Welcome to Litsy!

Book coincidences are crazy! I read this word for the first time this week in Joan Didion‘s Democracy (above). Now, it‘s in Dickens!! What the heck!

“Quilp said not a word in reply, but walking so close to Kit as to bring his eyes within two or three inches of his face, looked fixedly at him, retreated a little distance without averting his gaze, approached again, again withdrew, and so on for half-a-dozen times, like a head in a phantasmagoria.”

Differentiating Dickens‘ characters!

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

“[Quilp] clung tight to his opponent, and bit and hammered away with such good-will and heartiness, that it was at least a couple of minutes before he was dislodged. Then, and not until then, Daniel Quilp found himself, all flushed and dishevelled, in the middle of the street, with Mr Richard Swiveller performing a kind of dance round him and requiring to know 'whether he wanted any more?'”

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

“The Pilgrimage begins.” Grandfather and Little Nell. #whattheDickens @Cuilin

I‘m well past this point in the book but want to catch up with the illustrations.

Quill‘s attorney Sampson Brass has a primate appearance here!

“Mr Brass, after writhing about, in a great many strange attitudes, and often twisting his face and eyes into an expression like that which is usually produced by eating gooseberries very early in the season, was by this time awake also. Seeing that Mr Quilp invested himself in his every-day garments, he hastened to do the like,…

I‘ve reached the “holidays” in the book. I‘m not sure if that means winter holidays but it‘s a good excuse to post another image from another dish from my grandmother‘s Old Curiosity Shop dishes.

Reading how popular this serialization of this book back in the day, I now understand why these dishes were made. Even the book description calls it the Harry Potter of its day.

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

⬇️

This book has taken a very very dark turn. Oh my heart hurts for Little Nell!!! I wouldn‘t have thought Dickens could go to such heartbreaking places. And I‘ve read enough Dickens to see an immense range of emotions. But dang, this is brutal. (I removed spoilers and replaced with ellipses.)

We definitely needed a bit of humor from Mrs Jarley deciding not to become an atheist.

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

But this is what she does instead:

“But instead of adopting this course of retaliation, Mrs Jarley, on second thoughts, brought out the suspicious bottle, and ordering glasses to be set forth upon her favourite drum, and sinking into a chair behind it, called her satellites about her, and to them several times recounted, word for word, the affronts she had received.”

😂😂😂

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

I‘m getting biscuits while we listen to the tagged book

#whattheDickens @Cuilin

“Little Nell stood timidly by, with her eyes raised to the countenance of Mr Quilp as he read the letter, plainly showing by her looks that while she entertained some fear and distrust of the little man, she was much inclined to laugh at his uncouth appearance and grotesque attitude. And yet there was visible on the part of the child a painful anxiety for his reply.”

Then he offers to make her Mrs Quilp number two! Eww!

#whattheDickens @Cuilin