58 he did not really know how to do simple multiplication. Twice seven teen is surely done by multiplying seven by to first of all, and putting down four and carrying one. BEE NUMBER TWO FOUND DROWNED Dickens had a morbid interest in drowning. In several of his works he refers to notices headed FOUND DROWNED or MISSING - PRESUMED DROWNED. Thus, when Esther Summerson in BLEAK HOUSE went down with Inspector Bucket to the riverside in the East End of London, she described how "at length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in con ference with several man Against de mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I could discern the word FOUND DROWNED; and this, and an insciption about drags, possedded me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place." (Chapter 57) In DOMBEY AND SON (Chapter 25) when Solomon Gills suddenly disappeared from home, Captain Cuttle entertained similar suspicions. "For a whole week, the captain read of all the found and missing people in all the newspapers and handbills, and went forth on expeditions at all hours of the day to identify Solomon Gills in poor little ship- boys who had fallen overboard, and in tall foreigners with dark beards who had taken poison." When Mr Pegotty and David Copperfield followed the distracted Martha "Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sticky substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above highwater mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb tideChapter 47 FOUND DROWNED bills are described elsewherebut nowhere with such significance for the plot as in OUT MUTUAL FRIEND -"Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, Gaffer Hexam held it near a paper on the wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND, Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn read the handbill as it stuck against the wall.. "Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see," said Lightwoord ..."The trouser pockets empty, and turned inside out."

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The Dutch Dickensian | 1985 | | pagina 60