Mixed Up Dickens! Trivia Quiz

Answer: They will have trouble dancing.

Miss Mowcher, a single hairdresser, was extremely short. Heep, tall and lanky, was clerk to Mr. Wickfield, and had designs on his daughter. Neither was married. The only possible correct answer is, due to their extreme contrasting heights - they would have had a difficult time dancing at the wedding. Dickens first describes Miss Mowcher (who was based on his wife's chiropodist) thusly: "I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all" ("David Copperfield")

His introduction of the Uriah Heep character, thought by some to be modeled after Hans Christian Anderson, is classic: "When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person-a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older-whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise. ("David Copperfield")

Answer: She shoots him for more food.

Lady Dedlock's French maid Hortense ("Bleak House") was dismissed in favor of another woman, and so gave aid to lawyer Tulkinghorn in discovering Lady Dedlock's secret - that she had borne a child out of wedlock - knowledge that Tulkinghorn then used to blackmail Lady Dedlock. When Tulkinghorn betrayed Hortense, she shot him. The Hortense character was based on Marie de Roux Manning, an 1849 murderess whose story inspired certain events in "Bleak House". Mr. Bumble ("Oliver Twist") was the master of the workhouse where Oliver lived his young years. He married Mrs. Corney and later, in poverty, became a resident in the same workhouse - no secret benefactor for him - that was a reference to "Great Expectations".
In the scene that became iconic of Dickens' treatment of working house abuses, Bumble confronts young Oliver Twist: "The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
"Please, sir, I want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle. " ("Oliver Twist")

Answer: He will represent her in court.

Serjeant Buzfuz ("Pickwick Papers") was a barrister who represented Mrs. Bardell in her suit against Samuel Pickwick. He bullied the witnesses into giving incriminating testimony and Pickwick was falsely convicted. Miss Havisham, ("Great Expectations") was an austere old woman who lived at Satis House, where she continually wore her wedding dress surrounded by the yellowing remnants of her jilted wedding day. Miss Havisham was the guardian of Estella, not Rosa, who was the young student in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". The Christmas turkey was of course, procured by a boy as an agent for Ebenezer Scrooge ("A Christmas Carol") for delivery to the Cratchits in this memorable passage:
"Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!
'What's to-day?' cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
'Eh?' returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
'What's to-day, my fine fellow?' said Scrooge.
'To-day?' replied the boy. 'Why, Christmas Day.'
'It's Christmas Day!' said Scrooge to himself. 'I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!'
'Hallo!' returned the boy.
'Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?' Scrooge inquired.
'I should hope I did,' replied the lad.
'An intelligent boy!' said Scrooge. 'A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there? -- Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?'
'What, the one as big as me?' returned the boy.
'What a delightful boy!' said Scrooge. 'It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!'
'It's hanging there now,' replied the boy.
'Is it?' said Scrooge. 'Go and buy it.' " ("A Christmas Carol")

Answer: the Artful Dodger

Jack Dawkins ("Oliver Twist") was the most successful of Jewish fence Fagin's thieves. He trained Oliver Twist in pick pocketing and was later convicted and sentenced to transportation. Kit Nubbles ("The Old Curiosity Shop") was the shop boy at the Curiosity Shop. Kit himself was framed by Sampson Brass, who falsely accused him of stealing in an attempt to wrest the shop away from Nell's grandfather. Legend holds that Dickens used The Old Curiosity Shop on Portsmouth Street in Holborn, established in 1567, as the model for the setting of the novel, although it isn't clear whether any Holborn proprietors have had any serious gambling issues. Dickens described the shop as follows: "One of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.

There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams." ("The Old Curiosity Shop")

Answer: teacher and church clerk

Nicholas Nickleby ("Nicholas Nickleby") seeking to provide for his mother and sister after the death of his father, took a position as assistant master at the Dotheboys Hall school. Unsettled by the treatment of the pupils, he left to become an actor with Crummle's stage company.

Mr. Wopsle ("Great Expectations") was a Parish clerk who aspired to the ministry. "Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was `thrown open,' meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it." ("Great Expectations")

He despaired of entering the church, and instead became an actor, taking the stage name 'Waldengarver' "We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution -- not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything." ("Great Expectations")

Answer: Mr. Darnay

It's a teachers' convention! Dickens wrote often in his stories of schoolmasters and school scenes, many of which portrayed harsh or poignant episodes in his young life at Wellington House Academy in London. Wackford Squeers, ("Nicholas Nickleby") was the awful master of Dotheboys Hall. Mr. Sharp ("David Copperfield") was the first master at Salem House, where Mr. Mell was the assistant schoolmaster. M'Choakumchild ("Hard Times") was Schoolmaster in Gradgrind's school. Mr. Marton ("The Old Curiosity Shop") was one of the few kindly teachers in Dickens' writings. Mr. Creakle ("David Copperfield") the harsh Headmaster of Salem House Academy was based on Dickens own Wellington Academy headmaster William Jones. Dr. Blimber ("Dombey and Son"), Emma Peecher ("Our Mutual Friend"), and Bradley Headstone ("Our Mutual Friend") round out the faculty. Charles Darnay ("A Tale of Two Cities") was tried for treason in London and was acquitted due to his resemblance to Sydney Carton. Truth be told though, many a teacher can be heard to say at the end of term: ""It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." ("A Tale of Two Cities")

Answer: Jails

Dickens' attitude about prisons in Victorian England was largely influenced by his experience of his father's incarceration in Marshalsea debtor's prison when Dickens was 12. He later wrote "Little Dorrit" as a way of illustrating the horrors of incarceration.

In the very beginning of the story, Dickens wastes no time or words in painting an expressive image of his subject matter: "A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement.

As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean." ("Little Dorrit")

Answer: Gabriel Varden

In a desperate attempt to defy Bill Sykes and save Oliver Twist, Nancy rendezvous with Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow on the Surrey bank steps of the bridge that lead to the Thames River. She is followed by Sykes' spy Claypole. Dickens described the anxious moment: "The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro -- closely watched meanwhile by her hidden observer -- when the heavy bell of St. Paul's tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the nightcellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all." ("Oliver Twist")

The locksmith, Gabriel Varden ("Barnaby Rudge") crosses London Bridge to visit Mrs. Rudge in Southwark in the novel "Barnaby Rudge".

While London Bridge was the only means of crossing the Thames in London until 1750, in the ensuing century, when Dickens was writing, four more bridges had been added - the Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo and Westminster.

Answer: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, the Cratchits, Miss Havisham

"[The waiter] brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying, very affably, 'Now, six-foot! Come on!'...
'Why you see,' said the waiter, still looking at the light through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, 'our people don't like things being ordered and left. It offends 'em. ...
'What have we got here?' he said, putting a fork into my dish. 'Not chops?'
'Chops,' I said.
'Lord bless my soul!' he exclaimed, 'I didn't know they were chops. Why, a chop's the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain't it lucky?'
So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that, another chop and another potato. When we had done, he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
'How's the pie?' he said, rousing himself.
'It's a pudding,' I made answer.
'Pudding!' he exclaimed. 'Why, bless me, so it is! What!' looking at it nearer. 'You don't mean to say it's a batter-pudding!'
'Yes, it is indeed.'
'Why, a batter-pudding,' he said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my favourite pudding! Ain't that lucky? Come on, little 'un, and let's see who'll get most.'
The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him." ("David Copperfield")

"Mrs Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone-too nervous to bear witnesses-to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose-a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed. Mrs. Cratchit entered with the pudding.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered-flushed, but smiling proudly-with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!'
Which all the family re-echoed.
'God bless us every one!' said Tiny Tim, the last of all. " ("A Christmas Carol")

"`What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with her stick; `that, where those cobwebs are?'
`I can't guess what it is, ma'am.'
`It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!'"("Great Expectations")

Answer: Sophy Wackles ("The Old Curiosity Shop")

Miss Wackles is described by a potential suitor: "When the heart of a man is depressed with fears, the mist is dispelled when Miss Wackles appears; she's a very nice girl. She's like the red red rose that's newly sprung in June -- there's no denying that -- she's also like a melody that's sweetly played in tune."

Betsy Prig ("Martin Chuzzlewit") was "a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse, who, according to the author "had also a beard."

Cleopatra Skewton ("Dombey and Son") was 70, but dressed as though she was 23 in order to attract gentlemen. In a revealing passage, Mrs. Skewton summons her maid, "with the juvenile dress that was to delude the world to-morrow. The dress had savage retribution in it, as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and more hideous than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs. Skewton tried it on with mincing satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as she thought of its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her maid to take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into ruins like a house of painted cards." ("Dombey and Son")

Peg Sliderskew ("Nicholas Nickleby") was the old, ugly housekeeper to Arthur Gride. "Peg Sliderskew gathered up the chosen suit, and folding her skinny arms upon the bundle, stood, mouthing, and grinning, and blinking her watery eyes, like an uncouth figure in some monstrous piece of carving." ("Nicholas Nickleby")

It was a common occurrence for beauty contests to be held throughout European cultures to elect Queens and Kings to preside at local festivities and holidays.

In a modern culture which grows less and less literate, people turn to elaborate virtual communities and adventure games that are populated with interactive characters in order to find a preferable alternative to the world which seems too harsh and uncontrollable for the comfort of the masses. Charles Dickens was the prototypical creator of a fictional world where intensely fascinating characters lived and loved and suffered the triumphs and failures of life where being virtuous always counted for more than simply being virtual.