A Sleep To Startle Us

Carla René

Published by Carla René, Smashwords Edition

Copyright (c) 2010 Carla René

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A Sleep To Startle Us

Do go on, mama!" said Monica, clapping her hands. "You never finish what you begin to say."

"Very well," said Mrs. Dickens. She tucked the blanket tighter around her daughter's rosy cheeks, for their old chambers, while the envy of many, carried winter's drafts in its cracks and sills. "Do you remember where I left off?"

"You were about to convey the manner in which grandfather happened upon the idea for his now famous story."

"Ah yes, and here we go. Mind! This is the way it was relayed to me by my father, and you, should you have need, shall, hand it down by rote with much the same façon de parler.

"By the year of our Lord,1843, your grandfather's fame had spread throughout Europe and the Americas, his articles and essays appearing weekly in London's periodicals. He was never in want of a story idea, for he loved to take long walks through the city streets, and one would never need ask what it was he set his eyes upon during those walks, for the details would appear in print in his next work.

"However, just before putting his pen to paper to write his now famous story, a period of time in which no ideas came almost finished him. Nothing flowed, nothing sparked inspiration, no muse touched his shoulder lightly in honour of a fresh scheme. For many months this artistic annex continued, nearly sending your poor grandmother to take spirits, which-she could never do-since the Dickens family had long been people of temperance . . . ."

"Mama! Please! Do not torture me further by prolonging the tale!"

"Alright, done. It began on an unusually frigid night in November . . . ."

*****

Charles Dickens sat alone in his drawing room, staring transfixed into the flames, as if, by sheer force of his retinas, maintaining eye contact could draw the warmth from the grate. So caught up in his own mentation, was he, that his wife's entry behind him went unnoticed.

"Will you spend yet another evening in thought," she asked, "deserting your one true passion, which is to write?"

He said nothing, but continued to stare.

"It happens to everyone, I am sure," she continued.

"Never to me," he said, with much melancholy. "I have made a decision: I will never put pen to paper again for as long as my days on this Earth remain."

Catherine had never heard such lecture from him before, and this news, while possibly nothing more than a plea for sympathy, even though her husband was not prone to it, rattled each sense to her marrow, and she decided it serious.

"I am sure you do not mean this, Charles. It will pass. You must give yourself time."

"Time? One word I have written not these past eight months. I feel as if the well of my very soul has been emptied, for I have nothing left. I have stood idly by, helpless as a newborn, watching the hearts of the thousands of homeless children, wanting for shelter as well as mercy, while many of them remain disabled from ordinary life, who seem to drift across the landscape of the nineteenth century, discarded and forgotten."

"That visit to Field Lane ragged school in Saffron Hill in September really rent your heart," Catherine said, almost in a whisper.

"And did it not yours as well? Pray tell me, why, in God's infinite wisdom, does He allow such rapacity-at the cost of such undeserved suffering? I tell you, I cannot bear it further." He returned his gaze to the fire once more.

"Are you unwilling to allow your pen to feel what your heart is incapable of articulating at the moment? The Charles I married was a radical to the marrow, and oh, my, what power that pen, which you are unwilling to wield, doth possess."

He sat in silence.