Charles Dickens bicentennial, and his link to Poe

PHILADELPHIA — “Look at that beast,” said Gerald Dickens, laughing. “He’s terrifying.”

The smiling British actor, a great-great-grandson of writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870), second only to Shakespeare in the lineup of English literary superstars, points to Grip, a stuffed raven about the size of a big cat mounted on a branch in a case within a second glass case in the rare-book section of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

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(AP/AP) - Charles Dickens.

So fond was Dickens of the bird, who could talk, pop champagne corks and hector horses, pets and children in the Dickens household, that at the pet’s passing in March 1841 he was moved to tell friends about Grip’s last hours.

“On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed “Halloa old girl! (his favorite expression) and died. The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles but that was play. He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired,” Dickens said, unable to continue.

Strange as it might sound, the dead bird and accompanying year-long Dickens program at the Free Library probably provide the perfect means for the American culture vulture to celebrate not only Dickens’s 200th birthday on Feb. 7, but also the little-known yet astonishing impact of Grip on American letters and popular culture to this day.

“That’s because Grip is ‘The Raven,’ ” said Edward G. Pettit, a lecturer at La Salle University, author of “Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia” (History Press, 2012) and consultant to the library’s coming year of exhibits, readings, pub crawls and other events to mark Dickens’s ties to Philadelphia and, more subtly, Poe’s shadow behind Dickens.

Poe (1809-49) was a literary critic in Baltimore, New York and, for six years, Philadelphia. (After his wife died, he wandered back to Baltimore, where he died mysteriously in the streets.) In 1841, he reviewed Dickens’ serialized new novel, “BarnabyRudge” for Graham’s Magazine, explained Pettit. The novel, long out of favor, centers on anti-Catholic riots in London and a strange hero named Rudge, who has a goofball talking raven named Grip. At the end of the fifth chapter, Grip makes a noise and someone asks, “What was that — him tapping at the door?”

Another character responds, “’Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter.”

In his review, Poe both accurately predicts the outcome of the serialized novel, and suggested that a spooky raven like Grip could have a more weighty role in literature.

“Two years after Dickens visited Philadelphia, when both met and groused about copyright infringement,” Pettit continued, “Poe writes ‘The Raven,’ with its haunting refrain of ‘Nevermore.’ ” The poem, for which he was paid $15 (about $350 in inflation-adjusted dollars today) “sweeps Poe to instant fame, if not fortune, and generations of American kids get their first exposure to poetry, usually in high school or junior high, through ‘The Raven.’ ”