BleakChesneyWold

Around nine years ago, as the centenary commemorations for the start of World War One were about to open, a Danish language TV series '1864' was screened. The English subtitled version was certainly noticed, especially as the Danish  production company were connected with 'Borgen' and 'The Killing' which attracted an international audience. The series was based on the book '1864:Slagtebaenk Dybbol' (2008) by Tom Buk-Swienty, and an English translation appeared under the title '1864 -the Forgotten War that shaped Modern Europe' in 2015.  The book emphasised the significance of the Danish -Prussian war of 1864 : Germany, before unification, was a confederation of 39 states. The largest of them were Prussia and Austria. To the north the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein were nominally under the rule of the Danish crown. But there were large swathes of Germans in  Holstein, which was also in the German confederation. Schleswig was largely Danish sp...

                        Transparent and Grotesque ? Or a Good Sort?                                             Illustration  ' Guppy puzzling over the portrait of Lady Dedlock'  Copyright Gerry Mooney 2023 and reproduced with the kind permission of the artist   /  https://gerrymooneyillustratingdickens.com" ;            For those who haven't read Dickens's masterpiece 'Bleak House', it is hard to sum up Mr Guppy's role. A minor legal clerk who desperately aspires to be more than he is. A small fish desperately mimicking the big fish and coming unstuck.Dickens may have been thinking of an actual Mr Guppy from the case 'Stevens v Guppy' which reached the Chancery Court in 1824, when choosing the name SHATTO .   Yet in his own way, Mr Guppy pl...

                  New Exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum at Doughty Street, London                                         Scene from Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit   depicting two characters kissing in the fog, sepia wash illustration by Fred Barnard  © Charles Dickens Museum, London and reproduced with their kind permission.                            Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales...

            ' Peppermint Billy  William Brown and the Tollgate Murders of 1856'    By Joanne Vigor Mungovin                                                                          A few months ago,t he Leicester Museum service website announced : On July 14, 2023, The Guildhall in Leicester will recreate the trial of William 'Peppermint Billy' Brown - 167 years to the day after he was convicted of the murder of Edward and James Woodcock in Melton Mowbray. Peppermint Billy was the last man publicly hanged in Leicester in 1856. His conviction has always been questioned and shrouded in mystery. In order to make this event more memorable, we have found descendants of the witnesses to read the words of their ancestors during the trial. The trial is then recrea...

                           Can  Chesney Wold Be Located    ?                                                      Haunted House by John Atkinson Grimshaw ( Public Domain courtesy of Wiki Gallery )   Dickens ninth novel 'Bleak House' appeared in installments from March 1852 until 1853.  A major theme concerns the legendary Jarndyce v Jarndyce case featured in the Chancery court : A  dreary legal dispute regarding a will which drags on year after year, effectively destroying the lives of potential benefactors, Predictably, once the case is settled, it is discovered that all the money held in the estate has been devoured by legal fees. The chapters set in the area surrounding the Chancery are claustrophobic and dark. 'Bleak House' also contains some...

                                      A Sceptical View of  Victorian Spiritualism                                                                                  So far historian and fiction writer  Linda Stratmann has written six novels featuring an unusual lead character, Mina Scarletti. Mina is in her 20's, particularly small with a curved spine due to scoliosis. Living in her mother's home- and from an upper middle class background, in Brighton.  The first novel opens in 1871,Mina writes children's stories and has some horror fiction published under an assumed name. Throughout the series, Mina's main role is to expose fake mediums and associated charlatans, whilst still ma...

                   Catherine Crowe (1790-1872) At the Park Gate by John Atkinson Grimshaw ( 1836-1893) painted 1878, Public domain,courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons               The Victorian era saw a massive rise in respect of deliberate communication with the Dead. Those who had passed over weren't just spectres who haunted the living, they were being invited to return. And contact with spirits had consequences. But was a seance really to blame for the 1854 breakdown of a prominent author in the mid Victorian era?  Mrs Catherine Crowe wrote a series of novels published from around 1841  including, The Story of Lilly Dawson   ,The Adventures of Susan Hopley  or Circumstancial Evidence (  her most famous work ),   The Adventures of a Beauty , Linny Lockwood.   The 'Household Words' magazine, whilst edited by Charles Dickens published three short stories ...