Voorjaar 2009 no.66
Immortal Memory Speech Charles Dickens Fellowship Haarlem Branch
13™ December 2008)
9
The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXIX
why the Dickens Fellowship is special to me,
and perhaps to all of us.
I won't climb on the seat of my Windsor Chair
and conceal one hand behind my cocktails
(not to mention the tights and gaiters) but I
will wave my hand to raise a glass in honour
of the Dickens Fellowship, our honoured guest
and last but not least our Haarlem Branch!
door Pia Lokin - Sassen
Dear Fellow Dickensians
Here I stand before you, fairly proud to
have got the honour of being invited by
mr President of the Haarlem Branch to
say some words to you before I will pro
pose the immortal memory toast!
We all are captivated by the universe of
the genius of Charles Dickens! We all
try to catch the essence of his genius,
and by trying to do so, the only thing we
got to know for sure, is that we will be
able to unveil his secret. So please,
don't expect too much from me!
One of the many things that I have always
admired in Dickens' writings, is the way he
introduces his characters and makes the read
er acquainted with them. Dickens is portray
ing his figures with the hand of a great master
painter, quickly sketching some characteristic
details, with a maximum of precision. Details
which make the portrait step out of the frame
and become a living person to be loved or
hatred with all our senses. And even more
than that, in our lives we recognise our own
Blottons, our own Cheeryble brothers, our
own Pipps and Peggoties. To the real
Dickensian it is sufficient to say: he is a
Pickwick, a Pecksniff, or a Podsnap", and one
has to say no more.
Who will not recognise the person on the spot
in this description?
"Hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and
eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and
unshaded, that I remember wondering how
he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and
bony; dressed in decent black, with a white
wisp of a neck-cloth; buttoned up tot the
throat; and had a
long lank skeleton
hand, which par
ticularly attracted
my attention..."
There is one partic
ular characteristic
detail that attracts
my attention in
this description of
Uriah Heep, not
the eyes, not the
decent black of his
Bron: http://www.wilkie-
coat, not even the collins.info/images/books_mr_
skeleton hand, but wray2.jpg
his "whit wisp of a neck-cloth" in Dutch: een
wit sprietig halsdoekje): Dickens is catching
the whole character of Heep in that white wisp
of a neck-cloth. It is about the neck-cloth that
I wish to ask your attention for: in short, my
theme is:
The neckerchief in Dickens's works.
Lets take for instance Daniel Quip:
"An elderly men of remarkable hard features
and forbidding aspect, and so low in stature
as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and
face were large enough for the body of a
giant His deress consisted of a large
high-crowned hat, a worn dark suit, a pair of
capacious shoes and a dirty white neckerchief
sufficiently limp and crumpled to disclose the
greater part of his wiry throat..."
A dirty man with dirty, limp (kreupel, hang
erig, lusteloos) and crumpled (verfrommeld,
gekreukt) neckerchiefThe whole character of
the mean man is comprised in his neckerchief.
