Our Mutual Friend, Part 1

Whew, this is a long book.  Current progress: page 222/889.  And I have not been able to read as much as I had been recently b/c too much other crap to do, including a Federal Income Tax exam coming up soon...not as funny as Dickens.  I think Charles Dickens is hilarious, and I probably don't get half of his jokes.  To show you how fun he can be, we're going to play the Charles Dickens name game!!  Match the character name with their description: 

1. "With an immense obtuse drab face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up to the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patronized."

2. "So poor a clerk, through having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.  His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of various periods."

3. "A dark gentleman.  Thirty at the utmost.  An expressive, one might say handsome face.  A very bad manner.  In the last degree contrained, reserved, diffident, troubled."

4. "a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea overcoat and carrying a large stick.  He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's.  Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly inquiring grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows and broad-brimmed hat.  A very odd-looking old fellow altogether."

5. "an ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer who, as he spoke, fumbled at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangy, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying."

6. "this young rocking-horse was being trained in her mother's act of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on.  But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an under-sized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother's head-dress and her father from head to foot."

A. Nicodemus Boffin

B. R. Wilfer

C. Lady Tippins

D. John Rokesmith

E. Georgiana Podsnap

F. Roger Riderhood

The point of this fun little exercise is to marvel at Dickens's powers of characterization.  The names always match the personalities so perfectly, and even every physical detail that he tells us about the characters reveals their true natures.  You read the person's name and physical description and you already know if they are good, bad, tragic, ridiculous, rich, poor.  I mean, could anyone named Uriah Heep have any redeeming qualities?  I just love that.  If Charles Dickens had written Twilight, none of us would be wondering why Edward and Jacob are so in love with Bella.  Much more Dickens to come, including trying to figure out why this book is titled Our Mutual Friend...