Ice Skating in Literature

In answer to Shawn's last posting (and not surprisingly to anyone who knows me) the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of ice skating in literature is Mr. Pickwick's immediately recognizable physique on the ice! It occurs in Chapter 30 of the The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (affectionately known as The Pickwick Papers). You have to love Dickens' title for chapter 30:

HOW THE PICKWICKIANS MADE AND CULTIVATED THE

ACQUAINTANCE OF A COUPLE OF NICE YOUNG MEN

BELONGING TO ONE OF THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS; HOW

THEY DISPORTED THEMSELVES ON THE ICE; AND HOW

THEIR VISIT CAME TO A CONCLUSION

It is Dickens' first novel and tells of the ramblings of Mr. Pickwick and his friends, Nathaniel Winkle, Augustus Snodgrass and Tracy Tupman and is considered one of Dickens' funniest.

The original illustrator for this novel was Robert Seymour and this is his rendering of the ice skating event ....

We do have part of the MS for the Pickwick Papers at the Rosenbach which you have seen if you attended the 2009 Romance at the Rosenbach tour.

But there is yet another image of this event in Dr. R's collection, this one by Arthur Burdett Frost (1851 - 1928). It's a familiar scene and one seen on many holiday cards.

Here is the info from the Rosenbach web - site...

"Black and white reproduction image on India paper from ”A Portfolio of Twelve Original Illustrations Reproduced from Drawings by A. B. Frost to Illustrate ’The Pickwick papers’ ” published London: A.J. Slatter, 1908.

Title given in List of Plates as ”’Stop an Instant, Sam,’...Chap XXX”. Image depicts two men on a frozen lake. A man in ice skates hangs on the arm of a second man without skates. A group of men and women appear in the background. ”A.B. Frost” is printed at the lower right, within the image."

And YES, Shawn, I would love to go ice skating with you some of these days!