Friday, January 27, 2023

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
I have long been a fan of movie versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, enjoying watching one or more versions every holiday season. This year I saw the Disney version which claimed to be the most true to the text movie adaptation made. That got me wondering what gets left out of Dickens' original work when Hollywood decides to put their ow spin on it. So this year I downloaded the text onto my iPhone and read the story as he told it in 1843. I am glad I did. I will keep watching new movie adaptations in years to come, but now I will know I am rooted in the original text.

I did find one exchange that I have never seen in any Hollywood retelling. I found this anti-church exchange between Scrooge and Christmas Present while they watched the poor people of the town bringing their holiday dinners to be cooked in the bakers' ovens, a routine activity in the 19th century for those too poor to have their own ovens.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge, “wouldn’t you?”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day,” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”

“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Scrooge promised that he would …

Friday, January 06, 2023

Man-Size in Marble

Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit

Man-Size in Marble is a short story by Edith Nesbit. It was first published in the December 1887 issue of the Home Chimes magazine. The story was later collected in Nesbit's 1893 anthology Grim Tales. This edition was published by Books of Wonder in 1997 in their Classic Frights series of short booklets with illustrations by Jeff White.
In it, a young newlywed couple seeking inexpensive lodging rent a small cottage that, unknown to them, comes with a mysterious curse. The husband hires a local housekeeper who tells him the legend of two man-size in marble prone statues of knights in a lonely country church nearby. She says on All-Hallows Eve at 11 pm the statues rise up and walk to their old home, which is the ruins on which their cottage was built. He dismisses the story as a local legend with no truth and decides to not worry his wife.
While a simple tale, it is well written in Nesbit's simple style that she developed as a children's author.
The text of the story is available in Wikisource at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grim_Tales/Man-size_in_Marble