturated with character development and a refreshing attention to detail, along with subtle humor that, if it were found in a modern TV show, would be worshipped for its cleverness and style.
I relish authors that allow me time to take in the scenery. That’s difficult to find in a book, because I’m completely dependent on the amount of time the author took to describe it. Describing the setting in detail has gone out of style, but oh, how I love the old style. I feel like I can breathe in the descriptions, as if, if they chose to write about air, that’s all my lungs would need. It feels restorative. Dickens, in his purposeful word choice - not wasting a single letter, yet at the same time giving you the option to soak in the character’s surroundings, gives me the chance to stop and admire creation with more intentionality than I would ever naturally use. I appreciate that. Descriptions that flow, and glide, and sweep across the landscape to get the big picture and then zoom in on the most intricate of details - while reading I feel as though there are few things more important than reveling in the gift of creation.
"It [the cemetery] was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of some tall od trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air. First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the treetops; and others, arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent change of place, which satirised the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the strife in which they had worn away their lives." (Dickens 128)
Dickens could have just said that birds were making a lot of noise! That they were cawing to each other! He didn’t have to spend an entire paragraph explaining how they make noise. Yet this in-depth, detailed account, instead of alienating and boring me, draws me in and makes me pay more attention.
It doesn’t matter what he’s describing; on page 115 Dickens describes the sun rising over London. That’s nothing huge. ‘The sun rose.’ Boom. Done. But he did it by calling light “creation’s mind”, and showing how it changed the cityscape as it grew brighter. The descriptions don’t have to be full of long words; they can be simple. I just want an author that causes me to look at the world with new eyes. Refreshed eyes. Eyes that wonder, and behold, and are open to beauty of creation.
Not only does Dickens draw me to his descriptions, but he also makes me care about the characters. Not every author does that. The mark of a master is whether or not you feel their character’s pain, whether you smile and sigh with relief when the protagonist is safe, whether you smile at each character’s unique quirks. An author who is no more than tolerable will have characters who are no more than tolerable. Excellent authors make you feel intense emotion toward the characters. You adore some - despise others. You never feel lukewarm.
Dickens has characters who invoke emotion. Nell, her grandfather, Kit, - I fell in love with all of them. I grew to understand how they thought, to predict what they would do, and to feel what they would feel. Other characters are detestable. Quilp, as the main antagonist, is a prime example. I simultaneously hate his cruelty and am fascinated by his twisted humor. Quilp’s lackey, Sampson Brass, produces nothing but disgust in me. This sycophant has nothing noble about him. Never once did I find myself hoping for his welfare.
Part of how we grow to love characters is by watching them develop. Richard Swiveller is a particularly interesting case. He is an indirect character, more or less on the main stage, by no means the main character, yet present for the entire book. His growth is more of a background in the plot, yet he is essential for the story. It was intriguing watching this peculiar man traipse throughout the book.
Even more impressive is Dickens’s ability to break your heart in just a few pages. The young scholar personifies this skill. We are briefly introduced to an old schoolmaster, and the children he teaches. The schoolmaster is sorrowful because his favorite pupil, a little boy referred to as the young scholar, is very sick. We are brought to the young scholar’s bedside, where he and the schoolmaster have a conversation that is only made possible by combining the sweetness, love, and devotion of a young boy and an old man. Then the young scholar dies. The schoolmaster’s grief is tangible; you feel his heartbreak with him.
Yet Dickens proves he doesn’t need pages; he merely needs paragraphs. At another point in the story, Nell, the protagonist, is in a cemetery. She is paused in front of the grave of man who died at twenty-three, when she is approached by an old woman. This old woman was the young man’s wife decades before. Dickens spends one paragraph describing the evolution of the old widow’s sorrow, and in that one paragraph you feel as though it was your twenty-three-year-old spouse who had died, and you who was looking back on it over fifty years later. Your heart melts as an instant devotion to and love for this old woman materializes. I’ve read that passage several times, and its genuine description of pain, loss, and sorrow never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
But Dickens’s humor! He doesn't only break your heart in The Old Curiosity Shop; he gladdens it as well. Sprinkled throughout the book are subtle but hilarious passages that exemplify humor that can be found in daily life, as if Dickens wrote them and then winked at his audience. One of my favorites is a somewhat lengthy conversation between Kit’s mother and another woman, Mrs. Garland.
"'[W]e wanted a good lad in our house,' said the old gentleman [Mr. Garland].
[...] To this, Kit’s mother replied, that it certainly was quite true, and quite right, and quite proper, and Heaven forbid that she should shrink, or have cause to shrink, from any inquiry into her character or that of her son, who was a very good son though she was his mother, in which respect, she was bold to say, he took after his father, who was not only a good son to his mother, but the best of husbands and the best of fathers besides, which Kit could and would corroborate she knew, and so would little Jacob and the baby likewise [Kit’s siblings] if they were old enough, which unfortunately they were not, though as they didn’t know what a loss they had had, perhaps it was a great deal better that they should be as young as they were; and so Kit’s mother wound up a long story by wiping her eyes with her apron, and patting little Jacob’s head, who was rocking the cradle and staring with all his might at the strange lady and gentleman.
When Kit’s mother had done speaking, the old lady [Mrs. Garland] struck in again, and said that she was quite sure she was a very honest and very respectable person or she never would have expressed herself in that manner, and that certainly the appearance of the children and the cleanliness of the house deserved great praise and did her the utmost credit, whereat Kit’s mother dropped a curtsey and became consoled. Then the good woman entered into a long and minute account of Kit’s life and history from the earliest period down to that time, not omitting to make mention of his miraculous fall out of a back parlour window when an infant of tender years, or his uncommon sufferings in a state of measles, which were illustrated by correct imitations of the plaintive manner in which he called for toast and water, day and night, and said, 'don’t cry, Mother, I shall soon be better;' for proof of which statements reference was made to Mrs. Green, lodger, at the cheese-monger’s round the corner, and divers other ladies and gentlemen in various parts of England and Wales (and one Mr. Brown who was supposed to be then a corporal in the East Indies, and who could of course be found with very little trouble), within whose personal knowledge the circumstances had occurred. This narration ended, Mr. Garland put some questions to Kit respecting his qualifications and general acquirements, while Mrs. Garland noticed the children, and hearing from Kit’s mother certain remarkable circumstances which had attended the birth of each, related certain other remarkable circumstances which had attended the birth of her own son, Mr. Abel, from which it appeared that both Kit’s mother and herself had been, above and beyond all other women of what condition or age soever, peculiarly hemmed in with perils and dangers." (Dickens 154-156)
I know people who talk like that! I have had conversations with people who talk like that! The good-natured and endearing rambling - I have family members who talk that way! As I read this passage, I could picture every hand gesture and facial expression. And the subject matter - Kit’s mother and Mrs. Garland are such moms!
Later in the book, Nell encounters a Miss Monflathers, who is perpetually accompanied by two lady teachers. These two rival teachers each abhor the other, as each desires to be the haughty Miss Monflathers’s principal assistant. At one point, Miss Monflathers is scolding one of her pupils for momentarily helping Nell.
“'An impulse!' repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. 'I wonder that you presume to speak of impulses to me' - both the teachers assented - 'I am astonished-' both the teachers were astonished - 'I suppose it is an impulse which induces you take the part of every grovelling and debased person that comes in your way' - both the teachers supposed so too." (Dickens 226)
This is the classic bully and henchmen setup. I love how the teachers demonstrate each of Miss Monflathers’s emotions a split second after her. Again, I can see it in my head, and it’s hilarious.
And again, at a different point in the book, Nell encounters a lady whose oddities never fail to bring a smile to my face.
“There, child,” she said, “read that.”
Nell walked down it, and read aloud, in enormous black letters, the inscription, “JARLEY’S WAXWORK.”
“Read it again,” said the lady, complacently.
“Jarley’s Waxwork,” repeated Nell.
“That’s me,” said the lady. “I am Mrs. Jarley.”
Giving the child an encouraging look, intended to reassure her and let her know, that, although she stood in the presence of the original Jarley, she must not allow herself to be utterly overwhelmed and borne down, the lady of the caravan unfolded another scroll[.] (Dickens 195)
Isn’t that hilarious? Mrs. Jarley felt the need to give Nell an “encouraging look” so she wouldn’t be “overwhelmed and borne down” by being “in the presence of the original Jarley”. Nell doesn’t care! She doesn’t even know who Mrs. Jarley is! If she did, she would have had a more notable reaction to the inscription.
These instances of subtle humor are harder to pick up on in a book, if all you’re doing is reading the words. You have to visualize it to find it funny. Yet if these scenes were found in a TV show, you know it would be considered hilarious.
The Old Curiosity Shop was a fascinating and refreshing read. I am officially hooked on Dickens novels. If you're looking for something that will cause you to study creation with intentionality and wonder, or characters that you will adore, or humor you can praise, The Old Curiosity Shop is a perfect choice.
I relish authors that allow me time to take in the scenery. That’s difficult to find in a book, because I’m completely dependent on the amount of time the author took to describe it. Describing the setting in detail has gone out of style, but oh, how I love the old style. I feel like I can breathe in the descriptions, as if, if they chose to write about air, that’s all my lungs would need. It feels restorative. Dickens, in his purposeful word choice - not wasting a single letter, yet at the same time giving you the option to soak in the character’s surroundings, gives me the chance to stop and admire creation with more intentionality than I would ever naturally use. I appreciate that. Descriptions that flow, and glide, and sweep across the landscape to get the big picture and then zoom in on the most intricate of details - while reading I feel as though there are few things more important than reveling in the gift of creation.
"It [the cemetery] was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of some tall od trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air. First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the treetops; and others, arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent change of place, which satirised the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the strife in which they had worn away their lives." (Dickens 128)
Dickens could have just said that birds were making a lot of noise! That they were cawing to each other! He didn’t have to spend an entire paragraph explaining how they make noise. Yet this in-depth, detailed account, instead of alienating and boring me, draws me in and makes me pay more attention.
It doesn’t matter what he’s describing; on page 115 Dickens describes the sun rising over London. That’s nothing huge. ‘The sun rose.’ Boom. Done. But he did it by calling light “creation’s mind”, and showing how it changed the cityscape as it grew brighter. The descriptions don’t have to be full of long words; they can be simple. I just want an author that causes me to look at the world with new eyes. Refreshed eyes. Eyes that wonder, and behold, and are open to beauty of creation.
Not only does Dickens draw me to his descriptions, but he also makes me care about the characters. Not every author does that. The mark of a master is whether or not you feel their character’s pain, whether you smile and sigh with relief when the protagonist is safe, whether you smile at each character’s unique quirks. An author who is no more than tolerable will have characters who are no more than tolerable. Excellent authors make you feel intense emotion toward the characters. You adore some - despise others. You never feel lukewarm.
Dickens has characters who invoke emotion. Nell, her grandfather, Kit, - I fell in love with all of them. I grew to understand how they thought, to predict what they would do, and to feel what they would feel. Other characters are detestable. Quilp, as the main antagonist, is a prime example. I simultaneously hate his cruelty and am fascinated by his twisted humor. Quilp’s lackey, Sampson Brass, produces nothing but disgust in me. This sycophant has nothing noble about him. Never once did I find myself hoping for his welfare.
Part of how we grow to love characters is by watching them develop. Richard Swiveller is a particularly interesting case. He is an indirect character, more or less on the main stage, by no means the main character, yet present for the entire book. His growth is more of a background in the plot, yet he is essential for the story. It was intriguing watching this peculiar man traipse throughout the book.
Even more impressive is Dickens’s ability to break your heart in just a few pages. The young scholar personifies this skill. We are briefly introduced to an old schoolmaster, and the children he teaches. The schoolmaster is sorrowful because his favorite pupil, a little boy referred to as the young scholar, is very sick. We are brought to the young scholar’s bedside, where he and the schoolmaster have a conversation that is only made possible by combining the sweetness, love, and devotion of a young boy and an old man. Then the young scholar dies. The schoolmaster’s grief is tangible; you feel his heartbreak with him.
Yet Dickens proves he doesn’t need pages; he merely needs paragraphs. At another point in the story, Nell, the protagonist, is in a cemetery. She is paused in front of the grave of man who died at twenty-three, when she is approached by an old woman. This old woman was the young man’s wife decades before. Dickens spends one paragraph describing the evolution of the old widow’s sorrow, and in that one paragraph you feel as though it was your twenty-three-year-old spouse who had died, and you who was looking back on it over fifty years later. Your heart melts as an instant devotion to and love for this old woman materializes. I’ve read that passage several times, and its genuine description of pain, loss, and sorrow never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
But Dickens’s humor! He doesn't only break your heart in The Old Curiosity Shop; he gladdens it as well. Sprinkled throughout the book are subtle but hilarious passages that exemplify humor that can be found in daily life, as if Dickens wrote them and then winked at his audience. One of my favorites is a somewhat lengthy conversation between Kit’s mother and another woman, Mrs. Garland.
"'[W]e wanted a good lad in our house,' said the old gentleman [Mr. Garland].
[...] To this, Kit’s mother replied, that it certainly was quite true, and quite right, and quite proper, and Heaven forbid that she should shrink, or have cause to shrink, from any inquiry into her character or that of her son, who was a very good son though she was his mother, in which respect, she was bold to say, he took after his father, who was not only a good son to his mother, but the best of husbands and the best of fathers besides, which Kit could and would corroborate she knew, and so would little Jacob and the baby likewise [Kit’s siblings] if they were old enough, which unfortunately they were not, though as they didn’t know what a loss they had had, perhaps it was a great deal better that they should be as young as they were; and so Kit’s mother wound up a long story by wiping her eyes with her apron, and patting little Jacob’s head, who was rocking the cradle and staring with all his might at the strange lady and gentleman.
When Kit’s mother had done speaking, the old lady [Mrs. Garland] struck in again, and said that she was quite sure she was a very honest and very respectable person or she never would have expressed herself in that manner, and that certainly the appearance of the children and the cleanliness of the house deserved great praise and did her the utmost credit, whereat Kit’s mother dropped a curtsey and became consoled. Then the good woman entered into a long and minute account of Kit’s life and history from the earliest period down to that time, not omitting to make mention of his miraculous fall out of a back parlour window when an infant of tender years, or his uncommon sufferings in a state of measles, which were illustrated by correct imitations of the plaintive manner in which he called for toast and water, day and night, and said, 'don’t cry, Mother, I shall soon be better;' for proof of which statements reference was made to Mrs. Green, lodger, at the cheese-monger’s round the corner, and divers other ladies and gentlemen in various parts of England and Wales (and one Mr. Brown who was supposed to be then a corporal in the East Indies, and who could of course be found with very little trouble), within whose personal knowledge the circumstances had occurred. This narration ended, Mr. Garland put some questions to Kit respecting his qualifications and general acquirements, while Mrs. Garland noticed the children, and hearing from Kit’s mother certain remarkable circumstances which had attended the birth of each, related certain other remarkable circumstances which had attended the birth of her own son, Mr. Abel, from which it appeared that both Kit’s mother and herself had been, above and beyond all other women of what condition or age soever, peculiarly hemmed in with perils and dangers." (Dickens 154-156)
I know people who talk like that! I have had conversations with people who talk like that! The good-natured and endearing rambling - I have family members who talk that way! As I read this passage, I could picture every hand gesture and facial expression. And the subject matter - Kit’s mother and Mrs. Garland are such moms!
Later in the book, Nell encounters a Miss Monflathers, who is perpetually accompanied by two lady teachers. These two rival teachers each abhor the other, as each desires to be the haughty Miss Monflathers’s principal assistant. At one point, Miss Monflathers is scolding one of her pupils for momentarily helping Nell.
“'An impulse!' repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. 'I wonder that you presume to speak of impulses to me' - both the teachers assented - 'I am astonished-' both the teachers were astonished - 'I suppose it is an impulse which induces you take the part of every grovelling and debased person that comes in your way' - both the teachers supposed so too." (Dickens 226)
This is the classic bully and henchmen setup. I love how the teachers demonstrate each of Miss Monflathers’s emotions a split second after her. Again, I can see it in my head, and it’s hilarious.
And again, at a different point in the book, Nell encounters a lady whose oddities never fail to bring a smile to my face.
“There, child,” she said, “read that.”
Nell walked down it, and read aloud, in enormous black letters, the inscription, “JARLEY’S WAXWORK.”
“Read it again,” said the lady, complacently.
“Jarley’s Waxwork,” repeated Nell.
“That’s me,” said the lady. “I am Mrs. Jarley.”
Giving the child an encouraging look, intended to reassure her and let her know, that, although she stood in the presence of the original Jarley, she must not allow herself to be utterly overwhelmed and borne down, the lady of the caravan unfolded another scroll[.] (Dickens 195)
Isn’t that hilarious? Mrs. Jarley felt the need to give Nell an “encouraging look” so she wouldn’t be “overwhelmed and borne down” by being “in the presence of the original Jarley”. Nell doesn’t care! She doesn’t even know who Mrs. Jarley is! If she did, she would have had a more notable reaction to the inscription.
These instances of subtle humor are harder to pick up on in a book, if all you’re doing is reading the words. You have to visualize it to find it funny. Yet if these scenes were found in a TV show, you know it would be considered hilarious.
The Old Curiosity Shop was a fascinating and refreshing read. I am officially hooked on Dickens novels. If you're looking for something that will cause you to study creation with intentionality and wonder, or characters that you will adore, or humor you can praise, The Old Curiosity Shop is a perfect choice.
Quilp taunting a dog. Nell and her grandfather looking at London.
Works Cited:
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Reader's Digest, 1988.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Reader's Digest, 1988.