Word: dombey
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Dombey and Son the Hon. Mrs. Skewton, mother of the second Mrs. Dombey, suffers from what is now known to be cerebral arteriosclerosis. Dickens accurately follows the relentless progress of the disease. First she suffered from tremor, and "the palsy played among the artificial roses [on her hat] like an almshouse full of superannuated zephyrs." After a stroke "she lay speechless and staring at the ceiling for days; sometimes making inarticulate sounds . . . giving no reply either by sign or by gesture, or in her unwinking eyes." Dickens describes her recovery, the change in her temperament-and the second stroke that...
Actually, the varied fare proved less a virtue than a vice. By Dickens standards, too much of Williams' material was close to mediocre. The brief annals of Paul Dombey exposed Dickens' mawkish side; a little-known ghost story, The Signalman, raised no goose pimples. Surprisingly, the one real nonhumorous success was a dramatic pastiche from A Tale of Two Cities. Even much of the humor was secondbest. Williams did score a bull's-eye with a minor yarn, Mr. Chops. If a showman as gifted as Emlyn Williams ever goes to work on the great comic figures...