Flora and Fawning

Being myself a progressive liberal, I turned immediately to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible as soon as it became available in 1946.  Hide-bound conservatives in those days called it the Reversed Virgin because the translation of Isaiah 7:14 (“Behold, a young woman shall conceive”) differed from the hallowed orthodoxy of the King James Version.  Nevertheless, and to my surprise, I find that I quote Ephesians 4:32 to myself from the King James Version:  “Be ye kind one to another.”  Kindness is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of God’s chosen ones (Colossians 3:12).

The more I read around in the great novels of Charles Dickens the greater is my delight.  The more I read about the great man himself the greater is my sorrow.  Like most of us, Dickens could be kind, but he was also very cruel.  Even in my most generous judgment there is a distressing gap between the life and work of Dickens.  I occasionally wonder what I would have done if I had been his pastor and therefore responsible for him and to him.

The most obvious issue pertains to his wife of 22 years (and the mother of his 10 children).  Rich and famous at age 46, Dickens put Catherine aside and took up with Ellen Ternan, an 18 year old actress.  This sordid little affair is all too human and all too common.  It is naturally (if not morally) explained in David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire:  Strategies of Human Mating.

More interesting and challenging is the uncommon Dickens of a problem concerning Maria Beadnell.  Just into his twenties Charles Dickens fell wildly in love with a girl named Maria.  Her name was like the sound of music.  It was another West Side Story.  Seldom has a young swain combined a nature so passionate and so articulate.  Dickens star-crossed, pain-filled, and doomed love for Maria Beadnell was later and forever spread before the world in his thinly disguised autobiography.  David Copperfield (DC) and Charles Dickens (CD) – we all get it.

In Dora Spenlow, Dickens painted a portrait of Maria Beadnell as every young boy’s adorable, unsuitable, and forever lost first love.  Sadly, Charles Dickens, unlike David Copperfield, never found his Agnes Wickfield, so true, so beautiful, so good, “the better angel of my life” (Chapter 60).  Maria’s parents judged young Charles too poor in purse and prospect to be considered as a serious suitor for their daughter’s hand.  Their budding relation was broken off and Maria returned all Charles’ letters.  But not before making copies – presumably for the nostalgic feminine pleasure of an occasional hop around on a young man’s bleeding heart.

During the ensuing years, Dickens became rock-star famous, and Maria, now married and motherly, got back in touch with her old admirer, rekindling his almost inexpressible delight.  In the first blush of his enthusiasm to meet her again, Charlie forgot that, while he would be looking with essentially the same eyes, the woman he would see was twenty years different.  Her youthful enchantment had entirely disappeared.  To his dismay and disgust, Dickens found Maria Beadnell to be fat, forty, flighty, and finally foolish.  He wanted nothing to do with her.  And some years later rejected her request for help when her husband’s business failed.

Except for profound theological conviction, nothing seems to be beyond Dickens’ ability to describe.  He skewers poor Maria on a spit and roasts her to a turn both rare and well done.  The boy-lover, David Copperfield, now grown up appears as Arthur Clennam in Little Dorrit.  Maria Beadnell reappears as Flora Finching.  The description could hardly be more glorious as literature, and it could hardly be more brutal as reality.  Even Flora’s noble characteristics just make her silly ones the more devastating.  Dickens could never be charged with fawning over Flora.

Most of us rightly oppose the gratuitous infliction of grief on any person.  Nevertheless, I think I would advise my parishioner, Charles Dickens, “Life is short, but art is long.  Your depictions of Flora and Dora are among the most precious treasures of English literature.  That they refer to the same, living woman will soon be covered by the scab of history.”

“And, for the dear old times’ sake, Charlie, be ye kind.  Send her the money she needs.”

A Belated Father’s Day Reflection

To this point in history, little attention has been devoted to masculinist, or more precisely – fatherist, biblical exegesis.  When this important field is better recognized, I will offer the following father’s perspective on Luke 1:41:  “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb.”  Obviously, as is the way with women, Elizabeth related this information to Mary who passed it on to Dr. Luke, who wrote it down.  Mary and Elizabeth interpreted the event as a miraculous acknowledgement of the Messiah.

Having something alive and kicking inside your body must be an extremely weird experience which, I dare say, most men have never had the slightest desire to share.  Women, or at least some women, think their unborn child doing trampoline exercises is not weird but wonderful.  When my wife was pregnant she was always waddling up to request that I “feel the baby” leaping around.

In expecting our third child I was quite relaxed because by then I had taught Margaret all I knew about how to give birth.  When we got to the hospital, the physician asked me if I wanted to come into the delivery room.  I told him, “Nothing doing” because I had a book I wanted to read.  Besides, I had successfully completed my part of this process some months before.  However, he insisted that since I was present at the conception I should also be present at the delivery.  As a result I put on a white coat, a bandit’s mask, and informed the doctor that at the first opportunity I planned to faint dead away.  He said I was not allowed to faint because some student nurses were attending who had never observed the father in the delivery room.  I gave permission for them to look all they wanted, but to avoid stepping on me since I would be stretched out on the floor.

In the delivery room I understood why the doctor had insisted on my presence.  I was given the most important part of the entire medical procedure.  My task was to keep a cold, wet cloth on the mother’s brow.  This was not easy to do since Margaret and the doctor were animatedly discussing a movie they had both seen.  After a few minutes, and while I was concentrating mightily on my difficult assignment, the doctor said in a firm voice, “Push, Mother.”  I leave it to you to judge the likelihood that I so far forgot myself as to abandon my task, jump up, wave my arm, and shout “Push, Mother!”  Margaret says it is very hard to push and laugh at the same time.

As soon as our son was born, my wife pointed out that in Africa where she was born the umbilical cord was bitten in two.  Her physician demurred.  I think he had bad teeth.  Nevertheless, it was abundantly clear that Jonathan was my true son since his very first act in this world was to urinate on the doctor, incidentally decreasing his birth weight by about two pounds.  Since I knew the amount of the bill I would shortly receive from that physician, I had the strongest urge to perform the same action myself.

At this point the doctor helped Margaret off the delivery table, put my baby on his wet arm, and took Margaret with his dry arm.  I grabbed her other arm and with six student nurses trailing along we walked down the corridor to her room.

Now here is the most amazing part of my nativity story.  Somewhere behind us in that hospital was the entire University of Texas Longhorn Marching Band in parade performance.  I walked very proud and straight.  The second miracle is that I seemed to be the only one in our group who could hear the drum rolls celebrating my outstanding accomplishment.

There are those who say the hen delivers and the rooster crows, but being a father is clearly a job for a real man.  It is always nice to have mothers nearby when the baby is born, but I am sure Zechariah and Joseph had great stories to tell and it is a crying shame that nobody bothered to record them.