American Playhouse (1981–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine - full transcript
The arrival in a small town of a stranger who calls himself 'Charles Dickens' makes a magical and lasting change in the lives of an imaginative 12-year-old boy and a loving young woman.
[whimsical music]
[gentle piano music]
- [Narrator] Imagine a
summer that would never end.
Imagine a boy who would never grow up.
Imagine a barber who was never young.
Imagine a dog that would live forever.
Imagine a small town,
the kind that isn't lived in anymore.
Ready?
Begin.
[cheerful music]
[dog panting]
[train horn whistling]
- Hey, something's coming!
- Only the noon train route.
Just the train that comes at noon.
- No, something's really coming.
Big things, important things.
- Now what's important
to me, Ralph, is hair.
Sweep.
- Gosh, you'd think this stuff
just grew right up off the floor.
- Right, I didn't cut all that.
Darn stuff just grows on its own.
Look at that.
Did you ever see so many
different colors of hair
and chin fuzz?
Here's Charlie Smith's top knot.
And there, there's all that's left
of Mr. Harry Joe Flynn.
- Gosh, Mr. Wyneski, I
guess you know just about
everything in the whole world.
- Just about.
[train horn whistling]
- There it is again.
The train.
And something on the train.
- Noon train doesn't stop
in Greentown on Friday.
You know that, Ralph.
- But I got this feeling.
- I got a feeling the
hair's gonna grab me, Ralph.
- I'm thinking of changing my name.
- What's wrong with you today, boy?
- It's not me.
It's the name.
Just listen to it, Ralph.
- Ain't exactly harp music.
- Ralph's dumb.
I'm going to change my name by tonight.
- Julius for Caesar?
Alexander for the great?
- Don't care what.
Help me, huh Mr. Wyneski?
Find me a name.
[train clattering]
Here it comes.
- There it goes.
- No, there it doesn't go.
[train bell clattering]
[wheels screeching]
- [Conductor] Greentown.
- I just gotta see, Mr. Wyneski, please?
- Get along, Ralph.
- Oh thanks, Mr. Wyneski, thanks.
[dog barking]
- Come and tell me the worst.
- I bet he's headed of our house.
A new boarder, right dog?
I got this feeling.
[suspenseful music]
[gate creaking]
- Hello boy.
Hello dog.
- Heck, how'd you know
where we were hiding?
- In a former incarnation I was a boy.
Time before that, if memory serves,
I was a more than usually happy dog,
but to the issue at hand.
The station master has directed me here.
[tapping on door]
Does the sign say true, boy?
- Best rooms in town.
- [Dickens] Beds?
- Mattresses so deep you sink down happy.
- Food?
- Hot biscuits every morning,
peach pie noon,
shortcake every supper.
Right dog?
[dog barking]
- I'd sign my soul away.
- I beg your pardon.
- Manner of speaking, ma'am.
Not meant to sound un-Christian.
This bright man has just been telling me
about your accommodations.
I'm looking for--
- There's a room free next
to Mr. Wyneski, grandma.
- Well I know that, Ralph.
Won't you come in?
He is a great boy, isn't he?
Now then, I raised him from a baby
after our Lorene was taking from us.
She and her husband were
missionaries, you know.
Jungle fever.
- God moves in mysterious ways, madame.
His purpose, to reveal.
- Why that's just what our minister said.
Are you a minister?
- No ma'am.
- C-H...
- Read upside down, dear boy?
- Yes, sir.
A-R-L-E-S,
Charles!
- [Charles] Right.
- [Grandma] Mighty fine hand.
- Thank you, ma'am.
- D-I-C-K-E-N-S.
- Yeah?
What?
- Dickens.
- Good.
- Charles Dickens, grandma.
- [Grandma] A mighty fine name.
- Fine, it's great!
But I thought you were...
- Dead?
No, alive in fine fiddle
and glad to meet a recognizer, fan
and fellow reader here.
- Well, mind your manners.
Help Mr. Dixon with his bag.
- Dickens, grandma.
- Well that's what I said.
- Sarah, looks like we have a new boarder.
- Yes, Hal.
And a writer.
You two should get along famously.
- Grandpa, I'd like you to
meet Mr. Charles Dickens.
- Any friend of Nicholas
Nickleby is a friend of mine.
- Thank you sir.
- Anywhere will do, Pip.
Oh, you don't mind if I call you Pip, huh?
- Oh boy, oh no sir!
Pip's fine.
- [Grandma] You're not
from around these parts,
are you Mr. Lickens?
- Dickens, ma'am.
- [Grandma] Eh?
- Not from around here, no.
This is the first time
I've had the pleasure.
- Dear me Pip, I seem to be
fresh out of pads and pencils.
Might it be possible--
- Here, it's a yellow
Ticonderoga number two.
And an Iron Face Indian
notebook number 12.
- Extraordinary.
Extraordinary.
Pip, I've traveled two long weeks
with an idea for a story.
Bastille Day, you know it?
- July 14th, French Fourth of July.
- Remarkable boy!
It will be set during the
great and terrible revolution
for the rights of man.
And it must be done by Bastille Day.
Will you help me
preach the tide gates
of the revolution, Pip?
- With these?
- Lick the pencil tip, boy.
Top of the page, title.
Title...
Pip, what is a rare, fine title
for a novel that happens half
in London, half in Paris?
- A...
- Yes?
- A Tale...
- Yes.
- A Tale of...
Two Cities.
- Madam, this boy is a genius.
- I read about this day in the Bible.
Everything ends at noon.
- Put it down, Pip, quick!
A Tale of Two Cities.
Then book the first mid page,
Recalled to life.
Chapter one, The Period.
It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom.
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the epic of belief.
It was the epic of incredulity.
It was the season of light.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope.
It was the winter of despair.
[dishes clattering]
- Ralph, Ralph!
Come and set the table.
- Pip, Pip!
- [Ralph] Yes sir.
- Dinner time, Pip.
Come help your grandma.
- How did you know about Pip?
- Good job.
Oh, I heard the name fall out
of the window an hour ago.
Oh, mind the salt and pepper.
- Pip?
- [Grandpa] Oh, evening Sam.
- Oh, Mr. Wyneski.
I'm real sorry about not coming back.
I'll work twice as hard tomorrow, honest.
- Who's this Pip?
- Me.
Mr. Wyneski, I gotta tell you,
I've been everywhere this afternoon.
The Dover Coats and the Dover Road.
Paris.
Traveled so much I got writer's cramp.
- Paris?
Pip, when I was 12
I changed my name on several occasions.
Dick, that was Dead Eye Dick.
And John.
That was for Long John Silver.
Then Hyde.
That was for the other half of Jekyll
- I never had any other
name except Bernard Samuel.
- None?
- None.
- Have you proof of childhood then, sir?
Or are you a natural phenomenon
like a ship be calmed at sea?
- Huh?
- Nevermind, Bernard Samuel, nevermind.
- Dinner's ready, Mr. Dixon!
- Dickens, grandma.
- Dickens?
- Mr. Charles Dickens.
We have a new boarder.
A novelist who is starting a new book
and has chosen Pip to
work as his secretary.
Ralph.
- Worked all afternoon.
Made a quarter.
- A novelist named Dickens?
Surely you don't believe it?
- I believe what a man tells me.
Until he tells me otherwise.
Then I believe that.
A man with a good demeanor
has entered our house.
He says his name is Dickens.
For all I know that's his name.
He implies he is writing a book.
I pass his door, look in,
and yes he is indeed writing.
Should I tell him not to?
It's obvious.
He needs to set the book down.
- A Tale of Two Cities.
- A taste.
- Good evening.
- Mr. Dickens,
I'd like you to meek Mr. Wyneski,
the greatest barber in the world.
- Mr. Dickens, will you
lend us your talents, sir,
for grace?
- An honor, sir.
Oh Lord of the bountiest table,
oh Lord who furnishes
forth an infinite harvest
for your most respectful servants
gathered here in loving humility,
oh Lord who garnishes our feast
with a bright radish
and resplendent chicken,
who sets before us the
wine of the summer season,
lemonade, and who maketh us humble
before the simple potato pleasures,
the low born onion and in the finale,
so my nostrils tell me the bread
of vast experiments and fine success.
The high born strawberry shortcake,
beautifully smothered and may be drowned
in fruit from your own warm garden patch.
For this and this good
company, much thanks.
Amen.
- [Group] Amen.
- Amen, I guess.
[cheerful music]
- [Narrator] Oh, what a summer that was.
None like it before in Greentown history.
I never got up so early,
so happy ever in my life.
Out of bed at five minutes to.
In Paris by one minute after.
Six in the morning,
the English channel boat from Calais,
the white cliffs, sky
a blizzard of seagulls.
Dover, then the London coach
and London Bridge by noon.
Then back to Paris and tea at four.
And there I was Mr. C. Dickens,
A-one, first class,
Greentown, Illinois secretary.
My eyes bugging, my ears popping,
my chest bursting with joy.
For I dreamt of being a writer too.
And here I was unraveling a tale
with the very finest best.
Mr. Wyneski.
Somehow I neglected his shop.
Somehow I forgot the
mysterious barber pole
that came up from nothing
and spiraled away to nothing,
and the fabulous hair that
grew on his white tile floor.
[slow music]
[dishes clattering]
- You know, you move any faster
you're going to turn into
a streak of lightning.
- Grandpa, I'm in a hurry.
- That's what I've been meaning
to talk to you about, son.
- Huh?
- Your grandma can spare
you for a few minutes.
And your Mr. Dickens can spare
you for a little while, too.
Now I've been thinking, Ralph.
- Name's Pip.
- Pip, well now I do like that boy Pip.
Fast on his feet.
Hard worker.
Might even turn into a
famous writer someday.
But this Ralph,
well your grandmother and I
have sort of gotten used
to this boy named Ralph.
He used to like to go fishing
with me Saturday morning.
He used to hang around the kitchen
when his grandma baked peach pies.
Used to play out there in the
yard with his friend Henry.
Come to think of it,
I haven't seen Henry all summer.
Then--
- Grandpa.
- Let me finish.
Then there's Mr. Wyneski.
I don't think even he
knows why he is so unhappy.
He's had a tooth pulled during the night
by a mysterious dentist
and now his tongue is aching
around the empty place
where the tooth was.
- We're not in church, grandpa.
- Oh, cut the parables huh?
In simple words, son,
Mr. Wyneski is a man
with no wife, no family.
Just a job.
A man with no family needs someone,
somewhere in the world,
whether he knows it or not.
- I'll wash the barber
shop windows tomorrow.
I'll oil the barber pole
so it spins like crazy.
- I know you will, son.
I know.
Now you run on upstairs.
I'll take care of this disaster in here.
- Oh thanks, grandpa, thanks.
Charles Darney's in big trouble.
Went to Paris, got sent to prison.
I gotta see what happens next.
- Sure.
Sure.
- Of course crowds could have been better.
Most people don't know a
good thing when they see it.
- [Dickens] It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
[indistinct chatter]
It was the age of wisdom.
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the epic of belief.
It was epic of intigunity.
[loud crackling]
[gasping]
- All set, Mr. Mezmo.
You look very distinguished.
- Dr., that's Dr. Mezmo.
- Dr. Mezmo.
- Should be a good crowd tonight.
The last night always brings them in.
You taking the misses?
- Uh, no.
- Oh, I get it.
Is she pretty?
- Is she pretty?
- Nevermind.
Enjoy the show, man.
Mezmo's magic show.
Come see it tonight.
- Ralph, Ralph, come here!
- Hi Henry, name's Pip.
- Oh I forgot.
After dinner you wanna go
digging for night crawlers?
I found this great spot where
there's a whole bunch of them.
Nobody knows where it is except me.
I'll show you where it is if you want to.
- I'd like to go, Henry,
I just, I gotta help Mr. Dickens.
- You don't know what
you're missing, though.
I caught 100 last May!
- Ralph, Henry,
if you boys are finished visiting
maybe you could do me a favor.
- Sure Mr. Wyneski, anything.
- Sure.
- For some reason this Dr. Mezmo fellow
got the idea that I wanted to go
to this magic show of his tonight.
Last performance.
Gave me these tickets.
Could you boys take them off my hands?
- Can we!
- The magic show.
Oh thanks, Mr. Wyneski.
- All right, all right, get along home,
both of you.
- But Mr. Wyneski--
- It's all right, Ralph.
You put in a pretty good days work,
for a change.
[car horn honking]
- I can't go Henry.
- What?
- I can't go, though.
Charles Darney's in prison.
He might be killed.
I got to help Mr. Dickens work it out.
- No, you're crazy.
- You're going to miss Miss Frostbite,
just because then dumb old story.
- It's not dumb, Henry.
They got rabbits coming out of hats,
and a knife thrower.
And Miss Frostbite gets sawed in half.
- Henry, imagine you always
wanted to be a baseball player.
- But I do want to be a baseball player.
- Imagine one day,
just out of nowhere,
one of the greatest
baseball players of all time
comes walking right
through your front door.
- Babe Ruth?
- Babe Ruth.
And he tells you
you can help them out at batting practice,
and you follow him around.
And you're in the middle
of a great season.
- 60 home runs.
- Would you just leave
him in the middle of
an important game.
Top of the ninth inning, score tied.
- Okay, okay.
- Will you do me something?
- What?
- I can't tell Mr. Wyneski
I'm not going tonight.
He wouldn't understand.
- What do you want me to do you?
- Remember all the acts,
especially Miss Frostbite.
So if Mr. Wyneski asks
me how the show is like
I can tell him.
- Oh, I don't think we should do that.
- I know it's telling a lie, Henry,
but it's for good reason.
If we don't, Mr. Wyneski
will never forgive me.
- Okay.
- Thanks Henry.
I'll do you a favor sometime.
I promise.
Friends together,
friends forever.
- That's some favor.
- [Dickens] I have saved you.
It was not another of the dreams
in which he had often come back.
He was really here.
And yet his wife trembled
in a vague, but heavy fear was upon her.
You see Pip,
she knows the Charles Darney
will not be saved until he's out of Paris.
Now, all the air around
was so thick and dark,
the people were so
passionately revengeful.
- Ralph.
You haven't told me about
the show last night.
How'd it go?
Was the amazing Miss
Frostbite really amazing?
- That's what I have to talk
to you about, Mr. Wyneski.
- You boys have a good time?
- Mr. Wyneski.
- Now what's this?
Did you and that Henry get
into mischief last night?
Tell me the truth.
- Mr. Wyneski, I'm
trying to tell the truth
but it's just hard.
Henry didn't get into
trouble last night, I did.
I didn't go to the show.
- Didn't go?
You waited all summer for that blame show.
- I know, Mr. Wyneski.
I was real happy you gave
me the tickets, honest.
And I wanted to go,
but I just couldn't go last night.
It was a matter of life and death.
- Ralph Spaulding, what in
tarnation are you talking about?
- Charles Darney, he was on trial
about to get sent to the guillotine.
- Charles Darney, the guillotine.
- I know you're mad, Mr. Wyneski,
and I reckon I got it coming,
but I just didn't know
how to tell you yesterday.
I was gonna pretend I went,
but I couldn't tell a lie,
not to you.
Mr. Wyneski, Mr. Wyneski!
[slow music]
- A little late aren't you son?
- Sorry, grandpa, I--
- Something the matter?
- No grandpa, nothing.
- Thank you, Mr. Dickens.
- And where is Mr. Wyneski?
- Mr. Wyneski is out brooding in the yard.
- Brooding?
- Yep.
Brooding's the word.
Saw him kick the rose bush,
kick the green ferns by the porch,
decided against kicking the apple tree.
God made it too firm.
There, he just jumped on a dandelion.
Uh oh, here he comes.
Moses crossing a Black Sea of bile.
- Mr. Wyneski.
- I'll say grace tonight.
Oh Lord, who delivered me a fine June
and a less fine July,
help me get through August somehow.
Deliver me from the mobs and riots
in the streets of London and Paris,
which drum through my room night and morn.
Chief members of said riots being one boy
that walks in his sleep,
a man with a strange name,
and a dog that barks after
the rag tag and bobtail.
Give me the strength to
resist the cries of fraud and bunk artists
that rise in my mouth
and help me to say quietly
in all deference to the lady present
that if one Charles Dickens
is not on the train tomorrow,
bound for potter's grave or lands end,
I shall like Delilah with malice,
shear the black lamb
and fry his whiskers for
twilight dinners and late midnight snacks.
I ask oh Lord, not mercy for the mean,
but simple justice.
All agreed say amen.
[silverware clattering]
[door slamming]
[footsteps clicking]
[tapping on door]
- Mr. Dickens?
Mr. Dickens?
- No one by that name here.
No one by that name in this bed,
in this room,
in this world.
- You, you're Charles Dickens.
- You ought to know better.
A long time after midnight,
moving on toward morning.
- You're a world famous author.
So what cause you got to
feel sorry for yourself?
- You know, and I know.
I'm Mr. Nobody from nowhere.
- Goodnight.
- Wait.
Pip.
- [Pip] Yeah?
- Let's both be quiet.
Come sit down.
It's a fierce awful time of night.
On the way back to sunset
and 10,000 on a don.
We have need of friends then.
Pip,
I'm a man who could never fit his dream.
- What?
- I mean Pip,
I never became what I wanted to be.
- What'd you want to be?
- A writer.
- A writer, did you try?
- Try?
Oh Lord of mercy, son.
You never saw so much
spit, ink and sweat fly.
I wrote my way through an ink factory.
I busted and broke a paper company.
I ruined and dilapidated
six dozen typewriters.
- Wow.
- You may well say wow.
- What did you write?
- What didn't I write?
The poem, the essay, the play tragique,
the farce, short story, the novel.
1,000 words a day, boy,
every day for 30 years.
Millions of words passed
from my fingers onto paper.
And it was all...
All bad.
- It couldn't have been.
- It was.
Not mediocre, not passing fair.
Just plain outright, mud bath bad.
Friends knew it,
editors knew it.
One strange fine day about
4:00 in the afternoon
when I was 50,
I knew it.
- [Ralph] But you can't
write for 30 years without--
- Stumbling upon excellence?
Gaze long.
Gaze hard, Pip.
Look upon the only man in history
who put down five million words
without ever slapping to
life one puny character
who could rear his head and
cry, "Eureka, we've done it."
- You never sold one story?
- Not a throw away newspaper sonnet.
Isn't that rare?
To be so outstandingly dull.
Nothing ever brought a
chuckle, caused a tear.
Raised a temper, discharged a blow.
And you know what I did
on the day I discovered
I would never be a writer?
I killed myself.
- Killed?
- Did away with, destroyed.
- How?
- I packed me up,
two trucks of my collected works.
Then I took me on a long train ride.
[train horn whistling]
Rode,
a long time at night.
One by one, I let my manuscripts fly away
like panicked birds down the tracks.
One by one,
slow at first, then faster.
Faster.
Faster I chunked them over.
Story after story,
out, out of my arms.
Out of my head, out of my life.
Down they went.
Sunk, drowning,
in night rivers of prairie dust.
In lost contingence of sand.
Lonely rock.
[train horn whistling]
And I opened my fingers,
empty at last.
And when I got off the train
at the end of that long summer
I said, "What, what's this?
I'm a new man."
And I looked in a Flyspecked gum machine
in Peachgum, Missouri.
My beard growing long
and two months of travel.
My hair going wild with a wind
that combed it this
way sane, that way mad.
And I said, "Boy, Charlie
Dickens is that you?"
And the reflection cried,
"Dennis, who else would it be?
Stand back, I'm off to a great lecture."
- Did you really say that, Mr. Dickens?
- God's pillars and couples of truth, Pip.
And maybe the thing that saved me
was the thing that ruined
me in the first place.
- What?
- Respect for my elders,
the grand mobiles and tall mucky mucks
and the lush literary islands,
with me in the dry river
bottom in my canoe.
For oh God, Pip,
how I devoured Tolstoy.
Drank Dostoevsky
Feasted on Demopasonne.
I read too much.
Suddenly I found I could
not forget their books, Pip.
- Couldn't?
- I mean I could not forget
any letter of any word,
of any sentence, of any
paragraph, of any book
that ever passed under these
hungry, omnivorous eyes.
- Photographic memory!
- Bullseye,
all of Dickens.
Hardy, Austen, Poe, Hawthorne,
trapped in this old box Brownie camera
waiting to be printed off my tongue.
All those years, I never knew.
Pip, I had hid it all away.
- And then?
- Well then I bought a fresh paper
and ink for my first book,
and have been delirious and joyful
and a lunatic ever since.
Writing all the books one by one.
Me, Charles Dickens.
- But how do you live?
- I have traveled the continental vastness
of the United States of North America
and settled into write,
lecturing here and there.
Sometimes I lie whole snowbound winters
and little whistle stops.
Sometimes I stay whole summers in one town
before I'm driven off.
- Driven off?
- Oh yes, driven.
For such as your Mr. Wyneski
cannot forgive the fantastic, Pip,
no matter how particularly
practical that fantastic be.
- I don't get it.
- He does not see that we all
do what we must to survive.
Survive,
some laugh, some cry,
some bang the world with fists,
some run,
but it all sums up the same.
We make do.
The world swarms with people, boy,
each one drowning,
but each swimming a different stroke
to the far shore.
- But what about Mr. Wyneski?
- Mr. Wyneski makes do with
his shop and his scissors
and could not understand my
inky pen and lidded papers
and borrowed English soul.
[bell faintly tolling]
Time for me to go.
- No, you can't leave.
You haven't finished the book.
- Pip, dear boy, you
haven't been listening.
- The world's waiting.
You just can't quit in the
middle of A Tale of Two Cities.
- Pip, Pip.
- [Ralph] You can't Mr. Dickens.
- Pip.
- I'm waiting,
they're waiting.
- They?
- The mob at the Bastille.
Lucy Mannet, Dr. Mannet.
Charles Darnay Sydney Carton,
London, Paris, the guillotine.
- Pip, Pip.
- Charlie?
- Where were we this afternoon, Pip?
- Charles Darnay in prison,
saved by Sidney Carton.
- Oh yes, I remember now.
The coach speeding through the darkness
with Darney and Lucy fearful of pursuit.
Take this Pip.
[slow piano music]
The wind is rushing after us.
The clouds are flying after us,
and the moon is plunging after us.
The whole wild night is in pursuit of us.
But so far we are pursued by nothing else.
- Morning, Mr. Dickens.
- Morning, Pip.
- Mr. Dickens, The Tale of Two Cities.
It's finished?
- Done.
Didn't go to sleep.
Working steady.
Done, finished.
- Wow.
[train horn bellowing]
- I'm a,
I'm leaving it for you, Pip.
- Leaving?
[slow cheerful music]
[train bell dinging]
Mr. Dickens, Mr. Dickens,
the book's finished, yeah,
but not published yet.
- You be the executive, Pip.
- Well, wait,
what about David Copperfield
and A Christmas Carol?
If we start now we'll be
done by Christmas easy.
Scrooge, Mr. Dickens, and Marley's ghost.
- Friends of yours, Pip?
- Yours, Mr. Dickens.
Oh gosh, if you don't write
that, they'll never live.
- They'll get on somehow.
[train horn bellowing]
- Mr. Dickens, I'll give you a new title,
Pickwick Papers.
And after that, Bleak House
and Hard Times and Great Expectations.
Oh go on, leave, get away!
You don't deserve reading, you don't!
See if I even bother finish
reading A Tale of Two Cities.
Not me, never!
- Pip.
You mean what you just said?
- You know, you're nothing but a coward.
- Bah humbug, Pip?
- Humbug, I don't give
a blast what happens
to Sidney Carton.
- Why, it is a far, far better thing I do
than I've ever done.
Pip, you must read it?
- Why?
- Because I wrote it for you.
- So?
- So I just missed my train.
40 minutes til the next one.
- Then you got time.
- Time for what?
- Time to meet someone.
Come on, just this once.
And I promise I'll
finish reading your book.
- The library, in there?
- 10 minutes, Mr. Dickens.
Give me 10 minutes.
Just 10, please?
- Pip, what are we doing here?
Let's go.
There's nothing here I--
- Listen!
[pencil scrapping]
- Bless me.
I know that sound.
It's the sound of someone writing.
- Yes sir.
- Writing with a pen and writing...
- What?
- Poetry!
That's it.
[pencil scrapping]
Someone off there in a room.
How many fathoms deep?
Pip, I swear,
writing a poem...
There.
Flourish, flourish.
Scratch, flourish, on, on, on.
Not figures, not numerals.
Not dusty, dry facts.
Feel it sweep, feel it scurry.
A poem by God, yes sir.
No doubt, a poem.
- May I?
- Don't stop her.
Let her go.
May lose inspiration.
- As imperceptibly as grief,
the summer lapsed away.
Too imperceptibly at last
to seem like a perfect...
Ah, Ralph, it's you.
Why you're Ralph's friend.
Mr. Dickens, isn't it?
- Mr. Dickens, I want you to meet--
- Youthful, that last poem.
I also admire
because I could not stop for death
he kindly stopped for me.
Miss Emily.
- Her name is...
- Miss Emily.
- Pleased, but how did you...
- Know you were here?
Why, bless me ma'am.
I heard you scratching away off in here
in that run along rush.
Only poets do that.
- It's nothing.
- Chin high, head up, it's something.
Because I could not suffer that
as a fine, A one, first class poem.
- My own poems are so poor.
I copy hers out to learn.
- Copy who?
- Excellent way to learn.
- Is it, really?
You're not...
- Joking?
No, not with Emily Dickinson.
- Emily Dickinson?
- That means so much coming
from you, Mr. Dickens.
I have read all your books.
- All?
- All that you've published so far, sir.
- Just finished a new one.
A Tale of Two Cities.
- That sounds wonderful.
- And you ma'am?
- Me?
Why, I haven't even sent a
poem to our town newspaper.
- You must, tomorrow.
No, today!
- But I have no one to read them to first.
- Why you have Pip here,
and accept my card,
Charles Dickens, Esquire.
Who will, if allowed,
stop by on occasion
to see if all is well in
this Arcadian silo of books.
- But I couldn't.
- Tut, you must.
For I shall offer only
warm sliced white bread.
Your words must be the
marmalade and some honey.
I shall read long and plain.
You, shorten raptures of life
tempted by that odd delicious death
you often lean upon.
Enough, there.
At the far end of the
corridor, her lamp lit,
ready to guide your hand, the muse awaits.
Goodbye.
- Goodbye, doesn't that mean
God be with you?
- So I've heard the lady, so I've heard.
[gentle cheerful music]
- Good job, Ralph.
That's right, dog.
Why should you move?
You own the place.
[train horn bellowing]
You know Ralph, when I was your age,
more than anything in the world
I wanted to be a railroad man.
- Yeah?
- Sure did.
Wanted to get one of
them conductor's hats,
and sit up in the cabin
and blow that whistle.
- And then?
- Then what?
- Why didn't you?
- Oh, I don't know.
A man grows up,
grows out of the things he used to,
used to want.
- Just like that?
- Just like that.
And here I am.
The world's greatest barber.
You'll find out for yourself, Ralph.
It's all a part of growing up.
- Not me.
I'm gonna grow up and be a--
- A writer.
I know, I know.
- He been bending your ear too?
- [Wyneski] Only ever hour or so.
- This letter came for you today, son.
Thought I'd bring it over.
Special delivery like.
- For me, grandpa?
- To Master Pip Spaulding
from Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Dickens, Esquire.
- Gosh, grandpa.
I wonder where they are.
Dear Pip,
we are in the Aurora tonight,
Felicity tomorrow,
and Alton the night after that.
Charlie has six months
of lectures lined up
and looking forward.
Charlie and I are both working steadily
and are most happy.
- [Emily] Very happy.
He calls me Emily.
Pip, I don't think you know who she was,
but I hope you'll get her poems
out of the library someday.
Well, Charlie looks at me
and says, "This is my Emily."
And I almost believe.
No, I do believe.
We are crazy, Pip.
People have said it.
We know it.
Yet we go on.
But being crazy together is fine.
It was being crazy alone I
couldn't stand any longer.
Some year we may come back to your town.
If you are there call our names
as we know ourselves now,
signed Emily Dickinson.
- P.S., Charlie is my darling.
Well well.
Well well.
- You know, I don't think they're crazy.
- Neither do I, Pip.
Neither do I.
[slow piano music]
- [Narrator] Imagine a
summer that would never end.
Imagine a boy who would never grow up.
Imagine a barber who was never young.
Imagine a dog that would live forever.
Imagine a small town,
the kind that isn't lived in anymore.
Ready?
Begin.
[cheerful music]
[gentle piano music]
- [Narrator] Imagine a
summer that would never end.
Imagine a boy who would never grow up.
Imagine a barber who was never young.
Imagine a dog that would live forever.
Imagine a small town,
the kind that isn't lived in anymore.
Ready?
Begin.
[cheerful music]
[dog panting]
[train horn whistling]
- Hey, something's coming!
- Only the noon train route.
Just the train that comes at noon.
- No, something's really coming.
Big things, important things.
- Now what's important
to me, Ralph, is hair.
Sweep.
- Gosh, you'd think this stuff
just grew right up off the floor.
- Right, I didn't cut all that.
Darn stuff just grows on its own.
Look at that.
Did you ever see so many
different colors of hair
and chin fuzz?
Here's Charlie Smith's top knot.
And there, there's all that's left
of Mr. Harry Joe Flynn.
- Gosh, Mr. Wyneski, I
guess you know just about
everything in the whole world.
- Just about.
[train horn whistling]
- There it is again.
The train.
And something on the train.
- Noon train doesn't stop
in Greentown on Friday.
You know that, Ralph.
- But I got this feeling.
- I got a feeling the
hair's gonna grab me, Ralph.
- I'm thinking of changing my name.
- What's wrong with you today, boy?
- It's not me.
It's the name.
Just listen to it, Ralph.
- Ain't exactly harp music.
- Ralph's dumb.
I'm going to change my name by tonight.
- Julius for Caesar?
Alexander for the great?
- Don't care what.
Help me, huh Mr. Wyneski?
Find me a name.
[train clattering]
Here it comes.
- There it goes.
- No, there it doesn't go.
[train bell clattering]
[wheels screeching]
- [Conductor] Greentown.
- I just gotta see, Mr. Wyneski, please?
- Get along, Ralph.
- Oh thanks, Mr. Wyneski, thanks.
[dog barking]
- Come and tell me the worst.
- I bet he's headed of our house.
A new boarder, right dog?
I got this feeling.
[suspenseful music]
[gate creaking]
- Hello boy.
Hello dog.
- Heck, how'd you know
where we were hiding?
- In a former incarnation I was a boy.
Time before that, if memory serves,
I was a more than usually happy dog,
but to the issue at hand.
The station master has directed me here.
[tapping on door]
Does the sign say true, boy?
- Best rooms in town.
- [Dickens] Beds?
- Mattresses so deep you sink down happy.
- Food?
- Hot biscuits every morning,
peach pie noon,
shortcake every supper.
Right dog?
[dog barking]
- I'd sign my soul away.
- I beg your pardon.
- Manner of speaking, ma'am.
Not meant to sound un-Christian.
This bright man has just been telling me
about your accommodations.
I'm looking for--
- There's a room free next
to Mr. Wyneski, grandma.
- Well I know that, Ralph.
Won't you come in?
He is a great boy, isn't he?
Now then, I raised him from a baby
after our Lorene was taking from us.
She and her husband were
missionaries, you know.
Jungle fever.
- God moves in mysterious ways, madame.
His purpose, to reveal.
- Why that's just what our minister said.
Are you a minister?
- No ma'am.
- C-H...
- Read upside down, dear boy?
- Yes, sir.
A-R-L-E-S,
Charles!
- [Charles] Right.
- [Grandma] Mighty fine hand.
- Thank you, ma'am.
- D-I-C-K-E-N-S.
- Yeah?
What?
- Dickens.
- Good.
- Charles Dickens, grandma.
- [Grandma] A mighty fine name.
- Fine, it's great!
But I thought you were...
- Dead?
No, alive in fine fiddle
and glad to meet a recognizer, fan
and fellow reader here.
- Well, mind your manners.
Help Mr. Dixon with his bag.
- Dickens, grandma.
- Well that's what I said.
- Sarah, looks like we have a new boarder.
- Yes, Hal.
And a writer.
You two should get along famously.
- Grandpa, I'd like you to
meet Mr. Charles Dickens.
- Any friend of Nicholas
Nickleby is a friend of mine.
- Thank you sir.
- Anywhere will do, Pip.
Oh, you don't mind if I call you Pip, huh?
- Oh boy, oh no sir!
Pip's fine.
- [Grandma] You're not
from around these parts,
are you Mr. Lickens?
- Dickens, ma'am.
- [Grandma] Eh?
- Not from around here, no.
This is the first time
I've had the pleasure.
- Dear me Pip, I seem to be
fresh out of pads and pencils.
Might it be possible--
- Here, it's a yellow
Ticonderoga number two.
And an Iron Face Indian
notebook number 12.
- Extraordinary.
Extraordinary.
Pip, I've traveled two long weeks
with an idea for a story.
Bastille Day, you know it?
- July 14th, French Fourth of July.
- Remarkable boy!
It will be set during the
great and terrible revolution
for the rights of man.
And it must be done by Bastille Day.
Will you help me
preach the tide gates
of the revolution, Pip?
- With these?
- Lick the pencil tip, boy.
Top of the page, title.
Title...
Pip, what is a rare, fine title
for a novel that happens half
in London, half in Paris?
- A...
- Yes?
- A Tale...
- Yes.
- A Tale of...
Two Cities.
- Madam, this boy is a genius.
- I read about this day in the Bible.
Everything ends at noon.
- Put it down, Pip, quick!
A Tale of Two Cities.
Then book the first mid page,
Recalled to life.
Chapter one, The Period.
It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom.
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the epic of belief.
It was the epic of incredulity.
It was the season of light.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope.
It was the winter of despair.
[dishes clattering]
- Ralph, Ralph!
Come and set the table.
- Pip, Pip!
- [Ralph] Yes sir.
- Dinner time, Pip.
Come help your grandma.
- How did you know about Pip?
- Good job.
Oh, I heard the name fall out
of the window an hour ago.
Oh, mind the salt and pepper.
- Pip?
- [Grandpa] Oh, evening Sam.
- Oh, Mr. Wyneski.
I'm real sorry about not coming back.
I'll work twice as hard tomorrow, honest.
- Who's this Pip?
- Me.
Mr. Wyneski, I gotta tell you,
I've been everywhere this afternoon.
The Dover Coats and the Dover Road.
Paris.
Traveled so much I got writer's cramp.
- Paris?
Pip, when I was 12
I changed my name on several occasions.
Dick, that was Dead Eye Dick.
And John.
That was for Long John Silver.
Then Hyde.
That was for the other half of Jekyll
- I never had any other
name except Bernard Samuel.
- None?
- None.
- Have you proof of childhood then, sir?
Or are you a natural phenomenon
like a ship be calmed at sea?
- Huh?
- Nevermind, Bernard Samuel, nevermind.
- Dinner's ready, Mr. Dixon!
- Dickens, grandma.
- Dickens?
- Mr. Charles Dickens.
We have a new boarder.
A novelist who is starting a new book
and has chosen Pip to
work as his secretary.
Ralph.
- Worked all afternoon.
Made a quarter.
- A novelist named Dickens?
Surely you don't believe it?
- I believe what a man tells me.
Until he tells me otherwise.
Then I believe that.
A man with a good demeanor
has entered our house.
He says his name is Dickens.
For all I know that's his name.
He implies he is writing a book.
I pass his door, look in,
and yes he is indeed writing.
Should I tell him not to?
It's obvious.
He needs to set the book down.
- A Tale of Two Cities.
- A taste.
- Good evening.
- Mr. Dickens,
I'd like you to meek Mr. Wyneski,
the greatest barber in the world.
- Mr. Dickens, will you
lend us your talents, sir,
for grace?
- An honor, sir.
Oh Lord of the bountiest table,
oh Lord who furnishes
forth an infinite harvest
for your most respectful servants
gathered here in loving humility,
oh Lord who garnishes our feast
with a bright radish
and resplendent chicken,
who sets before us the
wine of the summer season,
lemonade, and who maketh us humble
before the simple potato pleasures,
the low born onion and in the finale,
so my nostrils tell me the bread
of vast experiments and fine success.
The high born strawberry shortcake,
beautifully smothered and may be drowned
in fruit from your own warm garden patch.
For this and this good
company, much thanks.
Amen.
- [Group] Amen.
- Amen, I guess.
[cheerful music]
- [Narrator] Oh, what a summer that was.
None like it before in Greentown history.
I never got up so early,
so happy ever in my life.
Out of bed at five minutes to.
In Paris by one minute after.
Six in the morning,
the English channel boat from Calais,
the white cliffs, sky
a blizzard of seagulls.
Dover, then the London coach
and London Bridge by noon.
Then back to Paris and tea at four.
And there I was Mr. C. Dickens,
A-one, first class,
Greentown, Illinois secretary.
My eyes bugging, my ears popping,
my chest bursting with joy.
For I dreamt of being a writer too.
And here I was unraveling a tale
with the very finest best.
Mr. Wyneski.
Somehow I neglected his shop.
Somehow I forgot the
mysterious barber pole
that came up from nothing
and spiraled away to nothing,
and the fabulous hair that
grew on his white tile floor.
[slow music]
[dishes clattering]
- You know, you move any faster
you're going to turn into
a streak of lightning.
- Grandpa, I'm in a hurry.
- That's what I've been meaning
to talk to you about, son.
- Huh?
- Your grandma can spare
you for a few minutes.
And your Mr. Dickens can spare
you for a little while, too.
Now I've been thinking, Ralph.
- Name's Pip.
- Pip, well now I do like that boy Pip.
Fast on his feet.
Hard worker.
Might even turn into a
famous writer someday.
But this Ralph,
well your grandmother and I
have sort of gotten used
to this boy named Ralph.
He used to like to go fishing
with me Saturday morning.
He used to hang around the kitchen
when his grandma baked peach pies.
Used to play out there in the
yard with his friend Henry.
Come to think of it,
I haven't seen Henry all summer.
Then--
- Grandpa.
- Let me finish.
Then there's Mr. Wyneski.
I don't think even he
knows why he is so unhappy.
He's had a tooth pulled during the night
by a mysterious dentist
and now his tongue is aching
around the empty place
where the tooth was.
- We're not in church, grandpa.
- Oh, cut the parables huh?
In simple words, son,
Mr. Wyneski is a man
with no wife, no family.
Just a job.
A man with no family needs someone,
somewhere in the world,
whether he knows it or not.
- I'll wash the barber
shop windows tomorrow.
I'll oil the barber pole
so it spins like crazy.
- I know you will, son.
I know.
Now you run on upstairs.
I'll take care of this disaster in here.
- Oh thanks, grandpa, thanks.
Charles Darney's in big trouble.
Went to Paris, got sent to prison.
I gotta see what happens next.
- Sure.
Sure.
- Of course crowds could have been better.
Most people don't know a
good thing when they see it.
- [Dickens] It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
[indistinct chatter]
It was the age of wisdom.
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the epic of belief.
It was epic of intigunity.
[loud crackling]
[gasping]
- All set, Mr. Mezmo.
You look very distinguished.
- Dr., that's Dr. Mezmo.
- Dr. Mezmo.
- Should be a good crowd tonight.
The last night always brings them in.
You taking the misses?
- Uh, no.
- Oh, I get it.
Is she pretty?
- Is she pretty?
- Nevermind.
Enjoy the show, man.
Mezmo's magic show.
Come see it tonight.
- Ralph, Ralph, come here!
- Hi Henry, name's Pip.
- Oh I forgot.
After dinner you wanna go
digging for night crawlers?
I found this great spot where
there's a whole bunch of them.
Nobody knows where it is except me.
I'll show you where it is if you want to.
- I'd like to go, Henry,
I just, I gotta help Mr. Dickens.
- You don't know what
you're missing, though.
I caught 100 last May!
- Ralph, Henry,
if you boys are finished visiting
maybe you could do me a favor.
- Sure Mr. Wyneski, anything.
- Sure.
- For some reason this Dr. Mezmo fellow
got the idea that I wanted to go
to this magic show of his tonight.
Last performance.
Gave me these tickets.
Could you boys take them off my hands?
- Can we!
- The magic show.
Oh thanks, Mr. Wyneski.
- All right, all right, get along home,
both of you.
- But Mr. Wyneski--
- It's all right, Ralph.
You put in a pretty good days work,
for a change.
[car horn honking]
- I can't go Henry.
- What?
- I can't go, though.
Charles Darney's in prison.
He might be killed.
I got to help Mr. Dickens work it out.
- No, you're crazy.
- You're going to miss Miss Frostbite,
just because then dumb old story.
- It's not dumb, Henry.
They got rabbits coming out of hats,
and a knife thrower.
And Miss Frostbite gets sawed in half.
- Henry, imagine you always
wanted to be a baseball player.
- But I do want to be a baseball player.
- Imagine one day,
just out of nowhere,
one of the greatest
baseball players of all time
comes walking right
through your front door.
- Babe Ruth?
- Babe Ruth.
And he tells you
you can help them out at batting practice,
and you follow him around.
And you're in the middle
of a great season.
- 60 home runs.
- Would you just leave
him in the middle of
an important game.
Top of the ninth inning, score tied.
- Okay, okay.
- Will you do me something?
- What?
- I can't tell Mr. Wyneski
I'm not going tonight.
He wouldn't understand.
- What do you want me to do you?
- Remember all the acts,
especially Miss Frostbite.
So if Mr. Wyneski asks
me how the show is like
I can tell him.
- Oh, I don't think we should do that.
- I know it's telling a lie, Henry,
but it's for good reason.
If we don't, Mr. Wyneski
will never forgive me.
- Okay.
- Thanks Henry.
I'll do you a favor sometime.
I promise.
Friends together,
friends forever.
- That's some favor.
- [Dickens] I have saved you.
It was not another of the dreams
in which he had often come back.
He was really here.
And yet his wife trembled
in a vague, but heavy fear was upon her.
You see Pip,
she knows the Charles Darney
will not be saved until he's out of Paris.
Now, all the air around
was so thick and dark,
the people were so
passionately revengeful.
- Ralph.
You haven't told me about
the show last night.
How'd it go?
Was the amazing Miss
Frostbite really amazing?
- That's what I have to talk
to you about, Mr. Wyneski.
- You boys have a good time?
- Mr. Wyneski.
- Now what's this?
Did you and that Henry get
into mischief last night?
Tell me the truth.
- Mr. Wyneski, I'm
trying to tell the truth
but it's just hard.
Henry didn't get into
trouble last night, I did.
I didn't go to the show.
- Didn't go?
You waited all summer for that blame show.
- I know, Mr. Wyneski.
I was real happy you gave
me the tickets, honest.
And I wanted to go,
but I just couldn't go last night.
It was a matter of life and death.
- Ralph Spaulding, what in
tarnation are you talking about?
- Charles Darney, he was on trial
about to get sent to the guillotine.
- Charles Darney, the guillotine.
- I know you're mad, Mr. Wyneski,
and I reckon I got it coming,
but I just didn't know
how to tell you yesterday.
I was gonna pretend I went,
but I couldn't tell a lie,
not to you.
Mr. Wyneski, Mr. Wyneski!
[slow music]
- A little late aren't you son?
- Sorry, grandpa, I--
- Something the matter?
- No grandpa, nothing.
- Thank you, Mr. Dickens.
- And where is Mr. Wyneski?
- Mr. Wyneski is out brooding in the yard.
- Brooding?
- Yep.
Brooding's the word.
Saw him kick the rose bush,
kick the green ferns by the porch,
decided against kicking the apple tree.
God made it too firm.
There, he just jumped on a dandelion.
Uh oh, here he comes.
Moses crossing a Black Sea of bile.
- Mr. Wyneski.
- I'll say grace tonight.
Oh Lord, who delivered me a fine June
and a less fine July,
help me get through August somehow.
Deliver me from the mobs and riots
in the streets of London and Paris,
which drum through my room night and morn.
Chief members of said riots being one boy
that walks in his sleep,
a man with a strange name,
and a dog that barks after
the rag tag and bobtail.
Give me the strength to
resist the cries of fraud and bunk artists
that rise in my mouth
and help me to say quietly
in all deference to the lady present
that if one Charles Dickens
is not on the train tomorrow,
bound for potter's grave or lands end,
I shall like Delilah with malice,
shear the black lamb
and fry his whiskers for
twilight dinners and late midnight snacks.
I ask oh Lord, not mercy for the mean,
but simple justice.
All agreed say amen.
[silverware clattering]
[door slamming]
[footsteps clicking]
[tapping on door]
- Mr. Dickens?
Mr. Dickens?
- No one by that name here.
No one by that name in this bed,
in this room,
in this world.
- You, you're Charles Dickens.
- You ought to know better.
A long time after midnight,
moving on toward morning.
- You're a world famous author.
So what cause you got to
feel sorry for yourself?
- You know, and I know.
I'm Mr. Nobody from nowhere.
- Goodnight.
- Wait.
Pip.
- [Pip] Yeah?
- Let's both be quiet.
Come sit down.
It's a fierce awful time of night.
On the way back to sunset
and 10,000 on a don.
We have need of friends then.
Pip,
I'm a man who could never fit his dream.
- What?
- I mean Pip,
I never became what I wanted to be.
- What'd you want to be?
- A writer.
- A writer, did you try?
- Try?
Oh Lord of mercy, son.
You never saw so much
spit, ink and sweat fly.
I wrote my way through an ink factory.
I busted and broke a paper company.
I ruined and dilapidated
six dozen typewriters.
- Wow.
- You may well say wow.
- What did you write?
- What didn't I write?
The poem, the essay, the play tragique,
the farce, short story, the novel.
1,000 words a day, boy,
every day for 30 years.
Millions of words passed
from my fingers onto paper.
And it was all...
All bad.
- It couldn't have been.
- It was.
Not mediocre, not passing fair.
Just plain outright, mud bath bad.
Friends knew it,
editors knew it.
One strange fine day about
4:00 in the afternoon
when I was 50,
I knew it.
- [Ralph] But you can't
write for 30 years without--
- Stumbling upon excellence?
Gaze long.
Gaze hard, Pip.
Look upon the only man in history
who put down five million words
without ever slapping to
life one puny character
who could rear his head and
cry, "Eureka, we've done it."
- You never sold one story?
- Not a throw away newspaper sonnet.
Isn't that rare?
To be so outstandingly dull.
Nothing ever brought a
chuckle, caused a tear.
Raised a temper, discharged a blow.
And you know what I did
on the day I discovered
I would never be a writer?
I killed myself.
- Killed?
- Did away with, destroyed.
- How?
- I packed me up,
two trucks of my collected works.
Then I took me on a long train ride.
[train horn whistling]
Rode,
a long time at night.
One by one, I let my manuscripts fly away
like panicked birds down the tracks.
One by one,
slow at first, then faster.
Faster.
Faster I chunked them over.
Story after story,
out, out of my arms.
Out of my head, out of my life.
Down they went.
Sunk, drowning,
in night rivers of prairie dust.
In lost contingence of sand.
Lonely rock.
[train horn whistling]
And I opened my fingers,
empty at last.
And when I got off the train
at the end of that long summer
I said, "What, what's this?
I'm a new man."
And I looked in a Flyspecked gum machine
in Peachgum, Missouri.
My beard growing long
and two months of travel.
My hair going wild with a wind
that combed it this
way sane, that way mad.
And I said, "Boy, Charlie
Dickens is that you?"
And the reflection cried,
"Dennis, who else would it be?
Stand back, I'm off to a great lecture."
- Did you really say that, Mr. Dickens?
- God's pillars and couples of truth, Pip.
And maybe the thing that saved me
was the thing that ruined
me in the first place.
- What?
- Respect for my elders,
the grand mobiles and tall mucky mucks
and the lush literary islands,
with me in the dry river
bottom in my canoe.
For oh God, Pip,
how I devoured Tolstoy.
Drank Dostoevsky
Feasted on Demopasonne.
I read too much.
Suddenly I found I could
not forget their books, Pip.
- Couldn't?
- I mean I could not forget
any letter of any word,
of any sentence, of any
paragraph, of any book
that ever passed under these
hungry, omnivorous eyes.
- Photographic memory!
- Bullseye,
all of Dickens.
Hardy, Austen, Poe, Hawthorne,
trapped in this old box Brownie camera
waiting to be printed off my tongue.
All those years, I never knew.
Pip, I had hid it all away.
- And then?
- Well then I bought a fresh paper
and ink for my first book,
and have been delirious and joyful
and a lunatic ever since.
Writing all the books one by one.
Me, Charles Dickens.
- But how do you live?
- I have traveled the continental vastness
of the United States of North America
and settled into write,
lecturing here and there.
Sometimes I lie whole snowbound winters
and little whistle stops.
Sometimes I stay whole summers in one town
before I'm driven off.
- Driven off?
- Oh yes, driven.
For such as your Mr. Wyneski
cannot forgive the fantastic, Pip,
no matter how particularly
practical that fantastic be.
- I don't get it.
- He does not see that we all
do what we must to survive.
Survive,
some laugh, some cry,
some bang the world with fists,
some run,
but it all sums up the same.
We make do.
The world swarms with people, boy,
each one drowning,
but each swimming a different stroke
to the far shore.
- But what about Mr. Wyneski?
- Mr. Wyneski makes do with
his shop and his scissors
and could not understand my
inky pen and lidded papers
and borrowed English soul.
[bell faintly tolling]
Time for me to go.
- No, you can't leave.
You haven't finished the book.
- Pip, dear boy, you
haven't been listening.
- The world's waiting.
You just can't quit in the
middle of A Tale of Two Cities.
- Pip, Pip.
- [Ralph] You can't Mr. Dickens.
- Pip.
- I'm waiting,
they're waiting.
- They?
- The mob at the Bastille.
Lucy Mannet, Dr. Mannet.
Charles Darnay Sydney Carton,
London, Paris, the guillotine.
- Pip, Pip.
- Charlie?
- Where were we this afternoon, Pip?
- Charles Darnay in prison,
saved by Sidney Carton.
- Oh yes, I remember now.
The coach speeding through the darkness
with Darney and Lucy fearful of pursuit.
Take this Pip.
[slow piano music]
The wind is rushing after us.
The clouds are flying after us,
and the moon is plunging after us.
The whole wild night is in pursuit of us.
But so far we are pursued by nothing else.
- Morning, Mr. Dickens.
- Morning, Pip.
- Mr. Dickens, The Tale of Two Cities.
It's finished?
- Done.
Didn't go to sleep.
Working steady.
Done, finished.
- Wow.
[train horn bellowing]
- I'm a,
I'm leaving it for you, Pip.
- Leaving?
[slow cheerful music]
[train bell dinging]
Mr. Dickens, Mr. Dickens,
the book's finished, yeah,
but not published yet.
- You be the executive, Pip.
- Well, wait,
what about David Copperfield
and A Christmas Carol?
If we start now we'll be
done by Christmas easy.
Scrooge, Mr. Dickens, and Marley's ghost.
- Friends of yours, Pip?
- Yours, Mr. Dickens.
Oh gosh, if you don't write
that, they'll never live.
- They'll get on somehow.
[train horn bellowing]
- Mr. Dickens, I'll give you a new title,
Pickwick Papers.
And after that, Bleak House
and Hard Times and Great Expectations.
Oh go on, leave, get away!
You don't deserve reading, you don't!
See if I even bother finish
reading A Tale of Two Cities.
Not me, never!
- Pip.
You mean what you just said?
- You know, you're nothing but a coward.
- Bah humbug, Pip?
- Humbug, I don't give
a blast what happens
to Sidney Carton.
- Why, it is a far, far better thing I do
than I've ever done.
Pip, you must read it?
- Why?
- Because I wrote it for you.
- So?
- So I just missed my train.
40 minutes til the next one.
- Then you got time.
- Time for what?
- Time to meet someone.
Come on, just this once.
And I promise I'll
finish reading your book.
- The library, in there?
- 10 minutes, Mr. Dickens.
Give me 10 minutes.
Just 10, please?
- Pip, what are we doing here?
Let's go.
There's nothing here I--
- Listen!
[pencil scrapping]
- Bless me.
I know that sound.
It's the sound of someone writing.
- Yes sir.
- Writing with a pen and writing...
- What?
- Poetry!
That's it.
[pencil scrapping]
Someone off there in a room.
How many fathoms deep?
Pip, I swear,
writing a poem...
There.
Flourish, flourish.
Scratch, flourish, on, on, on.
Not figures, not numerals.
Not dusty, dry facts.
Feel it sweep, feel it scurry.
A poem by God, yes sir.
No doubt, a poem.
- May I?
- Don't stop her.
Let her go.
May lose inspiration.
- As imperceptibly as grief,
the summer lapsed away.
Too imperceptibly at last
to seem like a perfect...
Ah, Ralph, it's you.
Why you're Ralph's friend.
Mr. Dickens, isn't it?
- Mr. Dickens, I want you to meet--
- Youthful, that last poem.
I also admire
because I could not stop for death
he kindly stopped for me.
Miss Emily.
- Her name is...
- Miss Emily.
- Pleased, but how did you...
- Know you were here?
Why, bless me ma'am.
I heard you scratching away off in here
in that run along rush.
Only poets do that.
- It's nothing.
- Chin high, head up, it's something.
Because I could not suffer that
as a fine, A one, first class poem.
- My own poems are so poor.
I copy hers out to learn.
- Copy who?
- Excellent way to learn.
- Is it, really?
You're not...
- Joking?
No, not with Emily Dickinson.
- Emily Dickinson?
- That means so much coming
from you, Mr. Dickens.
I have read all your books.
- All?
- All that you've published so far, sir.
- Just finished a new one.
A Tale of Two Cities.
- That sounds wonderful.
- And you ma'am?
- Me?
Why, I haven't even sent a
poem to our town newspaper.
- You must, tomorrow.
No, today!
- But I have no one to read them to first.
- Why you have Pip here,
and accept my card,
Charles Dickens, Esquire.
Who will, if allowed,
stop by on occasion
to see if all is well in
this Arcadian silo of books.
- But I couldn't.
- Tut, you must.
For I shall offer only
warm sliced white bread.
Your words must be the
marmalade and some honey.
I shall read long and plain.
You, shorten raptures of life
tempted by that odd delicious death
you often lean upon.
Enough, there.
At the far end of the
corridor, her lamp lit,
ready to guide your hand, the muse awaits.
Goodbye.
- Goodbye, doesn't that mean
God be with you?
- So I've heard the lady, so I've heard.
[gentle cheerful music]
- Good job, Ralph.
That's right, dog.
Why should you move?
You own the place.
[train horn bellowing]
You know Ralph, when I was your age,
more than anything in the world
I wanted to be a railroad man.
- Yeah?
- Sure did.
Wanted to get one of
them conductor's hats,
and sit up in the cabin
and blow that whistle.
- And then?
- Then what?
- Why didn't you?
- Oh, I don't know.
A man grows up,
grows out of the things he used to,
used to want.
- Just like that?
- Just like that.
And here I am.
The world's greatest barber.
You'll find out for yourself, Ralph.
It's all a part of growing up.
- Not me.
I'm gonna grow up and be a--
- A writer.
I know, I know.
- He been bending your ear too?
- [Wyneski] Only ever hour or so.
- This letter came for you today, son.
Thought I'd bring it over.
Special delivery like.
- For me, grandpa?
- To Master Pip Spaulding
from Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Dickens, Esquire.
- Gosh, grandpa.
I wonder where they are.
Dear Pip,
we are in the Aurora tonight,
Felicity tomorrow,
and Alton the night after that.
Charlie has six months
of lectures lined up
and looking forward.
Charlie and I are both working steadily
and are most happy.
- [Emily] Very happy.
He calls me Emily.
Pip, I don't think you know who she was,
but I hope you'll get her poems
out of the library someday.
Well, Charlie looks at me
and says, "This is my Emily."
And I almost believe.
No, I do believe.
We are crazy, Pip.
People have said it.
We know it.
Yet we go on.
But being crazy together is fine.
It was being crazy alone I
couldn't stand any longer.
Some year we may come back to your town.
If you are there call our names
as we know ourselves now,
signed Emily Dickinson.
- P.S., Charlie is my darling.
Well well.
Well well.
- You know, I don't think they're crazy.
- Neither do I, Pip.
Neither do I.
[slow piano music]
- [Narrator] Imagine a
summer that would never end.
Imagine a boy who would never grow up.
Imagine a barber who was never young.
Imagine a dog that would live forever.
Imagine a small town,
the kind that isn't lived in anymore.
Ready?
Begin.
[cheerful music]