I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: POLYPHONIC SPREE-Tiny Desk Concert #259 (December 21, 2012).

I really enjoyed Polyphonic Spree’s first album (and their strange robes and cult-like following (apparently even within the band).

They put out a Christmas album some time ago, and since we have a big pile of Christmas albums, I grabbed that one.  I didn’t love it, but it was a fun addition to our collection.

This Tiny Desk Concert is notable for just how many members of the band are behind (and on the side of) the Tiny Desk (perhaps 18?).

And the band is suitably musical–trombone, trumpet, keys, drums, bass, cello, violin and a ten (or so) piece choir.

Interestingly, I find that the weak link in this whole thing is leader Chris DeLaughter.  It’s just that his voice is really not that interesting. It’s especially notable on “The Christmas Song” where he sings some high notes unaccompanied.  When the choir comes in (and they change the melody) it sounds really cool.  I especially love the way they make “reindeer really know how to fly” into a high note.

The first song is “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” which I feel is the Christmas song they might be best known for.  It’s pretty traditional to the original, with the choir filling in for the kids.  The addition of horns really adds a lot to it.

“Silver Bells” gets a pretty rocking treatment–the buildup at the beginning is pretty cool.  They change the main melody to an almost circus-like waltz. I love the way it sounds when everyone joins in–and when the choir is singing along to the rocking end (with a very different melody) it sounds great.  But once again DeLaughter’s voice doesn’t seem up to the task of leading this larger group.

But it’s festive and fun, especially with everyone in red robes (and DeLaughters green one).

[READ: December 2016] Christmas Stories (1854-1864)

Last year, I started reading some Charles Dickens Christmas Stories in December.  I imagined that I’d finish the whole book this season (all 750 pages of it), but I didn’t come close.  I enjoy these stories but they are not quick reads by any standard.

The fascinating thing with a lot of these stories is that they appeared in All the Year Round, a Victorian periodical founded and owned by Dickens and published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom.  But just because these stories came out for the Christmas issue doesn’t mean they have anything to do with Christmas directly.

I thought I’d be reading a whole chunk of the book in a row, but I wound up skipping around a bit.  Maybe next year I’ll finish the remaining stories.

“The Seven Poor Travellers” [1854]
The Seven Poor Travellers is the first of the slightly longer stories  (about 30 pages each) in Christmas Stories.  There are three chapters. In the first, we meet the narrator.  He arrives at the door of a Charity with a sign that states Charity for six poor travellers who not being Rogues or Proctors may receive gratis for one Night Lodging Entertainment and Fourpence Each.”  The narrator pokes his head into the Charity and addresses the woman who works there.  He learns a bit about the place and then says he would like to meet the travellers. This is unheard of.  But he says, it being Christmas, he would like to offer them a fine meal and some homemade wassail.  And boy does he loves talking about how good his wassail is–he calls it among other things “my brown beauty.”

Things go well, dinner is made, and then he prepares himself to tell a story–the story of Richard Doubledick.

In the year 1799, Richard Doubledick was in the military with hopes of getting killed.  He felt his life was hopeless and he was a hopeless person.  He wanted nothing more than to be shot in battle.  It was then that Captain Staunton sat him down and talked some sense into him.  Told him he could be a hero if he actually put his mind to it.  And so it came to be.  He and Captain Staunton fought side by side against he French.

They are masterful soldiers and Doubledick himself becomes something  of a hero.  He is often injured in battle but he is never killed. And then at the battle of Badajos, Doubledick spied a French major.  For some reason, he watched the man’s face with perfect clarity as he raised his sword and called for his men to fire. When they fired, Staunton went down dead.

Doubledick vowed to avenge his friend and kill this solider.  He also vowed to give a lock of Staunton’s hair to his elderly mother.

Doubledick finally managed to get to Staunton’s mother’s house and gave her the lock of her son’s hair.  She was overcome and he soothed her.  He felt so welcomed there (he himself has no family), that he stayed and convalesced there as if she were his own mother.

Eventually, the war is over.  Doubledick had a pretty severe injury but he came out okay.  And when he went to find Mrs Staunton, she was vacationing in France.  The place where she was staying was wonderful–her host a sheer delight.  So Doubledick goes to visit her and whose house do you suppose it is?

Well, what is Doubledick to do?

The final chapter of the story is his exiting the charity.  A kind of anticlimactic bookend to an otherwise exciting story.

“The Wreck of the Golden Mary” [1856]
This story was written in collaboration with Wilkie Collins.

And holy cow is it a downer.  Usually the worst you can say about Dickens stories is that they are too preachy–too moralistic.  But man, this one is just depressing.

The story is told in the first person by a sailor.  He has been on the seas since he was twelve and has moved up to being a  Captain. He had sailed many times and had gotten a reputation for being quite the capable sailor.  And so a man sought him out to take a voyage to America to catch up on gold rush fever.

He says when the rumor first went out that there was gold everywhere, he was sailing in another part of the world–he had no time for it.  But he was back now, and ready to go on the adventure.  He requested his first mate, advertised for passengers (and got far more than they could hold and then set sail).

The beginning of the voyage is quite delightful. There is a child on board with blonde hair who is charming and who loves the ship (The Golden Mary) quite a lot.  They take to nicknaming her Golden Lucy.

Rather unexpectedly (although it is in the title), they strike an iceberg and the ship sinks.  They escape in two small boats and spend the rest of the time adrift at sea.

The Captain details their struggles–their rationing of food, their dealing with the cold, their endlessly seeing nothing but horizon.  And then, holy cow, Golden Lucy dies!  Holy crap, Dickens, what gives?

Well, things get worse and worse for everyone.  They are in their boats for some 28 days. They have basically run out of food (he assures us that everyone agrees they will not turn into cannibals) and then the Captain collapses.  Dickens does an interesting thing.  Knowing that an “I” narrator has to be alive at the end, otherwise how could he tells the story, Dickens suddenly has the story taken over by the diaries of the First Mate.

And the end is not an ending at all.  It almost sounds like the beginning of a new adventure (or else simply the beginning of the end).  Geez, Merry Christmas.

“Going Into Society” [1858]
This was a rather strange story.  It follows a dwarf who wants nothing more than to enter proper society.  He wins the lottery and gets his wish.  But he finds it lacking and returns to his previous life.

As with many of these stories there is a bookend around the plot.  This one is from a  man asking the narrator about a House and why the dwarf wound up owning it.

The Haunted House [1859]
Despite the Halloweenish nature of this story, it did appear in a Christmas issue of All the Year Round.  This story is interesting in that Dickens wrote the first chapter, then four other people wrote chapters then Dickens wrote a chapter and there was one more and then the ending by Dickens.  This book contains only his two chapters: “The Mortals in the House” and “The Ghost in Master B’s Room” I’m not sure why it doesn’t include Dickens’ “The Ghost in the Corner Room” although it is only one page long and seems to tidy things up quickly.  It ends (I found it online) with this:

Finally, I derived this Christmas Greeting from the Haunted House, which I affectionately address with all my heart to all my readers: Let us use the great virtue, Faith, but not abuse it; and let us put it to its best use, by having faith in the great Christmas book of the New Testament, and in one another.

The story itself is somewhat promising.  It begins with the narrator requiring a stop in the country for his health.  A friend had recommended an empty house, which he decided to look into. It was a large house, cheaply repaired and “ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted.”  When he inquires about the house, it comes out that it has a reputation for being haunted–that there are mysterious noises to be heard all night long.  He even talks to some of the local folk (who are rather amusing) who all concede that they have heard (if not seen) spooky things. Like a “‘Ooded woman with a Howl” “A hooded woman with an owl?”

Regardless, he moves in with his spinster sister, Patty, and some servants.  But none will remain–they are all frightened away by the noises.  So finally Patty says they should live without servants.  “Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions.”

Patty then suggests that they invite a group of friends to come down and form a “Society” that would occupy the house for three months and “see what happens” as far as supernatural activity in the house is concerned.  The friends agree to keep silent about any ghostly experiences until they gather on Twelfth Night unless “on some remarkable provocation” they have to break their silence on the subject of any haunted goings-on

Since I don’t have the other chapters, I can’t say what happens, but in Chapter 6, things go decidedly weird.  His thoughts are haunted by the letter B until he finally perceives the ghost of Mr B in his room.  After talking with him for a time, he proposes that they have a seraglio.

I didn’t know what that was.  It turns out to be: “the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in an Ottoman household.”  What?  Suddenly there were apparently 8 women and two men.  One of the women appears to be 8 or 9…?  There’s weird lines like “In the third place, when specially instructed to say “Bismillah!” he always sad “Hallelujah!”  Weird.

Later in this section while he is at the full height of his enjoyment he “began to think of my mother and what she would say to my taking home at Midsummer night of the most beautiful daughters of men.”

Things seem to end in a kind of fever dream, so I’m not really sure what to make of any of it.

“Tom Tiddler’s Ground” [1861]
Another story that doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas, this story has a unique aspect in this book.  The story was written in 7 parts, but Dickens wrote only three of the parts, so parts 2-5 are not included here.

As with many of these stories, there’s a strangely unrelated opening section that is rather unnecessary–unless Dickens always felt the need to place his main characters somewhere before they got to the action.  A Traveller asks an inn keeper about why a piece of property is called Tom Tiddler’s Land.  The Innkeeper tells him that a man lives there. He has never been seen and is something of hermit–he doesn’t clean himself or his house.

The Traveller seems quite indignant about this and marches off to the hermit’s property.  On part of the property, they find a Tinker lazing about.  The Traveller gives him a hard time and then marches to the door.

The bulk of the first part is just him yelling at the hermit saying that everything he is doing is wrong.  He is wasting his life living in squalor when there are people born into squalor who would love to have what he has.  His existence is a nuisance to all those around him.

In Chapter 6 (perhaps the other chapters would make this seem less startling) we learn of Miss Pupford, a woman who runs a home for girls.  But she ran off to get married leaving only Miss Kimmens and the housemaid.

She was left alone and her thoughts turned very dark indeed.  She felt wronged by the people there and many other things.  She believed that no one liked her and they all left her alone on purpose.  That her papa sent her to this school rather than keeping her with him.

But then she sprang from her chair and snapped out of it, saying this wicked creature isn’t me.  And the Traveller uses this story to add more abuse to the hermit.

In chapter 7, we see the tinker is still on the grounds but he is now working away.  And the moral of course is “metal that rotted for want of use, had better be left to rot, and couldn’t rot too soon considering how much true metal rotted from over-use and hard service.”

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings [1863]
One of the frustrating things about these Christmas Stories is that Dickens wrote a lot of these stories with other people.  That’s not so frustrating.  What is frustrating is that my books don’t include the chapters not written by Dickens.  Not that these stories are so great that I’d want to read the five missing chapters.  But it does make these pieces seem rather disjointed and unfinished.  Dickens wrote the first two chapters “How Mrs. Lirriper carried on the business” and “How the parlours added a few words.”

Mrs Lirriper is a fun character. Her husband died and left her with a lot of debt, so she began taking in lodgers.  She tells some stories (addressing the reader as My Dear).  The first section of the story lays the groundwork. She describes her troubles with the domestic help–if they are lively they get bell’d off their legs and if the are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in complacency.  She talks of her rivalry with another lodge owner Miss Wozenham down the street–she seems a busybody.  And then introduces us to her long time lodger Major Jemmy Jackman, who helped Mrs Lirriper through some of her troubles.

About a third of the way through the story we meet Mrs. Edson.  Her husband had paid three months in advance.  And now three months later, we learn that he had no intention of coming back and Mrs Edson is distraught.   She considers throwing herself in the river but Mrs Lirriper stops her (in a very delicate fashion).

But soon enough she dies and Mrs Lirriper assumes charge of the Edson baby.  She names it Jemmy Lirriper.  He proves to be a precocious child and the Major is sorely impressed with his brain.

The second chapter of the book is “written” by Jemmy Jackman as he relates young Jemmy’s brilliance.  And then the story ends.  I wonder what else happened in those missing chapters

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy [1864]
This story is a sequel to Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings (and came out the following year).  Little Jemmy has grown up some and Mrs. Lirriper and Major Jackman continue to dote upon him.  As with the previous story there’s a lot that goes on before we get to the plot of the story.

There are two chapters: ‘Mrs Lirriper Relates how She Went On, and Went Over’ and ‘Mrs Lirriper Relates how Jemmy Topped Up’

We meet Mrs Lirriper’s brother-in-law, a doctor named Jeremy.  Mrs Lirriper fights with the tax man Mr Buffle until a fire in Buffle’s house seems to bring the whole town together.  The fire is almost written as a comic scene (with an amusing description of how the family was saved).  And even though the fire is a disaster, she kind of blows it off by saying “they were fully insured.”

In another plot line, she finally sets a side her squabbles with Mrs Wozenham and she has a weird story about her Irish servant Sally Rairayganoo.

The legacy part comes, like the last story, about one third of the way in.  A Frenchman with an outrageous accent “I come frrwom the Frrwench Consul’s,” informs her that someone has left her a legacy in Sens, France.  She cant imagine who would have done that.  The man asks if she takes Locataires?  He means “lodgers” and suggests maybe it was a lodger.  But she can think of none who would have done that.

So she and the Major and Jemmy travel to Sens.  They spend a delightful day in Paris and then the three of them get to meet the benefactor.  It proves to be someone we do know.

They have Jemmy meet the poor man, who is in fact at death’s door.

Chapter Two is ‘Mrs Lirriper Relates how Jemmy Topped Up’ and this chapter is interesting because Jemmy was so moved by what he witnessed that he decides to make up a story about the now dead man.  Mrs Lirriper knows who the man was, but she won’t say anything.  And as Jemmy reels off his story, she is quite convinced that he knows more than he lets on.

~~~

These two Lirriper stories were quite good. Indeed, aside from the bummer ship story, I enjoyed all of thee pieces.

There’s 8 more to go in the book, including one that’s over 100 pages. I do hope I can finish it next Christmas season.