村の絵を描いてくれている友だちはわたしなんか足下にも及ばない量の多読をして
います。
文法だいっ嫌い、辞書も引いたことがないという強者です。
その友だちが最近読んだおもしろい文章を送ってきました。
これはつまり読み聞かせ・・・
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The Penny Reading was a form of entertainment already out of date in most places; but at Candleford Green it was still going strong in the ‘nineties. For it the schoolroom was lent, free of charge, ‘By kind permission of the Managers’, as stated upon the handbills, and the pennies taken at the door paid for heating and light. It was a popular as well as an inexpensive entertainment. Everybody went; whole families together, and all agreed that the excitement of going out after dark, carrying lanterns, and sitting in a warm room with rows and rows of other people, was well worth the sum of one penny, apart from the entertainment provided.
The star turn was given by an old gentleman from a neighbouring village, who, in his youth, had heard Dickens read his own works in public and aimed at reproducing in his own rendering the expression and mannerisms of the master.
Old Mr Greenwood put a tremendous amount of nervous energy into his reading. His features expressed as much as his voice, and his free hand was never still, and if the falsetto of his female characters sometimes rose to a screech, his facetious young men were almost too slyly humorous, and some of his listeners felt embarrassed when his deep, low voice he kept for pathetic passages broke and he had to pause to wipe away real tears, his rendering still had an authentic ring which to Dickens lovers was, as villagers said about other items, ‘well worth listening to’.
The bulk of his audience did not criticize; it enjoyed. The comic passages, featuring Pickwick, Dick Swiver, or Sairy Gamp, were punctuated with bursts of laughter. Oliver Twist asking for more and the deathbed of little Nell drew tears from the women and throat-cleanings from the men. The reader was so regularly encored that he had been obliged to cut down his items on the programme to two; which, in effect, was four, and, when he had finished his last reading, and with his hand on his heart, had bowed himself from the platform, people would sigh and say to each other: ‘Whatever comes next’ll sound dull after that!’
They showed so much interest that one would naturally have expected them to get Dickens’s books, of which there were several in the Parish Library, to read for themselves. But, with a very few exceptions, they did not, for, although they liked to listen, they were not readers. They were waiting, a public ready-made, for the wireless and the cinema.
ディケンズというと、名前を知らない人も多いでしょうけれど、
19世紀イギリスの偉大な（！）大衆小説作家です。
現代最高の（？）大衆小説作家スティーブン・キングはディケンズをめざしていると
わたしは見ています。
それがいちばん感じられるのは The Green Mile です。
結構な長編ですが、最初に出版されたときは6分冊で刊行されました。
これはディケンズの小説の出版形式をまねたものでしょうね。
（実際にはディケンズは月刊雑誌に連載していました。なお、英語版のwikiで
The Green Mile を調べても Dickens との比較は出てきませんね・・・）
あのころの小説はとにかく長い・・・
そして文章も長い・・・ １文が１ページにわたるなんていうことはちっともめずらしく
ありません。まさに多読向きの小説で、訳していたら、1ページと持たないでしょう。
そのディケンズは朗読会を頻繁にやったようです。結構なお金になったとか。
それで体を壊したと言われていますね。
上の文章は娯楽の少なかったころの、田舎の村の様子を描いています。
この友だちはこういう文章が好きで、ときどき（数年に1回くらい）見つけた
おもしろい文章を送ってきます。たしかに村の小学校の一室に集まってくる
人たちの様子が目に見えるです。
（もっと送ってくれればいいのに！）
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