Three Beautiful Things 03/14/18: Victorian Novels, Christy is on Her Feet, Chicken Dinner

1. Back home from the hospital in November of 1999, I decided reading Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope would help in my recovery from bacterial meningitis. I didn't have a lot of reading stamina, but I read the entirety of A Tale of Two Cities and read the first two books of Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles: The Warden and Barchester Towers.  I can't attest to the healing powers of these novels, but today, as I proceeded through the section of Great Expectations wherein Mr. Jaggers suddenly and mysteriously pops up out of thin air in the Three Jolly Bargemen public house to offer Pip the material means and the education he'll need to rise above his current station in life, I suddenly felt an old love I'd forgotten about well up in me for Victorian novels.

In the winter term of 1980, at the University of Oregon, I enrolled in Prof. Richard Stevenson's 19th Century Fiction course. In December of 1979, while traveling to Spokane, and eventually to Coeur d'Alene and Kellogg, on a dark, overheated Greyhound bus,on my way home for Christmas, I turned on the tiny spotlight above my seat and began reading Barchester Towers as a way of getting started on my winter term reading load. The novel opens with the death of Bishop Grantly and, in one short paragraph, I fell in love with what I would learn over the years was the Victorian novelists' keenness for capturing the essence of a character in a few words. About the dying Bishop, Trollope wrote:

Bishop Grantly died as he had lived, peaceably, slowly, without pain and without excitement. The breath ebbed from him almost imperceptibly, and for a month before his death it was a question of whether he were alive or dead. 

 I know that Great Expectations is a story about Pip's inward conflicts with his conscience as he moves up the social ladder, out of rural Kent County into the world of ambition and opportunity in London. My greatest joy in reading Dickens, though, is not so much with the novels' themes as it is with his characters. The memories of my 1999 recovery from meningitis and that 1979 December trip with Trollope on the Greyhound bus came rushing back to me as I read Pip's impressions of Mr. Jagger at the Three Jolly Bargemen, especially Jagger's habit of biting his forefinger:

There was an expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great forefinger as he watched the group of faces.

Pip suddenly remembers he saw this man on his second visit to Miss Haversham's and, within himself, runs through the details of his memory:

I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail, his large head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large watch chain, his strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand.

As with many of Dickens' unforgettable characters, Jaggers is misshapen, as if his physical appearance parallels something misshapen in his soul, as if the biting of his forefinger is an outward expression on an inward malady. But, the detail that stopped me cold, that told me Jaggers is not of the rural world of the Three Jolly Bargeman, was "the smell of scented soap on his great hand".  It was this scent that most bothered Pip the first time he encountered Mr. Jaggers at Miss Haversham's and it gave both Pip and me the creeps in the public house. I'll see if this scent matters later on in the novel.

2. Christy had been ill and confined to quarters since Sunday, but today she was up and at it. She came over for a visit and we talked about all kinds of things, ranging from what's been ailing her to our shared nephrologist, Dr. Jones, to the NCAA men's basketball tournament. A while later, the Deke arrived home from a knit shop trip to CdA and joined in the conversation.

3. The Deke and I decided to have chicken thighs for dinner. Originally, I was going to braise them in some of the chicken stock I recently finished making, but changed my mind and tried something I'd never tried before. I browned the skin side of the thighs in the Dutch oven on the stovetop, took the thighs out, got rid of excess oil, and lined the bottom of the Dutch oven with onion slices. I put the chicken thighs on top of the onion and poured some of the chicken stock over the meat. I then put the lid on the oven and baked the chicken at 350 degrees for a half an hour.  I guess it was a semi-braise, just done at a higher temperature than usual. The chicken was tender and juicy, the onions tasted awesome, and the Deke fixed our favorites, beets and beet greens and a cabbage salad, to go along with the meat. Once again, we enjoyed a simple and delicious meal tonight.