The Oncoming Hope

I know that the latest episode of Doctor Who seems a bit slight on the surface, but like Gridlock, which had a number of thematic similarities, there are joys to found in the depths. It's been a long time since I could describe this show of having any subtlety whatsoever, but even while maintaining the usual loud tempo in the A-plot, the episode still offered little reveals about the Doctor, and more importantly, about Clara.

Despite the fact that this episode centered on the loss of a parent, there wasn't a big emotional crying scene. I've realized more and more that when the characters' histrionics overwhelm the scene, there's no room left for the audience to connect emotionally.

In just ten quiet seconds, we feel the weight of the moment when Clara's forced to give up her mother's ring. The Doctor asking her to make that sacrifice clearly plants a seed of doubt in her mind about him, and reminds us that no matter how much he walks the walk, he's not actually human.

Nor do we need a big dramatic scene to understand the significance of the fact that when asked for a physical totem of cherished memory, he can only offer his sonic screwdriver. That's even though he once brought his (assumed long dead?) granddaughter to this very place.

(And because you should see it if you haven't, the scene where the Doctor abandons Susan on Earth for Not!AdamScott is one of the loveliest moments of the classic series. Middleman did a riff on this scene, for those of you who enjoy such things).

I've heard it said on Twitter that the episode relies on the usual Doctor Who deus ex machina that is The Power of Love. For once, I think there's something far deeper going on. Clara doesn't feed the monster with love, but with the infinity of loss. It's neatly scientific, wrapped up in a human bow. People who are grieving don't tend to dwell on moments had, they think of moments missed, moments lost. Every time I miss my grandmother, for instance, I don't think about my youth spent with her, I think about how she isn't here, how she isn't sitting next to me, enjoying Doctor Who with me (and enjoy it she did).

There's an infinity of those moments, and you'd go crazy if you try to understand how enormous those missed moments are. No one can comprehend infinity. You just shut down when you go too far down the path.

Which is my long-winded way of saying, well done Who, for having an vaguely comprehensible ending for once.

OTHER STUFF:

Clara Clara Clara. SO MUCH LOVE. She's the first companion in the New Era who I'd actually want to meet, and can imagine myself befriending.

Imagine someone writing the novel described in Borges' Garden of Forking Paths. You lead a hundred different lives in parallel.

You're born, and then you die. You're born again, and then you die again, after ticking off a few more minutes of your lifeline. By the time you've met your hundredth death, you're old enough to understand what's about to happen. You may not always interpret the signs correctly this time, but you'll learn. Sometimes you learn when the wrong person dies. But at least you get another chance.

Our heroine, Ursula Todd, is duly plagued, which results in her taking on multiple fates, each of them tiny microcosms of the human experience: so much horror, so many delights. It's not so simple as Sliding Doors, we follow her through two wars, and many traps lie afoot. Some of her worst experiences have nothing to do with the war. Humanity's usually its own worst enemy, whether you're in bucolic England or in mid-war Germany.

These are difficult themes to maintain, and I'm still impressed at what control Atkinson held. Astonishingly, even through reset after reset, there are character through-lines that remain both consistent and heart-breaking. The lines around Ursula's life are so beautifully colored in that the reader can dive easily into each new storyline, at least once you get used to the conceit.

"Darkness falls, and so on."

But what will probably stay in my mind, once all the timey-wimey trickery fades into the distance, are visions of a ravaged London, a London so thoroughly decimated that the descriptions read like science fiction or dystopia.

She was cold. The water she was lying in was making her even colder. She needed to move. Could she move? Apparently not. How long had she been lying here? Ten minutes? Ten years? Time had ceased. Everything seemed to have ceased. Only the awful concoction of smells remained. She was in the cellar. She knew that because she could see Bubbles, still miraculously taped to a sandbag near her head. Was she going to die looking at this banality? Then banality seemed suddenly welcome as a ghastly vision appeared at her side. A terribly ghost, black eyes in a grey face and wild hair, was clawing at her. 'Have you seen my baby?' the ghost said It took Ursula a few moments to realize that this was no ghost. It was Mrs. Appleyard, her face covered in dirt and bomb dust and streaked with blood and tears. 'Have you seen my baby?' she said again.

This London remains stuck in history. The art of the time had strict rules, propagandic overtures that wouldn't bear any mention of the idea that the British were so badly beaten down during the war.

You find this struggle most baldly acknowledged in the stranges of places: Gracie Fields comedies and in Powell and Pressburger's delicious allegories, especially in Black Narcissus. Just as Deborah Kerr's nun struggles against poverty, illness, crumbling infrastructure and burning desire in the remote Himalayas, millions of Brits struggled with the same at home. But one could never admit that; the Dunkirk spirit held its sway. Only in photography could you find the reality; was photography even considered an art then, or just documentation?

Poetry and the visual arts gave way to the abstract; the human eye and the human heart were incapable, then, of processing the horror of being in constant danger of annihilation. Atkinson's choice, then, to draw out this most troubled time, to realize it in words, strikes you in the heart.

A woman wearing a mink coat had come out of the entrance to the Savoy, on the arm of a rather elegant man. The woman was laughing in a carefree way at something the man had just said but then she broke away from his arm to search in her handbag for her purse in order to drop a handful of coins into the bowl of an ex-soldier who was sitting on the pavement. The man had no legs and was perched on some kind of makeshift wooden trolley. Ursula had seen another limbless man on a similar contraption outside Marylebone station. Indeed, the more she had looked on the London streets, the more amputees she had seen.

A doorman from the hotel darted out of Savoy Court and advanced on the legless man, who quickly scooted away using his hands as oars on the pavement.

And so I found, not an answer, but at least an understanding of something that plagued me when I lived in London, wandering the streets and pondering the crazy mess of buildings that huddle up into some kind of city. When so much of the city is destroyed, why wouldn't you build it to plan for the future? Even after WWII, urbanization became apparent. Someone made the choice to rebuild so many devastated buildings as exact replicas of what they used to be, instead of acknowledging survival and moving on into the (somewhat)  brighter future.

A partial explanation ties directly into the novel; you can't see into the future, and no matter what you do, you're always trapped by your past. If only we all had the opportunity to direct our own garden of forking paths.

When I recovered from the relentless terror of Shirley Jackson's House on Haunted Hill, I searched for another novel that flies out of the gate like a rocket-powered robin, whispering horrors in my ear with the loveliest of voices.

A re-release of Charlotte Armstrong's Case of the Weird Sisters fell into my lap, and more than made the grade. Armstrong maintains a a fierce commitment to suspense and character, even as certain aspects of the narrative fall flat.

Alice Brennan trips lightly through a poorly thought-out engagement into the house of the titular weird sisters, each nursing a debilitating handicap and a desperation for cash.

As I read it, 3 other series came to mind: Hercule Poirot, contemporary Doctor Who and a whole body of self-referential film noir.

These may sound unrelated. They're not.

Each case relies upon an interloper who not only happens upon the mystery, but also ingratiates him (let's face it, usually him) self with the primary players in the case.

I love The Case of the Weird Sisters unabashedly, even though it lays bare some of the most problematic aspects of the type of storytelling I describe. Doctor Who, despite being a science-fiction yarn, may represent this storytelling best: it relies upon the viewer relating to the earthbound narrator, who controls the story until the Doc appears. At which point, the Doctor takes over all agency, and our earthbound audience stand-in becomes nothing more than an observer.

::experiences sudden worry that the Charlotte Armstrong reading audience MAY NOT crossover to the Doctor Who audience, but c'est la vie::

Armstrong belies this; Alice is the lead, through and through. In fact, you can practically sense editorial medding; the tale's too feminine somehow, starting and ending with her love life, so we have to introduce MacDougal Duff as the lead, even though he leaves five pages in, only to reappear at the 27% mark.

That's a sizable chunk of the novel, ample time to forget that Duff even exists. And when he commandeers the narrative, our emotional hook becomes less strong. He enters the scene without any real connection to the characters (his knowing Alice is a silly coincidence at best) and absolutely no stake in how events turn out - he can always just leave.

This sort of thing can be written off as a necessary evil in a weekly tv show, but in a self-contained novel, it's a curious choice, and one that robs the narrative of urgency. We want this to be about Alice. The eerieness of the House of the Weird Sisters perfectly reflects the cobwebs in her own mind. As she works to sweep them away, we want to be with her, not with the interloper.

All this notwithstanding, the novel was a great read, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Despite the weirdness of Duff's interruption, he's as entertaining as any of the other characters, and that's what saves the novel. Armstrong's greatest strength is crafting the atmosphere, and I have to say, I was sorry to leave.

Duty dictates that The Oncoming Hope writes of Veronica Mars. For before The Oncoming Hope adopted a whole range of Doctor Who related aliases (aliasi?), all the internet handles (and the Oncoming fashions) were based on Veronica Mars (and as fans know, you can never just call her Veronica).

I actually can't believe I get to write about this show again. I discovered both blogging and fandom through it, and even though we obsessives eventually went our separate ways, we still run into each other in the darkest corners of the internet...

...or so it seemed.

For we were the few who watched the show when it aired.

But we do not begrudge those who found it after season 1, on the recommendation of one thriller writer whose name rhymes with Freven Ding.

We do not begrudge the Whedon-ites who found the show after prominent guest appearances by Willow, Cordelia, and Numfar himself.

We don't even begrudge the sorority girls who found the show after the CW cross-promoted it with guest appearances by Kristen Cavalleri (like...who?) and various other members of America's Forgotten Top Models.

But we do begrudge this:

Cause here's the thing about Veronica Mars. It was genuinely niche, a show for the geeks, from a time before geeks controlled the pursestrings.  Marvel hadn't yet assumed its disturbing stronghold on Hollywood and geek culture, Doctor Who was still that weird show on PBS with tinfoil aliens and styrofoam sets, and Star Trek wasn't even a lens flare in JJ Abrams' eye. So being the first to watch it is meaningless; there's never been any kind of mainstream push behind it.

Few watched Veronica Mars when it aired, but we desperately wanted all our friends to watch it. Even TWOP couldn't hide its unabashed glee (and this was when TWOP gave positive reviews to NO ONE (before it was bought out)) at this weird little show that was technically perfect and wonderfully plotted (read the season 1 recaps if you think I'm kidding; "glowing" barely scratches the surface).

So when I think about this Kickstarter, I don't think about it as a means for the WB to test out new production models, I don't think of it as surrendering some private nerddom to the mainstream, I think of it as what it is; a bunch of super fans had the chance to fund something they love. This beloved thing was never going to get any mainstream or institutional support. This is not Firefly, which had twice the ratings of VM when it aired, and already had its shot at a movie.

I think of this as a paean to what the internet used to be. When fandom wasn't manufactured, when it depended on a small group of people desperate to love and to promote the thing they loved. They didn't need to own it, they didn't need to feel like it was their own, they just felt that it was special enough to be shared.

And so it is. Every one of my close friends from high school and college eventually caught up to it, on the strength of my love for it. They love it too, and I never feel like their love is worth any less than mine; I just feel grateful that they gave it a chance.

This Kickstarter, no matter the implications, will connect more people with a show that they're likely to love. And for that, I'm grateful. And for the first time, I opened my wallet.

The United States Democratic Review must be one of the strangest publications in our nation's brief history. A strong proponent of Jacksonian democracy (and the ugliest aspects of Jacksonian democracy - annexation and manifest destiny), it also published work by a number of humanist and transcendental thinkers. Despite an editorial position that constitutes the worst of American jingoism, brilliant (and prescient) pieces, like the one below, snuck in.

I've referred to the original periodical, and cannot find an attribution. The logical assumption, then, would be that the editor wrote it, but its strong support of human rights, and the rights of a "lesser species", suggests otherwise. The Sepoy rebellion is a classic case of the victor writing the history - as far as the British Imperialists were concerned, it never happened. But to everyone else, the act was plain - one man killed a missionary, and the British army slaughtered 30,000 Indians and called it "civilized".

You don't need to look far to see recent incidents that mirror this. Anyway, read it and play along in the comments.

Abuses of Victory - British Morals in India (Dec. 1858, in the United States Democratic Review)

In exploring the annals of history, on almost every page is seen a record of the triumphs of one nation over another nation - of one race over another race. If this record is prepared by the victorious party, it is filled with exaggerations of the magnitude of its triumphs; teems with eulogy of the victors, and with detractions from the vanquished. If, on the contrary, the record emanates from the defeated party, a very different picture is drawn; then the pencil of the artist paints the character of the victors in deep crimson, and the pen of the historian draws black lines around their memory. In this manner successful brutality and force may be placed before the world in the light of heroism and patriotic achievement - sometimes even robed in the mantle of Christianity - while an unsuccessful effort to maintain the right, and defend the innocent, is stigmatized as barbarous and infamous; - and this is history. Prejudices as deep as these, it is feared, have controlled English writers in recording the events consequent upon the war of their country with India.

The history of that war, while it does but simple justice to the bravery of Englishmen, is a sealed book to the impartial truth of what has really been enacted in that distant country by British officers and soldiers. An occasional account of the doings of the English army in India reaches us through other sources than their own, and a recital of their deeds chlills the blood of the most cruel, as did the statements of the butchery by the infuriated Bengal Sepoys of foreigners who were in India at the commencement of hostilities.

The halo of glory that should have decked the brows of the heroic Havelock, Lawrence, Neill, and Nicholson, was dimmed by the blood of a hundred thousand defenceless natives in the subsequent conquests and brutalities by the British army. The wrath and indignation of the civilized world were justly aroused when the barbarous Sepoys waded through seas of Christian blood to secure the heads of two or three missionaries whom they regarded as their enemies; but no word of reproach is heard against the British soldiery when they form a catacomb of the corpses of thirty thousand Sepoys, whom they slaughtered in cold blood, for no other cause than that one of their number was guilty of a barbarous murder; and he had been delivered to the English for execution when demanded, but this could not appease their thirst for revenge.

Were the true history of this devastating war written, many barbarous exhibitions of this kind would be recorded to the shame of British victories in India. After conquering their degraded and imbecile foes, they assume or acquire the instincts of the blood-hound, and trail them wherever they flee, until the native soil of India is saturated with innocent blood - and this brutality the proud nation of Britain calls "civilized warfare. To use their own language, they

"Through SOFT degrees
Subdued them to the peaceful and the GOOD."

If the British historian who attempts to illustrate the humanizing and christianizing influence of the war in India, by the lines just quoted, was a mere satirist endeavoring to create in the public mind the most sickening disgust for the inhumanity and heartlessness practised by the conquerors of India, he coul d not find two lines better adapted to his purpose. "Through soft degrees" indeed - through the cannon, sword, rifle and the bayonet - they "subdued them to the peaceful and the good!"' Such hypocritical cant was never before employed by any writer claiming respectability, in discussing a subject of such solemn importance as that attached to the extinction of a nation, who, although not far advanced in civilization, were enjoying a large share of independence and contentment, until invaded by British rapacity, and by unscrupulous adventurers, who first sought their wealth, afterwards their liberty, and finally, their lives.

The writer referred to, and who penned the lines above extracted in eulogy of the British administration in India, admits that the nations, at least those inhabiting the country of the Five Rivers, were in the enjoyment, at an early period of their history, of a system of government well adapted to promote their interests as an independent people. He says, "Its form of government was a federation of chieftains, each independent of others, who met together at intervals to provide for their common safety, and furnish each his armed contingent for the public service."  Their motto was Wa Gooroojee ha Kalsa - Victory to the state of Gooroo. In their religion's creed they taught that all men were equal in the sight of God - that distinctions of caste were not a principle of faith - that differences of religion did not debar men from a common charity. Socially, they occupied a fair position,--industry and frugality were visible everywhere among them. This, in brief, seemed to be the condition of the people of India previous to being oppressed by taxes, and despoiled of their lands and their liberty by the conquering army of England, urged on by a ministry as false to its own nation as it was heartless and cruel to the inhabitants of India.

But it is not our present purpose to enter into a discussion of the merits of this war, nor would we have referred to it at this time, except for the fact that the latest advices from India seem to present a condition of moral degeneracy among the people, growing out of British influence and conquest, which is unparalleled in infamy in the the most barbarous ages.

Why people don't talk about Teddy Roosevelt more saddens me. His biography is full of baffling and wonderful surprises (such as this incredible tale of reading and reviewing Anna Karenina while chasing bandits down a frozen river in the Dakotas).

For example, H.G. Wells (quoted from Edmund Morris's essay on Teddy in This Living Hand: And Other Essays):

He hadn't, he said, an effectual disproof of a pessimistic interpretation of the future. If one chose to say America must presently lose the impetus of her ascent, that she and all mankind must culminate and pass, he could not deny that possibility. Only he chose to live as if this were not so. He mentioned my Time Machine...

He became gesticulatory, and his straining voice a note higher in denying the pessimism of that book as a credible interpretation of destiny. With one of those sudden movements of his he knelt forward in a garden chair -- we were standing, before our parting, beneath the colonnade -- and addressed me very earnestly over the back, clutching it and then thrusting out his familiar gesture, a hand first partly open and then closed.

"`Suppose, after all,' he said slowly, `that should prove to be right, and it all ends in your butterflies and morlocks. THAT DOESN'T MATTER NOW. The effort's real. It's worth going on with. It's worth it. It's worth it, even so.' . . .

"I can see him now and hear his unmusical voice saying, `The effort -- the effort's worth it,' and see the gesture of his clenched hand and the -- how can I describe it? - - the friendly peering snarl of his face, like a man with the sun in his eyes. He sticks in my mind at that, as a very symbol of the creative will in man, in its limitations, its doubtful adequacy, its valiant persistence, amidst complexities and confusions. He kneels out, assertive against his setting -- and his setting is the White House with a background of all of America.

I always enjoy how nearly every account of meeting Teddy Roosevelt is narrated in the style of a seduction; he's a man who leaves a powerful impression on all he sees.

And besides, can you think of another President who would not only read but have thoughts about contemporary science fiction?

Silver Linings Playbook earns its ending in a way few movies do, let alone recent ones. The film concentrates on something that's usually treated as a simple waypoint in other movie journeys: finding a way to peek your head out from behind the Sisyphean boulder, even when all the signs suggest you should continue to hide. The boulder causes continuous crushing pain, but at least it's pain you're familiar with.

And speaking of crushing pain, do not be mistaken; the first 30 minutes of the movie are profoundly uncomfortable. You will be squirming in your chair, especially when "the incident" is revealed, the moment that lands Patrick Solitano Jr. in the mental hospital.

Patrick (and who knew there was an actor hiding inside Bradley Cooper?) gets out of mental hospital, only to land in a more abstract prison. He suffers from dreams he can't let go, he's oppressed by his parents, he's written off so often that when anyone shows him kindness, he can't even recognize it (and notice that these moments are when he's most explosive).

When he meets Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany, the real fireworks happen (and not the good kind). They need each other's help, but it's dark and desperate - Pat can't see beyond his own need to reconnect with his estranged wife, and Tiffany never loses sight of her own needs for even a second (take THAT manic pixie dream girl meme). She's not gonna put up with his blindsided bullshit, and if that's the side of himself he brings to work, she doesn't hesitate to manipulate him outright.

It's a complex situation with no easy solutions, and would have been a disaster without Jennifer Lawrence's nuanced performance. Also stay tuned for Robert De Niro, who actually acts for the first time in thirty years (and he's just as terrific as you remember him being).

Mental illness is often treated as a plague upon other people - an affliction for the weak or the mutated or the poorly raised. But when it comes down to it, who hasn't felt the atmosphere become so tight, so oppressive, that you feel like space is literally closing in? When you can't see anything inside your head, let alone outside of it? We write those moments off, "I was stressed," "I haven't gotten enough sleep lately," but as soon as a doctor puts a name to someone else's bad moment, we cease to treat it as a natural part of human experience, but as an unforgivable failing.

At the end of the day, you still have to live, you still have to function. But that isn't easy, and Silver Linings Playbook doesn't pretend it is. Go see it. It deserves all it's Oscar noms (and if there's a God in the academy, it will win Best Picture).

D.H. Lawrence, now mostly remembered for Lady Chatterley's Lover and the censorship trial that followed, also had a stellar career in poetry (which many regard as superior to any of his novels). They possess an animal vibrance that stands in sharp contrast to his more cerebral contempories (T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was published in the same year, 1917).

One can easily imagine that the narrator of the two poems below would not only dare to eat a peach, he would eat it off his lover's body and spit it in the face of his enemies. Kick off your new year with a little bit of passion. Enjoy!

"New Year's Eve" by D.H. Lawrence

There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!

"New Year's Night" by D.H. Lawrence

Now you are mine, to-night at last I say it;
You’re a dove I have bought for sacrifice,
And to-night I slay it.

Here in my arms my naked sacrifice!
Death, do you hear, in my arms I am bringing
My offering, bought at great price.

She’s a silvery dove worth more than all I’ve got.
Now I offer her up to the ancient, inexorable God,
Who knows me not.

Look, she’s a wonderful dove, without blemish or spot!
I sacrifice all in her, my last of the world,
Pride, strength, all the lot.

All, all on the altar! And death swooping down
Like a falcon. ’Tis God has taken the victim;
I have won my renown.

Every review I've read of Les Miserables compares it to the musical that birthed it, which feels slightly like comparing Texas to Louisiana without any mention of the rest of the United States, let alone the world. So I'm gonna be the nerd who talks about the book, which only seems fair since, at the end of the day, the movie is a translation to a new medium, just as the musical was a translation from a novel, which in turn was translated and mistranslated from the original French.

What we're seeing on screen, ultimately, is the videotape of the videotape of the videotape. They've taken the original text and carved it up into strangely shaped pieces, excising character and context and leaving in the glossy bits. This approach worked fine for Mamma Mia (disagree in the comments) because at least Mamma Mia was a fun romp. Oscarbait Les Miserables is a series of soul-destroying set-pieces grounded in not even an iota of human agency.

It finds a humanity with its side characters (Thenardiers, Enjolras, many other nameless revolutionaries) that it never matches with the leads. There goes Anne Hathaway's snotty nostril, there goes the ever-pinkening bags under Hugh Jackman's eyes, and Cosette? Oh Cosette. I never knew you (though I knew you so well in the novel).

What frustrates me most is how little this film paid attention to the prime rule of film - economy in storytelling. Now, economy doesn't simply mean cutting out portions of the text, it means that you boil the story down to the essentials.

Character Slaughter

At the end of the film, here's what I'd have thought of the characters if I hadn't read the novel:

1. Jean Valjean is a Panglossian do-gooder whose relentless commitment to "morality" has no foundation in reality (which couldn't be further from his character in the novel, who's deeply conflicted at all turns. If you remember, when Jean Valjean goes to the battlements, he's undecided whether to save Marius or to kill him).

2. Marius is the shallowest romantic on the planet (this hurts, because Novel Marius was my first great love, the literary reflection of my idealistic/suffering 12-year old self). Seriously, what a wet wanker is FilmMusical!Marius.

3. Cosette? WHAT COSETTE? All I see is an OBJECT who is barely even half of a person (In the novel, she gets her own book for a reason. She's the optimistic striver who is tired of being an object, and makes choices. CHOICES). This hurts even more because Amanda Seyfried sounded TERRIFIC. Couldn't you give her a role, you guys?

Les Miserables as a Film

There's plenty of commentary elsewhere on Les Miserables filmic failures (oh those closeups. What really burns me is that Tom Hooper actually had multiple cameras on each actor, AND STILL CHOSE THESE DAMNED CLOSEUPS. Like, "Guys, forget the plot. What we really need now is an establishing shot of Eddie Redmayne's nasal freckles.").

Guys, this burns me to say. I really looked forward to the movie, and am sad that it isn't something I can rewatch over and over. But quite frankly, by the time we hit Valjean's seventh song, I was ready for him to die, and die swiftly (and don't get me started on Russell Crowe's "singing").

I've seen the musical, and I don't remember it being such an poorly thought out adaptation of the novel. But perhaps this is a reflection of the rule of Chicago - you can't just film the damn stage musical, you have to alter it to fit the new medium.

Oncoming Hope out. Play nicely in the comments.

This Christmas, we wanted to add some literary spice to your drinking.

Part of what made Dickens's work come so vividly to life was his attention to small details in small lives. This Christmas, you too can drink like Scrooge and Cratchit.

1. "Charles Dickens's Own Punch"

The man himself wrote the instructions for his eponymous punch in an 1847 letter to one "Mrs. F." (aka Amelia Austin Filloneau):

Peel into a very common basin (which may be broken in case of accident, without damage to the owner's peace or pocket) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin and with as little as possible of the white coating between the peel and the fruit, attached. Add a double handful of lump sugar (good measure), a pint of good old rum, and a large wine-glass of good old brandy; if it be not a large claret glass, say two.

Set this on fire, by filling a warm silver spoon with the spirit, lighting the contents at a wax taper, and pouring them gently in. Let it burn three or four minutes at least, stirring it from time to time. Then extinguish it by covering the basin with a tray, which will immediately put out the flame. Then squeeze in the juice of the three lemons, and add a quart of boiling water. Stir the whole well, cover it up for five minutes, and stir again.

This would be the punch that young David Copperfield offers Mr. Micawber:

“But punch, my dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, tasting it, “like time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment in high flavour.” (Chapter XXVIII - Mr. Micawber's Gauntlet)

2. "Smoking Bishop"

"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!" (A Christmas Carol)

Smoking bishop was not actually a Dickensian creation. It was a popular tavern drink, which Dr. Johnson defines as "a cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges and sugar." I'd give you the recipe but there's a variety on the web, from Jonathan Swift to Dickens' own father.

3. "Negus"

"Mr. Feeder, after imbibing several custard cups of negus, began to enjoy himself." (Dombey and Son)

Negus might be found all over English literature (Jane Eyre drinks it when she heads to Thornfield Hall, it features at a Mansfield Park party, and it's ALL OVER Dickens).

But the definitive version comes from Mrs. Beeton herself, who describes it as "a beverage usually drunk at children's parties." If that were the case today, I imagine children's parties would look a hell of a lot like Buster Bluth on grape juice:

Let's just say, the drink's not exactly virgin. Per Mrs. Beeton:

INGREDIENTS: To every pint of port wine, allow 1 quart of boiling water, ¼ lb of sugar, 1 lemon and grated nutmeg to taste.

DIRECTIONS: Put the wine into a jug, rub some lumps of sugar (equal to ¼ lb) on the lemon rind until all the yellow part of the skin is absorbed, then squeeze the juice and strain it. Add the sugar and lemon-juice to the port wine with the grated nutmeg; pour over it the boiling water, cover the jug, and, when the beverage has cooled a little, it will be fit for use.

Enjoy your Dickensian drinks, and a happy holiday to all!