Clocking in

Everybody knows Big Ben. Right?

Americans mostly think Big Ben is the clock tower pictured here. A lot of London folk think so too. No harm done.

Of course YOU know that Big Ben doesn't really refer to the tower or the clock, but rather to the largest of the 5 bells that are located in the belfry. I'm not writing this post to correct your thinking - so many people just call the clock tower Big Ben, it has become acceptable to do so. No, what I really want to do in this post is talk about the bell itself.

My infallible sources (I'm trying to stay away from Wikipedia this year) tell me that Big Ben is the third largest bell in the UK. I'm sure you can name the other two, so I won't insult you by telling you about those.

Yes I will.

The largest bell in the kingdom is Great Paul and the second largest is in Liverpool. Big Liv or something like that. No, wait. Great George.

Some of you are probably wondering who Big Ben is named after. Rightly so. That's a poser. For those of you who believe it was named after Queen "Ben" Victoria, sorry. But thank you for playing. There are so many prominent Benjamins from whom to choose. Many say it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who personally carried the 13-ton bell on his back up the 334 steps to the tower belfry. Could be. In fact, Sir Benjamin Hall's name is inscribed on the bell, so you would really have to be a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic to still doubt who it is named after. Before I learned about Benjamin Hall, I was going to guess Benjamin Disraeli, though I doubt even his own mother ever called HIM "Ben". And I immediately discarded Benjamin Franklin as a candidate.

The original Great Bell weighed over 16 tons, and was drawn from the foundry to the tower on a trolly drawn by 16 horses. This was not, I'm thinking, one of your average Tesco trollies. [Note to American readers: Tesco is a British grocery store chain, and the British don't use shopping carts.] Unfortunately, the first bell cracked while being tested and had to be recast. I'm not entirely sure where the missing 3 tons went. All I know is that Sir Ben was PISSED (as Charles Dickens noted afterward) that he had to carry the bell down and up again.

I'm sure, if you are burdened by the peculiar kind of "Rain Man" memory that Relax Max has, then you can't really read the words "16 Tons" without immediately thinking of Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1956 hit song of the same name. I'm sure. "Ya loaded sixteen tons, whaddaya get? - Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter dontcha call me cuz I CAN'T GO! I owe my soul to the company store. Doodoodoodoo dumdy dumdum."

But try to block that out of your mind for the time being.

Would you, dear American reader, like to visit the belfry of the Great Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster when next you are in London, and check out the bells and clockworks close up? Sorry, no furriner tourists allowed. They'll take your money for the ground level tour stuff, though, and let you in the gift shop, but only actual card-carrying British citizens (including some Scots, I'm told) may tour the tower itself, and only then if they get a recommendation and okey-dokey from their PM. Make that MP. True. And guess whether or not the tower has a lift? Heh heh heh.

I really wanted to show you a picture of the Great Bell known as Big Ben, but the only pictures I could find were on Wikipedia, and, as I say, Wikipedia lies too much for me to use this year. Those could have been pictures of the Liberty Bell for all I know. So I have drawn you a picture of Big Ben, below, just to give you a working idea of what it looks like. By the way, just for scale, the actual bell is 2.2 meters tall. That is about half a rod, more or less.

[Illustration drawn by Relax Max. The original was drawn by 16 horses.]

One final note. The clock tower (and maybe the whole of the Westminster post-fire rebuild, for all I know - I have already spent too much time on this post and I'm not going to go back and look it up in my notes) was designed by Augustus Pugin. Augustus later went mad and spent time in Bedlam (perhaps screaming in terror about nightmarish neo-gothic architecture) and died at age 40. So sad. Died at Ramsgate, Kent. But I've already posted about Ramsgate. Some say he really died of syf-full-lus. But those people are probably spiteful Torries.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

This blog was born of my interest - curiosity, really - about words and language. I am an analyst first and foremost, with an emphasis on the architecture of information. This leads me down many paths, but primarily my overriding goal is to clarify; I find ways to simplify the complex, extract the essence of things, restate and restructure into more understandable terms. This activity isn't limited to only written things, but this post is about the interpretation of written things.

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Charles Dickens was a 19th century British writer - he would say English writer, I'm sure - who mostly wrote about life in the early part of that century. He wrote fiction, to be sure, but fiction that was set against the background of the reality of the times in which he lived. One can learn a lot about what life was like for those who lived back then by reading Dickens' descriptions - descriptions of the sometimes squalid lives of the poor or common people of the first part of that century.

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I have loved reading since I was a child. I can't remember a time when I wasn't reading some book or other, and I can't remember when I first discovered Charles Dickens. I remember studying David Copperfield as a requirement in school, but that wasn't the first.

Like many others in this age of instant communication, I have fallen into the lazy trap of watching "books" in the cinema, or on TV. For example, every Christmas I watch the TV versions of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," with the Alastair Sim version being my favorite I think. After many times of watching it, one gets to almost be able to say the dialog by heart.

Although I watch it on TV every Christmas, in its many renditions, it has been years and years since I actually read the words Charles Dickens wrote. I did dig it out the other day and began reading it, and was immediately reminded of how the movie versions don't do Dickens' writing justice. If you have been guilty of this lazy habit of watching instead of reading, I would recommend you pick up the book again.

What makes an author successful? Famous? We've talked about what makes certain books "classics," but, in my mind, it is almost totally the author's powers of description that make him good, great, or classically great. Of course, one needs an interesting story to begin with, but the telling of that story will determine mediocrity or greatness, in my opinion. Nobody describes better than Charles Dickens.

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When I was a child, I always read books far over my head, so to speak. Books written for children never interested me. Of course that meant I needed to always have a dictionary nearby, and it had to be used with nearly every paragraph. Today, I am older and perhaps even wiser, but I still need my dictionary when I read Dickens. I don't mind.

We all know the story of Dickens' A Christmas Carol by heart. It is the story of the meaning of Christmas and how an old man lost his way by forgetting what life is really all about. And then, as Paul Simon might say, he was given another shot at redemption.

To watch the old story unfold on TV is one thing. But to read Dickens describe the story, well... that is something else again.

Part of the reason I still need my dictionary to read Dickens in the flesh is because the story was written a long time ago and people spoke differently in the 19th century. Another reason is because Dickens was British and used British phrases and idioms, some foreign to an American eye. But, mainly, I need a dictionary because Dickens' vocabulary is simply so much more extensive than mine.

I know some of you reading this are also analysts, and I know some of you are also interested in literature. As I began reading A Christmas Carol, and looking up words, just as I had done as a child, and trying to sort out his underlying meanings, it occurred to me that perhaps you would enjoy doing some of that right along with me. If so, what follows might even be a little bit fun for some of you. Let's do some together.

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A Christmas Carol

Stave I: Marley's Ghost

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Marley was dead. Got that. But 'Change? I don't get that. "Exchange"? Hmmm. Dictionary no help here. Well, the meaning was clear that Scrooge's name carried considerable weight. And that Scrooge knew for sure that Marley was dead. Dead as a doornail? I'm surprised that expression is so old that Dickens used it, but I know what it means.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge was Marley's sole residuary legatee. My dictionary says "residuary" means an estate and "legatee" is a person who is the beneficiary of such. I take this to mean that Scrooge inherited all of his partner's estate when he died. His part of the business. His house. The movie versions don't tell you that. We further glean, in Dickens' rather roundabout manner of speaking, that Scrooge didn't take the day off when Marley died, but conducted business as usual and even closed a nice transaction that day. Do you agree with my interpretation? But why the lengthy reference to Hamlet? Why, to warn the reader that he, Dickens the writer, is also about to set up a scene with a ghost and wants to make sure you agree the guy is dead. That's the gist of it, I think. Still, I don't understand the reference to St. Paul's in this context, or the part about his son's weak mind. Maybe some of you who are up on your Hamlet can explain it better than I. And I'm trying. Help.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire. I like that, don't you? Elegant. So is the Oyster simile. "Rime", I learned long ago in the Air force, is thin ice that forms on wings and causes planes to crash. Must be deiced. But on Scrooge's head? Well, Dickens never saw an airplane, so we are talking about a hoary frost on his thin hair and eyebrows. But not literally; Scrooge was a cold character even in the summer, so Dickens isn't referring to the winter air causing Scrooge to be cold - he was simply cold-hearted, period. Indeed, Dickens goes on to clarify this by saying Scrooge was a cold character even in the dogdays. Dogdays meaning the hottest part of summer. I think.

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Well, maybe this analysis isn't so much fun for you as it is me after all.

Try the following all by yourself. I mean, rewrite it into modern simple English if you can:

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often `came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, `My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, `No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!'

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call `nuts' to Scrooge.

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day -- and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

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I HATE multiple-choice tests; all of mine are essay. Do translate. For the fun of it.

Old money

I was speaking with a friend the other day and the subject of the old monetary system in the UK came up. I wonder if anyone still remembers the days of the shilling. Your old money was always unfathomable to me as an American when I read about it in books by Charles Dickens and Anna Sewell.

Mostly pounds and shillings. I thought 12 shillings to the pound but was corrected. (The 12 that stuck in my mind was the number of pence in a shilling; there were 20 shillings to the pound.)

Which reminds me, oddly, of Enid Blyton saying the dog's tail was wagging 19 to the dozen. I don't know why I always remember that, or what it has to do with the number of shillings to the pound. But if you have followed BritishSpeak since its inception, you know why an American is familiar with a British children's author. Back to money.

Anyway, the real questions I had were about what other money names meant, including slang. For example, Sherlock Holmes and H.G. Wells spoke of gold sovereigns, which I don't have a clue as to the value. I finally figured out what a quid was, but still don't know what a bob is or was or where the word came from. Ebenezer Scrooge gave the prize turkey boy half a crown for returning with the poulterer in less than five minutes, says Charles Dickens. I don't know what a crown is, money wise. If I did, I could surely figure out what half a crown was.

Let's not forget guineas. Nobody knows what those were.

I was force-fed a song in grade school about someone who had six-pence and seemed happy to have it.

The song "A Soalin'" (don't get me started on soul cake or carved turnips, please) mentioned a ha' penny. And my friend claimed to still have a farthing. What IS this stuff? What WAS that stuff, I mean.

We all agree that bobbies are named after Robert Peel, but I don't think bob the money is related. Whatever a bob is. Not my uncle, that's for sure.

I give up. I doubt if anyone remembers anyway.

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The Telegraph, June 6, 2010: "Enid Blyton beats Roald Dahl and JK Rowling to be voted Britain's best-loved author." The children's authors were ahead of Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens. Another children's author, Beatrix Potter, also appeared in the top ten. I think all but Rowling and Shakespeare were paid in the old money at one time or another. Maybe Shakespeare, too; I haven't researched Elizbethan lucre.