She told the Radio 4 literary programme ‘With Great Pleasure’ that one Sunday [in Paris] she stayed in her room all day reading Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. “When I emerged in the evening I walked straight into Fernando who looked absolutely horrified. I had mascara down my face and he assumed I had just received news of a death, which I had — Sydney Carton’s.” The unhappy Carton had taken the place of Charles Darnay at the guillotine because of his love for Darnay’s wife Lucie and by his ultimate sacrifice finds salvation: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Joanne considers this “the most perfect last line of a book ever written” and one that invariably makes her cry. (Smith, pp 87-88)

But as the true book looms, this speculation is too little too late. We’ll see soon.

Holly

Linda’s blog can be quick clicked by going to the links in the right column. Look for L.O.O.N!

I should also note here (before someone else does) that, though Gager does not make a Shakespeare-Dickens link for Tale of Two Cities — she makes three passing references to the book in her exhaustive look at the novelist, the playwright, and 19th century theatre — the link between stage elements and TOTC is very well established, beyond its props and monologues, because of Dickens’ thespian activities at the time he was writing it. I just haven’t found a discussion in my several copies of TOTC or in my Shakespeare references of the specifically Shakespearean not to mention alchemical qualities of this novel. This ground may have been very well covered in the library of Dickens and TOTC scholarship. I just don’t know. Yet.

The reason I am suspicious that this link hasn’t been explored is I have seen this happen before. David Downing’s Planets in Peril on Lewis’ Space Trilogy is one of the top ten books on C. S. Lewis’s writing in print (this from Robert Trexler of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, who keeps that list current). Planets, frankly, exhibits the sort of scholarship and comprehensive understanding not only about Lewis but English Literature, Chaucer to Rowling, that I only dream of having when I am struck with malarial fevers. But nowhere in this brilliant book does Prof. Downing mention the alchemical images and structures that in several ways define Lewis’ trilogy. Lewis-Alchemy is an easier connection than Dickens-Alchemy, because of Lewis’ friendship with alchemical writer Charles Williams and Lewis’ knowledge of 16th Century literature (he read every book from that period in the Oxford library while writing the Oxford History of the English language volume on the 16th century), but by far the best book on Lewis’ alchemical novels doesn’t mention the link.

Please take the Dickens-TOTC-Alchemy-Rowling links, though, with a grain of salt. I offer them here as an exciting possibility but it is at least as speculative as Scar-O-Scope or Stoppered Death. The links are also as valuable as illustrations of ideas as those theories of the Five Keys and I hope that readers will understand I am not offering this as much more than an edifying curiosity.

Anyone out there collecting Neck Nuggets from canon? Please post them below. Sydney and Harry will be happy to see them.

Over thirty instances? Yikes.

I knew there were a lot, but I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that high of a number.

I finally posted my own set of predictions that I had been obsessing over on my blog. For those interested in seeing more on the topic of beheadings…

Linda