| The Chimes | |
|---|---|
 Title page of first edition, 1844 with engraving by F.P. Becker |
|
| Author(s) | Charles Dickens |
| Original title | The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In |
| Illustrator | Daniel Maclise Richard Doyle John Leech William Clarkson Stanfield |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novella |
| Publisher | Chapman & Hall |
| Publication date | 1844 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 175 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | A Christmas Carol |
| Followed by | The Cricket on the Hearth |
The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, a short novel by Charles Dickens, was written and published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol and one year before The Cricket on the Hearth. It is the second in his series of "Christmas books": five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840s.
Contents |
Development history [link]
The book was written in late 1844, during Dickens' year-long visit to Italy.[1] John Forster, his first biographer, records that Dickens, hunting for a title and structure for his next contracted Christmas story, was struck one day by the clamour of the Genoese bells audible from the villa where they were staying.
All Genoa lay beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead."[2]
Two days later Forster received a letter from Dickens which read simply: ""We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master Shallow!",[2] and the writing of the book began. Forster describes Dickens' intentions in writing The Chimes as striking "a blow for the poor".
They had always been his clients, they had never been forgotten in any of his books, but here nothing else was to be remembered ... he had come to have as little faith for the putting down of any serious evil, as in a then notorious city alderman's gabble for the putting down of suicide. The latter had stirred his indignation to its depths just before he came to Italy, and his increased opportunities of solitary reflection since had strengthened and extended it. When he came therefore to think of his new story for Christmas time, he resolved to make it a plea for the poor ... He was to try and convert Society, as he had converted Scrooge, by showing that its happiness rested on the same foundations as those of the individual, which are mercy and charity not less than justice.[2]
Dickens returned to London for a week in December 1844 and gave readings of the finished book to friends prior to publication, in order to judge its impact; the artist Daniel Maclise, who had contributed two illustrations to The Chimes and attended two of these events, portrayed the reading of 3 December 1844 in a well-known sketch.[3]
Explanation of the novel's title [link]
The chimes are old bells in the church on whose steps Trotty Veck plies his trade. The book is divided into four parts named "quarters", after the quarter chimes of a striking clock. (This parallels Dickens naming the parts of A Christmas Carol "staves" – that is "stanzas" – and dividing The Cricket on the Hearth into "chirps".)
Plot summary [link]
One New Year's Eve Trotty, a "ticket-porter" or casual messenger, is filled with gloom at the reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers, and wonders whether the working classes are simply wicked by nature. His daughter Meg and her long-time fiancé Richard arrive and announce their decision to marry next day. Trotty hides his misgivings, but their happiness is dispelled by an encounter with a pompous alderman, Cute, plus a political economist and a young gentleman with a nostalgia, all of whom make Trotty, Meg, and Richard feel they hardly have a right to exist, let alone marry.
Trotty carries a note for Cute to Sir Joseph Bowley MP, who dispenses charity to the poor in the manner of a paternal dictator. Bowley is ostentatiously settling his debts to ensure a clean start to the new year, and berates Trotty because he owes a few shillings to his local shop which he cannot pay off. Returning home, convinced that he and his fellow poor are naturally ungrateful and have no place in society, Trotty encounters Will Fern, a poor countryman, and his orphaned niece, Lilian. Fern has been unfairly accused of vagrancy and wants to visit Cute to set matters straight, but from a conversation overheard at Bowley's house, Trotty is able to warn him that Cute plans to have him arrested and imprisoned. He takes the pair home with him and he and Meg share their meagre food and poor lodging with the visitors. Meg tries to hide her distress, but it seems she has been dissuaded from marrying Richard by her encounter with Cute and the others.
In the night the bells seem to call Trotty. Going to the church he finds the tower door unlocked and climbs to the bellchamber, where he discovers the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants who reprimand him for losing faith in man's destiny to improve. He is told that he fell from the tower during his climb and is now dead, and Meg's subsequent life must now be an object lesson for him. There follows a series of visions which he is forced to watch, helpless to interfere with the troubled lives of Meg, Richard, Will and Lilian over the subsequent years. Richard descends into alcoholism; Meg eventually marries him in an effort to save him but he dies ruined, leaving her with a baby. Will is driven in and out of prison by petty laws and restrictions; Lilian turns to prostitution. In the end, destitute, Meg is driven to contemplate drowning herself and her child, thus committing the mortal sins of murder and suicide. The Chimes' intention is to teach Trotty that, far from being naturally wicked, mankind is formed to strive for nobler things, and will fall only when crushed and repressed beyond bearing. Trotty breaks down when he sees Meg poised to jump into the river, cries that he has learned his lesson, and begs the Chimes to save her, whereupon he finds himself able to touch her and prevent her from jumping.
With this the vision ends and Trotty finds himself awakening at home as if from a dream as the bells ring in the New Year, and the book ends with celebrations for Meg and Richard's wedding day
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Main characters [link]
- Toby "Trotty" Veck, a messenger or "ticket-porter", and the main protagonist
- Margaret "Meg" Veck, Toby's 20-year old daughter
- Mrs. Anne Chickenstalker, the local shopkeeper
- Alderman Cute, a Justice of the Peace
- Mr. Filer, a political economist in the Utilitarian mould
- Sir Joseph Bowley, a rich paternalist MP
- Will Fern, a countryman
- Lilian Fern, Will's orphaned niece
Major themes [link]
This is a campaigning story like its predecessor A Christmas Carol, written with the intention of swaying readers towards Dickens' moral message. The chimes represent time, and the main themes of the story are summarized in the three wrongs they accuse Trotty of committing:
• Harking back to a golden age that never was, instead of striving to improve conditions here and now.
• Believing that individual human joys and sorrows do not matter to a higher power.
• Condemning those who are fallen and unfortunate, and offering them neither help nor pity.
'Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good—grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity. And you have done that wrong!'
Literary significance and reception [link]
A Christmas Carol had been extremely well received the previous year, and The Chimes aroused public interest and anticipation. Five different stage productions of the book were running within weeks of publication and nearly 20,000 copies were sold in the first three months. It had a high media profile, and was widely reviewed and discussed. Critical opinion was divided; those sympathetic to its social and political message liked the book, but others thought it dangerously radical. The Northern Star reviewer called Dickens "the champion of the poor"; John Bull rejected his unflattering caricatures of philanthropy.[4] It was certainly a financial success for Dickens, and remained popular for many years, although in the long term its fame was eclipsed by that of A Christmas Carol.
Allusions and references [link]
Allusions to other works [link]
Asking the upper classes to stop interfering with his life and leave him to die, Will Fern makes a bitter reference to the biblical Book of Ruth, deliberately misquoting Ruth's "Whither thou goest, I will go" speech.
Allusions to actual history, geography and current science [link]
The novel's setting is contemporary and the 1840s, the "Hungry Forties", were a time of social and political unrest.
Trotty's conviction that poor people are naturally wicked is influenced by an article in his newspaper about a young woman who has tried to drown herself and her child, and this motif returns at the climax of the book, when Meg is driven to contemplate the same course of action. This is a reference to Mary Furley, a destitute young woman sentenced to death in 1844 for infanticide after her desperation not to return to the workhouse led to a failed suicide attempt in which her illegitimate child drowned.[5] This case caused great public debate in the late spring of 1844. Dickens took part in the general outcry against the sentence, which was eventually commuted to transportation.[6] Among other works inspired by the Furley case is Thomas Hood's poem The Bridge of Sighs.
Alderman Cute is a parody of Sir Peter Laurie, a Middlesex magistrate, alderman and former Lord Mayor of London, known for his determination to "put down" the lower classes and their antisocial behaviour.[7] His remarks on the 1844 Mary Furley case have been cited as one inspiration to Dickens to write The Chimes.
The unnamed young man who harks back to the "good old times" is a reference to the Young England movement. Dickens removed many of these references prior to publication.
Adaptation [link]
In 1914 the work was made into a silent film The Chimes directed by Thomas Bentley.
A musical adaptation of The Chimes was created in 1992 by Lisa Kofod and Gay Donat Reed, with music by Paul Johnson. A staged reading of this work was produced at The Workhouse Theatre in New York City.
The Chimes was adapted into a 24-minute clay-animated film in 2000 by Xyzoo Animation. It won a Cine Special Jury award in 2002.
The Colonial Radio Theatre in Boston produced a full cast radio production of THE CHIMES in 2000, and released on CD by Blackstone Audio in 2007, and re-released by Brilliance Audio in 2011.
In 2004 a stage adaptation by Les Smith premiered at the Southwark Playhouse.
References [link]
- ^ House, Madeline; Tillotston, Kathleen; Storey, Graham (2002). "Preface, p.x". The Letters of Charles Dickens. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-812475-9, 9780198124757. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8Xxn8x-JYLMC&pg=PR9&lpg=PR11&vq=Chimes&dq=The+Chimes+Dickens&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html.
- ^ a b c Forster, John. "Chapter V". The Life of Charles Dickens. vol 4. https://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/CD-Forster-4.html#IV.
- ^ Cohen, Jane A (1980). "10". Charles Dickens and his Original Illustrators. Ohio State University Press. pp. 168. https://www.ohiostatepress.org/books/Complete%20PDFs/Cohen%20Charles/13.pdf.
- ^ Slater, Michael (1985). Introduction to The Chimes in Charles Dickens: The Christmas Books, Volume 1.. London: Penguin Classics. pp. 139–140.
- ^ "Gates, Barbara T. Mad Crimes and Sad Histories Chapter 3 at VictorianWeb". https://www.victorianweb.org/books/suicide/03.html. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- ^ Slater, 264
- ^ Sanders, Prof. Andrew (7.11.2006). "Dickens' Law Makers and Law Breakers: Barnard's Inn and Beyond". Lecture transcript. Gresham College website. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=549. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
External links [link]
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Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Online editions
- The Chimes at Internet Archive.
- The Chimes at Project Gutenberg
- The Chimes audiobook at Librivox
- The Chimes – Searchable HTML version.
- The Chimes – Easy to read HTML version.
Film
Theatre
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https://wn.com/The_Chimes
The Chimes (US band)
The Chimes (later Lenny Cocco & the Chimes) were an American doo wop group from Brooklyn.
The group came together under the direction of lead singer Lenny Cocco in the mid-1950s. Their first single was a version of Tommy Dorsey's "Once in a While", released on Tag Records. The song became a hit in the U.S., peaking at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961. The follow-up single was "I'm in the Mood for Love", a song from the 1930s. This hit #38 later that year. In 1962, they began recording as Lenny & the Chimes, and moved to Metro Records and then to Laurie Records in 1963. In 1964, they released the single "Two Times" on Vee-Jay, but broke up shortly after.
In subsequent decades they have re-formed for the doo-wop revival circuit, usually under the name Lenny Cocco and the Chimes.
Members
Original
The Chimes (disambiguation)
The Chimes is a short 1844 novel by Charles Dickens.
The Chimes may also refer to:
See also
Mama Said
Mama Said may refer to:
See also
Mama Said (Lukas Graham song)
"Mama Said" is a single by Danish band Lukas Graham. The song was released as a digital download on 26 June 2014 through Then We Take the World. It achieved success in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The song was written by Lukas Forchhammer and Stefan Forrest, with music from Forrest and Morten Ristorp.
Music video
A music video for "7 Years" was first released onto YouTube on 23 October 2015 at a total length of three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
Track listing
Chart performance
Weekly charts
Release history
References
External links
Mama Said (Metallica song)
"Mama Said" is a power ballad by American heavy metal band Metallica from their sixth album Load, with music and lyrics by James Hetfield (music credited to Hetfield/Ulrich). The lyrics represent a man or boy who is learning to find his own way in life away from his mother. The song is directly written about Hetfield's difficult relationship with his mother, who died of cancer when he was 16 years old.
The song stands out among Metallica's predominantly metal catalog; its genre-blending style incorporates country, blues, and hard rock. "Mama Said" begins with acoustic guitar and, during the chorus, becomes flush with a country-flavored vocal harmony and steel guitar. Toward the end the song features power chords on electric guitar.
"Mama Said" has never been featured as a part of Metallica's live setlist. Hetfield has performed this song live, however, using a single steel-stringed acoustic guitar with no drum or bass accompaniment. He also performed it along with country singer Jessi Colter on CMT's Outlaw Concert, along with Hetfield's cover of Waylon Jennings's "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand."
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Mama Said
by: Dionne BromfieldMama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this Mama said
(Mama said, mama said)
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this my Mama said
(Mama said, mama said)
I went walking the other day,
Everything was going fine,
I met a little boy named Billy Joe
And then I almost lost my mind
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this Mama said
(Mama said, mama said)
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this my Mama said
My eyes are wide open
But all that I can see is,
chapel bells are callin for everyone but-a me
but I don’t worry cause
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this Mama said
(Mama said, mama said)
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this my Mama said
And then she said someone will look at me
like I’m looking at you one day,
then I might find
I don’t want it any old way,
so I don’t worry cause
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this Mama said
(Mama said, mama said)
Mama said there’ll be days like this,
There’ll be days like this my Mama said
Mama said, mama said
Hey! Don’t you worry,
Mama said mama said
Hey! Don’t you worry now.
Mama said mama said,