Writing the Storm

 

As I mentioned last week, I recently read finished re-reading David Copperfield. When I came to Chapter 55, titled “Tempest,” I was swept up in Dickens’ description of a powerful storm. The highest praise I can give him is to reproduce excerpts here for your reading enjoyment.

To set the stage, these first passages occur while David Copperfield is traveling from London to Yarmouth on the evening mail coach.

It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as it, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. …

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

…

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had it stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.

Upon reaching Yarmouth, David took a room at an inn and went down to the shore for a closer look.

Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

…

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rendering and upheaving of all nature.

I wish I could write like that.

__________

The painting of the storm at sea is by Robert Witherspoon, a 19th Century British artist. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Remembering High School English

 

I just finished reading David Copperfield for at least the second, and possibly the third or fourth, time. But it’s the first reading in high school that sticks out in my mind. I was particularly struck by these two passages describing David’s stepfather after David’s mother died.

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair.

. . .

[He] took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room.

The teacher asked us to write a character study about somebody in the story, and I chose Mr. Murdstone. Most readers consider him to be a mean, hard-hearted man, and he is, but my paper concluded that he had a soft side and deserved to be pitied because of the strength of his grief.

I don’t remember what grade I received on that paper, but it was probably an A since that was my normal achievement in Mr. Leemgraven’s junior and senior English classes. I remember another paper for the specific reason that I received only an A- on it. The assignment was to critique an article from The New Yorker. I don’t remember anything about the content except that it used exaggeration as a literary advice and I didn’t think it worked. My problem was that I used “exaggerated” or one of its other forms several times, always spelling it with one “g.” Mr. Leemgraven marked me down for the spelling, and I wasn’t happy. I argued that at least I had been consistent, but I still ended up with that A-.

By my senior year, I had decided I wanted to be a lawyer. So when Mr. Leemgraven assigned a research paper, I chose the case against Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard during a robbery. I especially enjoyed reading through the court transcripts. I didn’t know if they had done it, but I concluded that the guilty verdict was a miscarriage of justice because the state had not met it’s burden of proof.

Mr. Leemgraven was a good teacher, and I learned a lot from him. I don’t remember ever telling him how much I appreciated him as a teacher before he died in 1985.

But I wish I had.

__________

The image at the top of this page is from the original 1849 serial publication of David Copperfield and is in the public domain because of its age. I didn’t find a reference to the cover illustrator, but since the interior illustrations were done by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), I assume he did the cover as well.