THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 📚 : with Lydia Craig

Dominic is joined again by the inimitable Dr. Lydia Craig where they dive into Dickens' third Christmas Book, with readings from the award-winning actress Penelope Rawlins

The Cricket On The Hearth - published 180 years ago this year - explodes into life from the very start and hardly pauses for breath until the very end. Its unrelenting pace sweeps its characters along whether they be human, animal, insect or household object … 

Centred around that fabled victorian fireside. Where dreams and visions appear happy in the glowing light but depressed in the shadows, there sits John Peerybingle with his pipe. His occupation as a carrier brings one of the many Christmassy elements to the book, in his daily round of delivering parcels out in the raw Winter weather. His wife Dot - as in the brightest little star that ever shone - is a young, energetic woman, who races about their home.

Another Christmassy element in this story is the occupation of Toy-making. Enter Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter Bertha who make Dolls for the nasty, crab-faced Tackleton.

And tearing in and out is the excited dog, Boxer seen as a spec in the distance one moment, then suddenly up close with his wet nose pressed into your face …

Last but not least, is the magical Cricket ...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!

Intro Music and Additional SFX provided under license by Epidemic Sound

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SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hold on to your hats, everyone, because Dickens' third Christmas book is a riot. The Cricket on the Half, published 180 years ago this year, explodes into life from the very start and hardly pauses for breath until the very end. Its unrelenting pace sweeps its characters along, whether they be human, animal, insect, or household object. Centred around that fabled Victorian fireside, where dreams and visions appear happy in the glowing light, but depressed in the shadows, there sits John Peerybingle with his pipe, a hard-working man of middle age, loved and respected by the community, and whose occupation as a carrier brings one of the many Christmassy elements to the book in his daily round of delivering parcels out in the raw winter weather. His wife, Mary Peerybingle, known as Dot, as in the brightest little star that ever shone, is a young, energetic woman who races about their home. There's Tilly Slowboy, a kind-hearted but dangerously clumsy maid who looks after their baby in ways that imperil its short life. Another Christmassy element in this story is the occupation of toy making. Enter Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter Bertha, who make dolls for the nasty, crab-faced Tackleton. And tearing in and out is the excited dog Boxer, seen as a speck in the distance one moment, then suddenly up close with his wet nose pressed against your face. Returning to the series to guide us through this fairy tale of home is the inimitable Dr. Lydia Craig. And reading excerpts today, I'm thrilled to welcome the award-winning actress Penelope Rawlins. One more thing. Lydia, happy Christmas again, and welcome to Charles Dickens of Brain on Fire.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Happy Christmas, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

I'm so pleased to have you in for this one because given the other Christmas book we've done, this one couldn't be more different, could it?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yes. I would say it still has some moments of darkness. But yeah, uh a much happier Christmas story.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Yes, I um I really enjoyed reading it again. I my first impression of this book was not so favourable, actually, but I've really come around to love it. But there is a review from the London Times. I don't know if you know this. Um most of the reviews I think for The Cricket on the Half were quite positive, but the London Times called it a twaddling manifestation of silliness.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

There was lukewarm praise, and some people really did enjoy this book. You know, it was a Christmas book, so people were buying it and gifting it to people. It was published, I think, on the 20th of December, and Dickens had been writing it in the early part of um, well, the late part of the autumn and the early part of the winter, and had finished, I think, at the beginning of that month. And so people bought this book and it had lovely illustrations in it. Um quite a few of Dickens's artistic friends contributed. So this was sort of a way of him, I think, also showing off his connections to many of the leading artists of the day. So we have, for example, um Daniel McLeese and then Richard Doyle, Edwin Henry Lansier, who was more noted for his um paintings of animals, actually, and um John Leach and Clarkson Stanfield, who Dickens would collaborate with on set pieces. Um did a lot of Dickens' set designs. Uh so visually, this is gorgeous. I think people just didn't know what to expect after having read A Christmas Carol, still Dickens' most popular book, and then The Chimes, and then we have this.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Yes, I think I think Dickens is running miles and miles away from where he was at in the Chimes, isn't he? Yes. My impression reading it this time is a feeling like he is high as a kite writing this. He's wound himself up so much, and he's so high octane and jolly and chirpy and stuff himself. Um, but if you're not ready to buy that as a reader, it's gonna be a difficult read, I think.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Right. I I would like to talk about chirp the first. So there's a cricket on the hearth, um, which was an expression before this time period to describe contentment. Um, you know, if you're just a humble cricket on a hearth, enjoying the domestic sphere, kind of like we would describe someone who's a homebody today. It means you're happy in the domestic setting. So if you listen to the beginning part of Chirp the First, I think he is almost panicking. What you were describing, I think, is exactly what you're getting here. He's he's he sounds high. I think he sounds frantic. So he begins. The kettle began it exclamation point. Don't tell me what Mrs. Perribingle said. I know better. Mrs. Perribingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it, but I say the cricket did. I ought to know, I hope. The kettle began at full five minutes by the little waxy faced Dutch clock in the corner before the cricket uttered a chirp. As if the clock hadn't finished striking and the convulsive little haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a moorish palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the cricket joined in at all. Another exclamation point. Why, I'm not naturally positive. Everyone knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Perribingle unless I were quite sure on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But this is a question of fact, and the fact is that the kettle began at least five minutes before the cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and I'll say ten. Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration, if I am to tell a story, I must begin at the beginning. And how is it possible to begin at the beginning without beginning at the kettle? This is insanity. I think he's struggling to find the the narrative that he wants to begin with. So he sets up this trial of skill between the kettle and the cricket. And I think that does help, especially as the chapter continues. It starts kind of setting the scene, but it's a very strange beginning. I don't feel like it's any way as certain as the beginning of a Christmas carol. Um there's no calm, collected certainty of here's the story I'm going to relate, here's the suspense. No, none of that.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Yes, there's so much kind of throwaway in the writing throughout, isn't there? But what I find interesting is the characters that are then introduced, you know, you've got Dot in a mad hurry, and you've got the cricket blaring and the kettle and everything, all kind of fever pitch. There's a jolly spirit there, but there's a kind of brittleness to the jolly that as if none of even the mechanical objects, the clock, none of these objects or people will dare pause for breath at any moment because there's darker things around. Possibly underneath or forebodings.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

I like that view of it. I think as I was reading this this time, it it's very eerie in a way. We have this domestic scene where she's basically heating up water for tea. And, you know, she does have to fill the kettle outside, fill it with water, bring it inside, and splashes over her stockings. She doesn't like it. She has this moment of temper. She starts the kettle. The cuckoo sounds, and she's sort of waiting for her husband to come home. And there's this song that the kettle sings, which I just love because it's poetry.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way. And above, all is mist and darkness, and below all is mire and clay. And there's only one relief in all the sad and murky air, and I don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare, of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather. And the widest open country is a long, dull streak of black, and there's hoarfrost on the fingerpost and Thor upon the track. And the ice, it isn't water, and the water isn't free. And you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be. But he's coming, coming, coming.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

There's so many clues in that section. Who is coming? He's coming. And you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be, so you're not supposed to trust anything that is about to develop. Um, and then just the things that are referenced: rotten leaves, mire and clay, deep and angry crimson, guilty. You know, these are all very negative words. And so I think that he slips this in so that we're we're feeling uneasy and we're not sure, but we're totally destabilized by the time John arrives home. Yes. And we almost don't know why, but I think it's masterful.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I love all that. I suppose the first two characters then that are present, apart from the cricket, of course, uh, is is Dot, Mary, known as Dot, and and her husband John. And there's there's an interesting dynamic between them.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yes. I think especially interesting in view of the fact uh that Dickens is eventually going to be involved in what was referenced as a May-December marriage or relationship, um, where you have someone who's older, usually the man, and then someone who's younger, the woman. Um, and it is something that is uncomfortable. I think we have this view of the Victorians that they were used to seeing the spectacle of vastly different um age gaps in marriage, and it actually wasn't always the case. So one of the things that underpins this entire plot is John's feeling of unease over having married a woman who is so much younger. Um, the sense that he has perhaps cheated her of having a different kind of life with someone who would be more of a partner rather than someone she's kind of expecting one day to nurse through their old age. So this is a huge source of guilt. And I think you couldn't have this story without that tension.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Yeah. And in amongst all of that, you know, John comes in, and you've got the dog Boxer as well, who I think is a fantastic creation. He's so much fun, isn't he? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Boxer dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy. Now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable door. Now, feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops. Now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy in the low nursing chair near the fire by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance, now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby. Now going round and round upon the hearth and lying down as if he had established himself for the night. Now getting up again out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off at a round trot to keep it.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

So we have this wonderful domestic scene. John walks in, um, he you know reunites with his wife. There's a lot of physical contact, which is funny because they're married, so it's okay. So Dickens can kind of emphasize kissing and cuddling, and you know, they seem to have a very happy relationship. They have a baby, and then they have this teenage girl who is, I think, one of my favorite characters, Tilly Slowboy, and she's nursing this baby, and she kind of reminds me of um the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland with her very large, oversized baby that she just doesn't treat well and knocks around. Yeah. So poor Tilly is slamming the baby into different things and trying to kind of learn from this couple that she's working with what a good marriage looks like.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Miss Slowboy had a rare and surprising talent for getting this baby into difficulties, and had several times imperiled its short life, bringing into contact with deal doors, dresses, stair rails, bedposts. Still, they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated and installed in such a comfortable home. For Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundling, which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in meaning and expresses quite another thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

So, you know, Dot and John are reacquainting themselves, and then we learn that John has brought this old man home with him. Yes. Kind of inexplicably in a cart, and he's also brought a wedding cake, which are two things you wouldn't expect someone to bring home, even if they are a carter. It's just kind of strange to have them together. Um, but we don't really know the identity of this old man, but he wants to stay with them. And so that's just sort of introduced as a matter of course. We learn that Dot's uh friend is getting married to um Tackleton, the toy maker, who is also one of my other favorite characters. And there's this moment where Dot expresses some confusion over this. So John says it's Gruffin Tackleton, the toy maker, and you know, basically, no she knows that her friend is getting married. And Dot says, Why, she and I were girls at school together, John. He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her, perhaps, as she was in that same school time. He looked upon her with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer. And he's as old, as unlike her. Why, how many years older than you is Gruffin Tackleton, John? And John doesn't answer. So I think one of the things that's fascinating here is that Dot is objecting to her friend who's of the same age, marrying someone who may be a little bit older than John, but I feel like she's realized halfway through her horror over it that her husband is going to be offended and draw parallels. And so then she goes, Well, you know, he's a lot older than you. And John, you can just tell it's it's it's something John is very uncomfortable with.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

That's the first weird moment. And it seems that Dot is guilty of something. Oh Dot, oh failing dot, there's no place for it in all your husband's visions. Why has its shadow fallen on this earth? So yeah, Dickens is not being he's being very heavy-handed.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

Yes, and he's not being honest, is he? He's going along with the deception. He knows full well what the truth is, but he's making us willingly making us think that she might be guilty of something.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Yeah. But what was that young figure of a man, which the same fairy cricket set so near her stool? Why did it linger so near her, with its arm upon the chimney piece, ever repeating, Married and not to me? Oh Dot, oh failing Dot. There is no place for it in all your husband's visions. Why has its shadow fallen on his hearth?

SPEAKER_03 15:45

It's visions that appear at the hearth, isn't it? This is where the cricket comes in as well in that first instance where John is sat by the smoking his pipe by the fire, and she's Dot's made his pipe very well for him in this moment, so it's not quite crisis point yet.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

No, not yet. You have tobacco, things are good.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

Yeah, yeah, tobacco's working, it's fine. His little woman is doing the tobacco okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

But there are there are images of Dot appearing in the fireplace. And so that's the sort of magical element.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

The cricket calls them forth, and we do find out later on that the cricket is able to take a fairy shape.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old pipe, and as the Dutch clock ticked, and as the red fire gleamed, and as the cricket chirped, that genius of his hearth and home, for such the cricket was, came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned many forms of home about him. Dots of all ages and all sizes filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children running on before him, gathering flowers in the fields. Coy Dots, half shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough image. Newly married dots alighting at the door and taking wandering possession of the household keys. Motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious slowboys bearing babies to be christened. Old carriers, too, appeared with blind old boxes lying at their feet. And as the cricket showed him all these things, he saw them plainly. Though his eyes were fixed upon the fire, the carrier's heart grew light and happy, and he thanked his household gods with all his might.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Where the book did fall down a bit for me is that the visit the magical element. I mean, when you think of the goblins in the bell tower with Trotty, not to mention the ghosts in a Christmas carol, which are just kind of breathtaking, and even Gabriel Grubb down in the in the goblin cave, and how exciting and sort of mad that is. There's a line I think where Dickens talks about how the cricket is a very potent spirit or something.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

And he's like, is it?

SPEAKER_03 17:55

Really?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

I want to know it's in that tobacco that he's smoking.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

There is that. There is definitely that. That's true, actually. The vision seemed to come after smoking or of being too near the fire.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Right. I I think we perhaps I think the problem is we might be looking at some of this with 21st century vision. I don't know about you, but I've watched a lot of horror films and I've read a lot of you know terrifying stories since Dickens in literature. And there's this idea of multiplicity that comes a lot, especially after the First World War. A lot of the ghost stories after that start having what we would think of as zombies or all these, you know, all these beings swarming you. This would have been sort of unusual. So when Dickens is imagining goblins, you know, so many of them. This did exist in culture. There's some poems I can think of that were published in different um journals that had, you know, demons doing that. Um, but it's unusual. And he's doing something that I think would have been more shocking to them at the time, seeing all these images arising or being called forth. I don't I don't know if they would have really been seeing this much in fiction or had any kind of contrast. So this would have been probably a lot more interesting to them than it is to us.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

I also know in fairness, and actually I think the visions do get more interesting, actually. There's a much more exciting one later on, I think. And actually, thinking of the images coming out of smoke, I mean that's that's the experience of a society, probably getting used to steam power, isn't it? That, you know, through the fog and the smoke past the window, you suddenly see things you don't know what you're gonna see next. Right, yeah. So maybe that's that sensation he's conjuring a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I like that you brought that up because you know, London at this point is covered in fog, it's covered in coal smoke. Um, it is very mysterious in ways, you don't have clear visibility. And I think what what people see Dickens as, and we have you know paintings that people did that sort of prove this, um, they see him as sort of calling up all of these, all of these imaginations um from his brilliant mind. We have, you know, Dickens' dream. And so what Dickens is doing by bringing up all of these different things, he's showing us possibilities sometimes for the plot. And so I think it's exciting to them to see all the different ways it could go, and then he chooses one. So he's sort of teasing them in some of these um visions. Because, for example, this one of John's, we don't know if this is going to come to fruition. We don't know if John is actually going to live this life that he imagines. Um and he does this a lot in a lot of books. Dickens will have people sit by the fire, like Lizzie Hacksham and our mutual friend, and imagine futures. And the excitement is that it hasn't happened yet. So they're just planning or hoping, but we don't know if it will actually take place.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

In this first chapter as well, when we first meet Tilly Slowboy, who I think actually is a little bit, she's kind of recast again in the Battle of Life as Clemency Newcomb, that same slightly haphazard kind of maid. But I think I think Tilly Slowboy is amazing, the way she's kind of basically in charge of the baby.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yes, I love the baby talk that she speaks to.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature was it Grafs and Tackletons the toy makers then? And would it call it pastry cooks for wedding cakes? And did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them homes? And so on.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Dickens is very close to the characters in this one, isn't he?

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yes, he is. I think we get a view of Dickens as a very doting father, especially to small children. And I think that's something that isn't talked about enough with Dickens. Um he was very attached to his children when they were small, and he thought they were so funny and hilarious. And in his descriptions of this baby and Tilly's interactions, that's basically what we're seeing here, where he just adores these these baby moments where he can talk baby talk.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

It does feel I don't know if it feels to you, but it seems to me a lot of the characters in this one are quite infantilized, actually, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

And they're very close to the toys. And you know, which which goes into the second jump.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Right. I think one aspect of the infantilization obviously involves the women in this story, especially Dot, who's you know very small, very loving, very fierce, but also kind of childlike. Um, and I do want to point out that Dickens I think distinguishes between the bad way of infantilizing people, the good way of doing it. So we actually see this in the first chirp. I know I've spent a lot of time with this, but it's important. Um, and this is when John meets Tackleton. And they he finds out that Tackleton seems to be copying his life. He's getting married on the exact same day. This corrupt toy merchant who has this kind of power over all the children in the area. Um, one of my favorite lines is Cramped and chafing in a peaceable pursuit of toy making. He was a domestic ogre who had been living on children all his life and was their implacable enemy. He hates toys, so he designs them gross and terrifying, um, you know, with goblins, goblin slides for magic lanterns. So he he would be all for the multiplicity of goblins. Um, but he's getting married on the same day as John did. Um, he's marrying a young wife, a beautiful young wife. And then he says to John, You'll come to the wedding, we're in the same boat, you know. So John hates this. Tackleton is telling him, We were doing the exact same thing. We're both gonna be married to young women, it's gonna be great. Um, and so one of my favorite lines is when Tackleton talks about how to manage women.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Um, he says, You come to the wedding. It's as much your interest as mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that they're quiet and contented and couldn't be better off. I know their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to clinch. Always. There's that spirit of emulation among them, sir, that if your wife says to my wife, I'm the happiest woman in the world, and mine's the best husband in the world, and I dote on him. My wife will say the same to yours or more, and half believe it.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

Yes, um this isn't why he's evil, but it doesn't help his appearance, is the fact that his face is screwed up on one side as well as the with one eye kind of permanently shut.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

And he's very much the Scrooge figure, isn't he? He goes by the name of Gruff and Tackleton sometimes in the way that Scrooge go by Scrooge and Marley. He also has a counting house there as well, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yes. He also has, um, if we move on to the second chirp, he has um uh an employee, Caleb Plummer. And I think this is again showing Dickens' reworking part of a Christmas carol because you know we have the Cratchits and Bob Cratchit and a Christmas Carol, but his wife is fully aware of how badly Scrooge is exploiting them. And she has no sympathy for Scrooge. And this situation is slightly different. I think it's Dickens saying, What if I hadn't done that? So we have Caleb Plummer, who makes toys, and then we have his daughter, Bertha, who doesn't know how badly they're being exploited by this toy maker, and she actually adores him to the point of maybe being in love with him herself, or at least of wanting the kind of arrangement he's offering to this young woman he's marrying, whose name is May. We have this situation, I think, where we the a lot of the dramatic tension is in the fact that this girl who's blind is not able to see her surroundings, she's not able to see what the toy maker is doing to her family. And so Caleb, her father, deliberately keeps her in the state of innocence because he thinks that means happiness. And so that's another one of those exploitations, is she she doesn't really know anything about actual reality. And it makes her unhappy when she realizes she can never have some of the things the women around her having, like marriage and children.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

Yes, and suddenly the story takes a sort of deeper turn at this point, I think, doesn't it? From Bertha. I mean, she's so much in lots of ways the heart of the entire book. I mean, I think it's but it's deeply moving, and you really understand why her father Caleb wants to shield her from any more hardship or or upset or misery, you know. He pretends that Tackleton, who's always obnoxious and horrible when he comes into their kind of little toy-making hut, always pretends, oh, he's only joking! He's oh, if you could only see his face, he's winking at us. He's he's not he's not um he's not in earnest. But it extends also to the room. You know, um Bertha is is is raised to believe that the room is finely decorated and furnished, and that that um Caleb's clothes are very rich and fine to the point where he's embarrassed to wear them.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

The blind girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured, walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there, high crevices unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The blind girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off. The blind girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested. Never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short, but lived in the belief of an eccentric humorist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the guardian angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word of thankfulness.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Yeah, it's so sad. I think you do see how much he loves his daughter, Caleb. You know, he he's wanting to give her everything, but um through ignorance and through his love, I think, which is kind of his uh scheme. And then today, as they have this event where people are invited over, and you know, Dod and John arrive and Tackleton and all these people even brings a tart because he's getting married and he wants to show off his wealth, so they actually have a lot of good food. Um, but it's this very sad moment where Caleb realizes that his daughter is not contented. And so she's been dull and she says, Oh, father, father, oh my hard, hard fate. And he's trying to say, Well, you're loved by people, so many love you. And you know, she basically wants more in life. This is an era where if you were blind, it was very unlikely that you would marry. But here, she's definitely in this in this chirp, she's struggling with her her resentment of people like Dot and especially May, um, who have gotten married and have this full domestic life that she can't have. And Caleb sees this and he says, Have I deceived her from the cradle? But to break her heart at last.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

I think it's actually really quite moving and and powerful. And also the effect of the deception that Caleb, for the best intentions, put on his daughter, Bertha. There's that fantastic line about he had confused himself about himself and had laboured for so many years to destroy his own identity that Caleb, a poor soul, kind of wanders through the pages of the book, completely kind of kind of adrift and kind of confused and slow in answering and not quite knowing where he is. I mean, he even fakes his footsteps for her, doesn't he? I know. She's so acute to the arrival of people. She hears them approaching and she always knows her father's step because it's always very sprightly and lively as he comes bustling in, and then he sort of goes into the corner of the room and sits down and collapses in a chair, you know, just to keep her spirits up.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I see him as sort of working as a mirror cricket, because he is also creating all these images and visions for his daughter. He is her sight, and it's a very false sight, um, but it's it's a magic sight that he's created, and I think he's buckling under the pressure of having to support a reality that doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your beautiful new great coat, said Caleb's daughter. In my beautiful new great coat, answered Caleb, glancing towards a clothesline in the room on which the sackcloth garment was carefully hung up to dry.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

He's sort of a shadow Dickens in the same way that the cricket is. He says, I've suspected it from the first. I knew this was happening. John has no idea what's going on. He looks through a window and he sees Dot with the old man who's wearing a fake wig, which is so melodramatic. I mean, this is like theater, you know, whips off the wig or the mustache and is someone else that no one has noticed. Um and then he sees Dot putting, you know, letting the man put his arm around her, and they're laughing together over the disguise. And of course, he sort of assumes the worst. So the question is, is this a false sight? Um is this is this reality that he's seen? Um Tackleton is horrible in this. He's like, you know, don't commit any violence, it's of no use, it's dangerous too.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

Which is kind of like Fagan saying to Bill Sykes, Yes, don't murder Bill. Yeah, don't do anything rash now, Bill. Bill, I just told you, if I open the door and let you out now, you're going to be good. I know. Oh, come on.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Come on. I mean, it's just it's it's wild. Um, I think the interesting thing too is that if people had gotten to this point, they would go back probably to the first chirp, where Dot jumps at this weird moment and can't explain why she had the start. And from reading back, you realize it's because she she looked at the old man and saw something. So I think that's kind of something that's relevant. Even if people don't know how this ends at this point, they would be able to go back and see that she knew in the first chirp something about this old man.

SPEAKER_03 32:46

Yes, this old disguised old man who's the young man that we're about to find out a little bit later. But that's where she puts, she has this strange kind of crying followed by laughing fit, doesn't she? Yes. And again, it's that kind of the people kind of going a bit crazy and breaking down, including the author, you know, kind of slightly hysterical and a bit sort of all over the place. It's kind of amazing that moment, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah. Um I just reviewed a book by Robert Um L. Patton, which was amazing because he established in this book, um, which is about death at Christmas, that Dickens was actually very stressed out every Christmas and did not have the good time that we think he did. This was just, I feel a lot of empathy for him as well as anger because he's done this to me as well. Um every every Christmas. I mean, we're here with doing a podcast episode. You feel it too.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Yeah, I've got to get this up in time. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Christmas is the busy season, and poor Dickens is having to churn this out. Um, so I do think it's funny that there is this pressure um on the characters, on Dickens, and I do see a little vengefulness here. I think maybe Dickens is getting some of his own angst out through this very dark plot that will um, I think, come to a high point in the next or low point in the next chirp.

SPEAKER_03 34:01

But I think Dickens is as a writer is kind of at his wisest when he does set up a foil to his own position, doesn't he? So you get that in Tackleton and you get that into what happens to John at the start of the next one. But before we get into that, by the way, I love how natural it is to describe them as chirps now. We're not even thinking about it. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I've actually I've actually written chirp on a piece of paper next to me, so But maybe it's just me then.

SPEAKER_03 34:27

But I like, yeah. Dickens has won, is what I'm saying. He's won me round. But um, so this is the big crisis point then. This is where and and John is interesting, he splits in two, doesn't he? His spirits. And what I do like is if we go into Chirp the Third. It's quite funny, actually, the way the Dutch clock in the room becomes apologetic.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

It sort of pops its head out, does its bit, and then sort of hides away again. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Sorry. The Dutch clock in the corner struck ten, when the carrier sat down by his fireside, so troubled and grief-worn that he seemed to scare the cuckoo, who, having cut his ten melodious announcements as short as possible, plunged back into the Moorish palace again, and clapped his little door behind him, as if the unwanted spectacle were too much for his feelings.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

If you're not on board with this book, you can miss those kinds of details and and the fun. And yeah, I think that's a lovely touch, actually.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Yeah, he doesn't let a description go to waste. And I think if you're frustrated and you want to get to the main point, you miss a lot of the foreshadowing or a lot of the kind of comic um I don't know, it's almost like animation of just inanimate objects and things. Um I suppose we'd call it personification sometimes, um, that he'll do. And I think it makes the scene a lot more magical. Um, what we basically have is a breakdown in this, in this um chirp, because he loves his wife so much, and he has set her up as this sort of idol figure. It says it was a heart so full of love for her, so bound up and held together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endearment. So this is the time of their marriage so far, which has at least probably been a year, um, where he has every day sort of, it's almost like the links in his chain to borrow from a Christmas carol, are, you know, the days he spent with his wife, that the chain that binds him to her. It was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely, a heart so single and so earnest in its truth, so wrong, so strong and right, so weak and wrong, that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first and had only room to hold the broken image of its idol. But then we have this rise, just like the kettle was rising in the beginning, where he starts going through the different stages of grief. And one of them is anger, and he starts thinking about revenge. And I think it's interesting that Tackleton's words about murder come back. What you were saying about Fagan urging Sykes to commit murder, you wonder if he would have. I mean, he's a bad lot, but would he have gone straight to that with Nancy if that hadn't been suggested to him? It's very Yago-like. Um, with Othello, it's this idea of, you know, oh, don't do this. And so because he said that, John starts thinking about doing that. You know, one blow would beat it in. He's thinking of breaking the door in. But then we're thinking about the blows that would happen after that. How could it be murder if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand? He was the younger man. And this is why he gets the gun. Because he wants to kill him. He doesn't want there to be a chance that the younger man will overpower him. So it sort of strikes that insecurity. You're too old for her anyway. You can't even beat her lover in a fair fight. This is agony, which is described as agony.

SPEAKER_03 37:53

Yeah. And every, you know, the whole environment and all the objects and all the people are all so connected in this one. The the hearth, the cheerful, warm fire has gone down to ash at the at his lowest, less humane point as a character, I think, which is interesting. So he does, he's not boiling with rage to go and do this. It's a coldness that comes into him that puts him on this path to just about to kill him, which I think's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

But there's something I can't forgive Dickens for, which happens in the middle of this. Before he goes for the gun, she's put the baby to bed. She comes downstairs, looks at him, and then divines everything he's feeling. And then just looks kind of miserable and then goes to bed.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Doesn't say anything. Doesn't explain the situation.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Doesn't explain the situation. It's insanity. So we have to wonder if she's if you know this is something we're seeing focalized through his perspective where he's interpreting everything she's doing as evidence of guilt or of awareness. Um, but there is something to be said for this. It seems like she's in cahoots with Dickens to keep the story spun out as well as it's a little bit more than a little bit spinning, keep it keeping, keep it going, keep it going, don't spoil it for everyone. Yes, yes. This is like when you watch a television show and and the whole episode wouldn't have happened if someone had just communicated for like 30 seconds by phone. Like, hey, here's the deal. Here's what's happening.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

She does say later on in this chapter third, though, that she does explain, well, John, you see, you're so there's no nothing artful about you. You can't keep secrets.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Yes, you can't keep secrets, so I had to keep it, but he's about to go murder someone, and she just assumes he's gonna sit there and be upset. I don't under I don't know, I don't understand this. I think it's very ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Yeah, no, no, you've really you've really highlighted that for me now. I won't be able to read that without the same thought.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

It's so irritating, you know, especially he the old the old man that he knows as the young man is under their roof at that moment. So what does she think he's going to do? Just take it? Um Yeah, I'm not sure about that. But thankfully we have the cricket um who saves the day.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Boom, yeah, come straight in.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream, and put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat down again beside the fire, and found relief in tears. The cricket on the hearth came out into the room and stood in fairy shape before him. I love it, said the fairy voice, repeating what he well remembered. For the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me. She said so, cried the carrier. True. This has been a happy home, John, and I love the cricket for its sake.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

It has been, heaven knows, returned the carrier. She made it happy, always until now. Otherwise, I never could have loved her as I did. Returned the carrier. The voice, correcting him, said do.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

It's a weird a weird thing in literature at the time to have a husband say I don't have any solid proof she isn't cheating on me, but I I think I'm to blame for putting her in this position. And his sort of solution is very it's the second thing that really confuses me in this piece. I don't know if you thought it was strange.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Yeah, it is a bit strange. Although actually that moment in a moment is um where he's talking to Tackleton. It makes me you love John actually. It's something quite noble about what he said what he's about to say. But actually, that vision, that final vision, I think, that final fulsom vision of the of the cricket and the spirit. I like actually some of the substance of that. I mean, I love that it describes uh glass or mirrors appearing, and how whenever a shadow breaks into the scene where it's the figure of that young man, the fairy crickets or whatever, they they they blot it out, they call up there's a cry, and they they wipe it off the glass.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

And while the carrier, with his head upon his hands, continued to sit meditating in his chair, the presence stood beside him, suggesting his reflections by its power, and presenting them before him, as in a glass or picture. Fairies came trooping forth, not to stand beside him as the cricket did, but to busy and bestir themselves. There were sounds of gaiety outside, musical instruments and noisy tongues and laughter. A crowd of young merrymakers came pouring in, among whom were May Fielding and a score of pretty girls. Dot was the fairest of them all. They came to summon her to join their party. She merrily dismissed them, nodding to her would-be partners one by one as they passed, but with a comical indifference, enough to make them go and drown themselves immediately if they were her admirers, presently there came a certain carrier to the door. And bless her, what a welcome she bestowed upon him. Although the shadow of the stranger fell at intervals upon the glass, whenever it appeared, the fairies uttered a general cry of consternation and plied their little arms and legs with inconceivable activity to rub it out.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

I think the cricket went to the same spirit school as the goblin of the bell in the chimes. Because it's that same level of kind of heavy-handed sermonizing kind of you know, the wit, the wit and sparkle of the of the goblins after Gabriel Grubb and all the ghosts that that Scrooge meets, all their attitude and all their kind of quirkiness. You don't get that ever again, I don't think, in these books. It kind of maybe in the haunted man a bit, but really you don't, it never comes back. I think that's a shame. That's a missed opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

I think I have a theory that Thackeray said something to Dickens because this is exactly the kind of thing that he made fun of in Dickens, and some people thought was kind of absurd.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

So then Tackleton, I think, comes in, doesn't he? And uh in the very small hours of the morning, and and then there's the most amazing. Moment where John overcomes the rage and his knee-jerk kind of anger. Yes. And he sort of basically is prepared to give Dot up and let her be happy. Let her go with this man.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

It's wild, especially considering that he has a child with her. So I find this very interesting and kind of foreshadowing Dickens's general views on marriage. I I do believe that Dickens would have sought and acquired a divorce if it was legal and possible to do later in life. I'm not on his side of that rupture, I will say.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Did I consider how little suited I was to her sprightly humour? And how wearisome a plodding man like me must be, to one of her quick spirit. Did I consider that it was no merit in me or claim in me that I loved her when everybody must who knew her? Never. I took advantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition. And I married her. I wish I never had. For her sake, not for mine.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

He's basically arguing sort of against himself. Someone might say, Well, yes, you're older than her, but you loved her. He's like, Well, everyone did who've met her, you know. So he's he I think he is realizing that he may have done her a great injury by marrying her if this is the case and this is someone she loved before him. And then he says, Heaven bless her for the cheerful constancy with which she has tried to keep the knowledge of this from me. Heaven help me then in my slow mind, I've not found it out before. And then I think this is just absolutely wild. He says, I mean to do her the greatest kindness and make her the best reparation in my power. I can release her from the daily pain of an unequal marriage and the struggle to conceal it. She shall be as free as I can render her.

unknown 46:29

That's wild.

SPEAKER_03 46:33

For the time as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Yes, it's very radical.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

Yeah, because we're what, 50 years before a doll's house, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Yeah, so I I think it's kind of interesting that he would say something that is so radical. And I think the only reason why he wasn't taken up on that was he doesn't do it. And it turns out it wasn't necessary. People can make allowances for John being kind of off his head a little bit and loving his wife so much, but um it's wild.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

But I wondered uh in this reading of it, I wondered whether some of what John says starts to work on Tackleton as well. I don't know whether I see glimmers of that.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Yeah. Do you remember the moment where Tackleton is looking at him through his eye?

SPEAKER_02 47:13

The toy merchant gazed at him without winking. Even the half-shut eye was open now.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

I think this is the great moment of Tackleton this last chip, isn't it? Because the way he sort of so he thinks. And there's a description about how his horse looks more like a bridegroom than he does, with all the with all the flowers around it and everything. And probably more appealing to look at. But then he comes back to find that his wife wasn't there or something, and and his wife to be has actually been promised to Edward, Caleb Plumber's long-lost son, who was disguised as the old man in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

Yeah, as a previous arrangement. And there it is. And then there's this really interesting transitional moment here for Tackleton where he's kind of he talks to them each in turn in a kind of stagey sort of way, where he kind of apologizes to them, but in a kind of conditional way of going, Well, you were a bit mean to me, actually, but never mind. And he goes away.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

And then keeps bringing presents keep arriving.

SPEAKER_03 48:09

And then the knocks on the door and different things arriving, like hamper and a wedding cake that he can't have anymore, and then toys come along, and there's there's a fantastic moment I picked up this time. The toys he sends for the baby and the second knock at the door aren't ugly. Yes. And that's our first sign that something's gone on with him, and then he finally has the courage to arrive himself to say, Do you mind if I um spend the day with you? Right. It's not quite Scrooge's transformation, is it? Even though it's as impactful the transformation, we don't get to see it on stage with quite the same uh potency.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

I think another thing is when John is talking about his wife, I think it might have sunk in a little bit. Um, because he says, I've had time to think of it, John Peribingle. I'm sour by disposition, but I can't help being sweetened more or less by coming face to face with such a man as you. Um and then he's affected by Bertha. This unconscious little nurse gave me a broken hint last night, of which I have found the thread. I blush to think how easily I might have bound you and your daughter to me. So, yes, I'm not so much as a cricket on my hearth. I've scared them all away. He needs a cricket and he needs to be a member of the party.

SPEAKER_03 49:19

Yeah. But yeah. That's a nice moment as well, isn't it, when he acknowledges that how he totally misread Bertha, thinking her stupid and simple. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of and and he feels that kind of regret as well. I kind of I like him at the end, really. I like that because there's that line about how he didn't know about himself, how he had the capacity for joy and good humour, and he finds it um in his kind of slightly awkward kind of way, maybe. But um so anyway, this was the cricket on on the hearth. I do think, and I think you've suggested at the beginning as well, he's still very much under the kosh of the carol, isn't he? Yes, like he was in the chimes. But there's one bit, William and Tackleton comes back and he's asked to be part of the festivities and everything, and they end on a dance and all of that. Um, there's a there's a phrase that says, He was at home in five minutes, which is literally the same phrase given to Scrooge when he knocks on his nephew Fred's door and lets in. And you think, oh well, there you go. He's not free of even the exact phrases of the carol, you know, at this point.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

He's actually hurtling towards a breakdown at this point. Um, and so yes.

SPEAKER_03 50:23

Okay. Suddenly it all falls into place.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

Um, one of the things that is interesting is when he um writes Dombey and Sun, that's where a lot of it hits when he's in Switzerland. Um, there are times in his life where he struggles to write. One of them was when um Mary Hogarth died after um sort of an evening out at the theater, and it was just very unexpected. And um he wasn't able to make his deadline for Pickwick, which was one of the only times that he failed his public like that. Just could not write. And then when he's um beginning Dombian's Sun and doing the serial, that's also a really difficult time for him to just find the will to write. And so when he's writing The Battle of Life, he's he's struggling even more. He's just not doing well. And then he takes a hiatus and then does the haunted man and the ghost bargain, and then has the brilliant idea a few years later of having other people write parts of his Christmas story and makes it the Christmas number. So I think he was he was very burned out. Um, and so he's in this, I think this book might have the most evidence of him not being able to come up with much that's new. Um, and sort of I maybe not even without realizing it, using phrases and language from his biggest success, hoping maybe that they'll have that sort of echo effect, or maybe not even knowing.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

Yeah, I wonder if he even noticed himself doing it. Because he seems to have written this one because it does seem to just kind of fly onto the page. I don't know what the manuscript looks like, but it's just kind of it's just kind of he even says at points, oh, that was the wrong phrase. Yeah. I don't know that can be an affectation, but I get the feeling that actually he probably thought, oh no, I shouldn't have said that. No mind, keep going. Just drive, drive, drive, drive, drive away with his pen.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Right. The ending of this book, though, is a little odd because we have this wonderful dance, all the characters are dancing together. Um, the cricket is chirping, the kettle's humming, we have this nice little circularity. And then it says, But what is this? Even as I listen to them blithely and turn up towards Dot for one last glimpse of a little figure very pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air and I'm left alone. A cricket sings upon the hearth, a broken child's toy lies upon the ground, and nothing else remains. So it's just Dickens sort of sitting in and you wonder, you know, was this a puppet show? Is this magic? It's kind of like the magic stories where people wake up and there's like a feather to remind them of this bird they saw. You know, it's just this sort of indication that it was real.

unknown 52:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

But it doesn't exist anymore. And I don't really know what that ending means, but it's not very cheering.

SPEAKER_03 53:03

I didn't notice that. I didn't notice that the first time I read it because I was so kind of saturated with jollity and sort of manicness. Um but that broken toy, yeah, that stuck out at me this time as well reading it.

SPEAKER_04 53:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

Which I think is interesting. And I think actually, for some reason, the darker sides you don't always notice in this one.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

But they're definitely there, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 53:25

I think it would be very interesting for people reading at Christmas around their own hearth. Um, and that is one thing I think that we miss when we're reading it now because we're not brought together with the author through the fire or that imagery of the fire where you know we get maybe a more cheerful view of it if we're reading it on Christmas Eve that year, and imagining the author sort of sitting by the fire after we've finished the book, maybe in the light of dawn. Because a book like this would have taken almost all night to read in some cases. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Yeah. No, I like that. Oh gosh. Well, Lydia, thank you so much. I've so enjoyed this. It's been brilliant to get you back for another Christmas one. Um, yeah, I hope you have a lovely, a lovely Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Happy Christmas.