#rosa dartle

[besotted-with-austen]

James Steerforth: *dismissive* oh, Miss Dartle’s scar? Yeah, I threw a hammer at her when I was a younger-what can I say, I was pretty annoyed at her that day!

David Copperfield: *benevolently* what a peculiar guy you are!

James Steerforth: *gets the kindest teacher at school fired because he is poor and he had a disagreement with him*

David Copperfield: Steerforth has such a strong character, he never backs down from challenging authority! Man, pity that Mr Mell had to resign!

Agnes Wickfield, literally David’s moral compass: Trotwood, that guy is a bad friend to have.

David Copperfield: what? Noooo, he is Steerforth! He is my best friend, that’s the way he is!

[thisbluespirit]

Jacqueline Pearce as Rosa Dartle in Episode 3 of David Copperfield (BBC 1974).

[mxcottonsocks]

Chapter 29 of David Copperfield is so funny. So Steerforth has told his mother that he can't visit more often because he's too busy staying with David (less than 10 miles away) and, what, attending his job with him??

If I were Rosa, I would also be asking questions...

[creatediana]

"Ekphrasis on Rereading David Copperfield" - a poem written 12/22/2023

[nicknumber]

Nancy Price as Rosa Dartle in Em'ly, from The Sketch, August 19, 1903

[vintage1981]

Celebrating Jacqueline Pearce

Jacqueline Pearce is a British actress best know for playing Servalan in all four series of Blake's 7.

Born in Woking in the south of England, Jacqueline Pearce trained at the British stage school RADA and at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in Los Angeles. 

Her TV career began in the 1960’s with regular roles in the ITV Play of the Week as well as appearances in shows such as The Avengers and Armchair Theatre.

She starred in two Hammer horror films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, filmed simultaneously in 1966. Other film roles include Sky West and Crooked, Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River and How to Get Ahead in Advertising.

Roles in the 1970’s included Rosa Dartle in David Copperfield, Claudia Haswell in Couples, and Anna Rupius in Vienna 1900. But it was in 1978 that she was cast in the role for which she would be ever known.

Servalan was the Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation in Blakes 7, the TV drama devised by Dalek creator Terry Nation. The character was only expected to appear in one episode of the saga, but Pearce’s electrifying performance ensured the character would survive far longer than the title character, appearing in all four series.

A cold, calculating, ruthless sociopath Servalan’s main aim was to destroy the crew of the Liberator and the relish with which Pearce played the character ensured she would remain a fan favourite for the series duration. 

Her Doctor Who appearance came in 1985, playing Chessene of the Franzine Grig in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors. She later appeared in a slew of Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who audio adventures for for Big Finish Productions.

In 1991 she played Miss Pendragon in the Russell T. Davies series Dark Season. She also appeared in series such as Casualty, Doctors, Daniel Deronda and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Her theatre work included West End appearances in Harold Pinter’s Otherwise Engaged (Queen’s Theatre) and JB Priestly’s Dangerous Corner (Garrick Theatre); Shadowlands; Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry) ; and her one woman show A Star is Torn.

Jacqueline relocated to South Africa for several years, initially to care for orphaned monkeys, before recently returning to the UK. Her autobiography, From Byfleet to the Bush, was published in 2012. 

Jacqueline Kay Pearce, actor, born 20 December 1943; died 3 September 2018

[105nt]

Norfolk reads - David Copperfield

I finished listening to David Copperfield, read by Martin Jarvis via Audible (it's included, which I find extraordinary, because it's an astounding good piece of work - he is so in character with every word spoken that it is practically a dramatisation (but without all the annoying mood music in the background) and supplemented with my hard copy - this beauty, of which I only have volumes I and II.

My memory of reading this in my early teens is loving Betsey Trotwood and Wilkins Micawber, but being frustrated by Little Em'ly (the fallen woman) Dora Spenlow (the "child-wife") and Agnes Wickfield (the ministering angel), who all seemed so insipid and limited to me next to the literary heroines I admired - Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver, Anne Shirley.

Reading it now with the advantage of several decades, I wonder that I didn't appreciate the minor female characters more, because they are truly wonderful - Rosa Dartle with a scar every bit as expressive as Harry Potter's, Jane Murdstone's fine example of an oppressor in the Simone de Beauvoir mode, and Miss Mowcher - what the hell I made of her when I was 12 I can't think - but there she is, a procuress in plain sight.

I still love Micawber and Aunt Betsy best, but characters I would have hated without reservation are now nuanced to me - none more so than Uriah Heep, who is physically as repulsive to me as he ever was, but now I feel he might have had a point when he says that Copperfield always hated him. The book now reads to me as if he wasn't suffered to rise at least partly because he wasn't of the right class. Like Milady in The Three Musketeers - eventually I must have reached an age when I was less concerned about his crimes and more that he was surrounded by a bunch of entitled snobs.

The description of the storm at Yarmouth and the wreck is as fine as I remember:

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair ...

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white–headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm–bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature ...

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

Last words to my favourites:

Ilsa is as sharp as Betsey Trotwood, if not as discreet:

'I think Agnes is going to be married.'

'God bless her!' said I, cheerfully.

'God bless her!' said my aunt, 'and her husband too!'

"And now, in short, I proceed to devour that inestimable volume, The Shrieking Pit by Arthur Rees, and if any remain to accompany me on this literary pilgrimage, in due course here shall be found such ruined vestiges as yet

Remain

Of

A

Fallen Tower"

105 (with apologies to Wilkins Micawber)

[panneshirley]

inspired by (x)

[quipmodestproductions]

June 2nd, 12:14 AM, Rosa Dartle’s phone

(A little thing I wrote that takes place after season 2 episode 14 is posted!)

[20genderchild]

[kanchelsis]

david copperfield as wolfpupy tweets

david: i want to thank everyone for their kind words, i haven't received any kind words yet it's just something i want to do in the future

agnes: this doesn't add up, and i should know [does a gesture that heavily implies i own a calculator]

traddles: i did the best with the resources i was given, which was nothing

dora: i don't care if this offends you but once i get my long sparkling mermaid hair everyone else will basically become worthless

uriah: only the good die young? phew good thing that i am so incredibly awful

steerforth: yeah i looked both ways before crossing the street, i looked both 'handsome' and 'radiant', too bad i got hit by that car

rosa: you can take our lives but you can never take my spicy sassy attitude

emily: i won't do what i'm told, it involves listening to what people tell me

betsey trotwood: the world continues to spiral out of control and i am just sitting here like a bad bitch

[eleftherian]

Betsey: Trotwood! I’m ruined

Mr, Dick: like a castle

David: how can you be ruined?

Mr Dick: like a big castle

[doctorbluesmanreturns]

16: What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done in the name of outlining/worldbuilding (timelines, research, maps, spreadsheets, etc.)? 7: What was the first novel you ever tried to write? If you’ve never tried to write a novel, then what was the first story you ever wrote?

16: I do lots of stuff like that for worldbuilding, probably the most extensive was when I was really into Victorian-era stuff and reading all of Judith Flanders’ books about their society and coming up with plot twists and characters solely to include the Cool New Facts I had found (which reminds me I should get those books back for my Dracula project!)

7: I’ve been writing forever but the earliest novel type things I can remember are a continuation of David Copperfield centered around my favorite character Rosa Dartle (who is like a TERRIBLE person in the book so it begins with “those of you who have read Mr. David Copperfield’s reminiscences may recall the part I played in them, and those of you who do recall will very probably be tempted to hurl this book out of the nearest window”), a Doctor Who novella centered around the Doctor fighting against a hive-mind creature from Gallifrey’s distant past that operates by feeding on the thoughts of others (not to be confused with the Doctor Who novella written by Neil Gaiman the same year, which centers around the Doctor fighting against a hive-mind creature from Gallifrey’s distant past that operates by feeding on the thoughts of others, which I had NO IDEA existed until YEARS later and from which I conclude that something was trying to get into our world in 2013), and the earliest versions of the Noir project which even in 2007 would be roughly recognizable as what they are now, mostly because one of the main characters is a young woman whose parents were thoughtless enough to saddle her with the given name of Welcome (THAT IS REALLY SOMETHING THAT USED TO HAPPEN, I FOUND IT IN MY GRANDFATHER’S OLD COLLEGE YEARBOOK AND HAD TO USE IT)

Thanks!

[mindibindi]

Clare Holman as the “always dangerous” Rosa Dartle in David Copperfield (1999)

[doctorwhonews]

Jacqueline Pearce 1943-2018

Latest from the news site: The actress Jacqueline Pearce, best known for her role as the main villain, Servalan, in the science fiction series Blakes 7, has died at the age of 73. Born in Woking in the south of England, Jacqueline Pearce trained at the British stage school RADA and at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in Los Angeles. Her TV career began in the 1960's with regular roles in the ITV Play of the Week as well as appearances in shows such as The Avengers and Armchair Theatre She starred in two Hammer horror films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, filmed simultaneously in 1966. Other film roles include Sky West and Crooked, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River and How to Get Ahead in Advertising. Roles in the 1970's included Rosa Dartle in David Copperfield, Claudia Haswell in Couples, and Anna Rupius in Vienna 1900. But it was in 1978 that she was cast in the role for which she would be ever known. Servalan was the Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation in Blakes 7, the TV drama devised by Dalek creator Terry Nation. The character was only expected to appear in one episode of the saga, but Pearce's electrifying performance ensured the character would survive far longer than the title character, appearing in all four series. A cold, calculating, ruthless sociopath Servalan's main aim was to destroy the crew of the Liberator and the relish with which Pearce played the character ensured she would remain a fan favourite for the series duration. Her Doctor Who appearance came in 1985, playing Chessene of the Franzine Grig in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors. She later appeared in Audio productions for Big Finish. She also appeared in series such as Casualty, Doctors, Daniel Deronda and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Alliance Agents who worked with the actress paid tribute. Everyone at Alliance Agents are devastated to learn of the passing of our wonderful friend and client Jacqueline Pearce. Jacs was a glorious eccentric who enriched our lives during the time we knew her. She did everything "her way" and you never dared to stand in her way. She loved meeting her Blake's 7 fans and we are glad that we managed to give her a few convention appearances when she returned to the UK from Africa. We'll miss you Jacs. xxx Jacqueline Pearce died shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Doctor Who News http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2018/09/jacqueline-pearce-1943-2018.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[vintage1981]

Rest In Maximum Power Jacqueline Pearce!

Jacqueline Kay Pearce, actor, born 20 December 1943; died 3 September 2018

The actress Jacqueline Pearce, best known for her role as the main villain, Servalan, in the science fiction series Blakes 7, has died at the age of 74.

Born in Woking in the south of England, Jacqueline Pearce trained at the British stage school RADA and at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in Los Angeles. 

Her TV career began in the 1960's with regular roles in the ITV Play of the Week as well as appearances in shows such as The Avengers and Armchair Theatre.

She starred in two Hammer horror films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, filmed simultaneously in 1966. Other film roles include Sky West and Crooked, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River and How to Get Ahead in Advertising.

Roles in the 1970's included Rosa Dartle in David Copperfield, Claudia Haswell in Couples, and Anna Rupius in Vienna 1900. But it was in 1978 that she was cast in the role for which she would be ever known.

Servalan was the Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation in Blakes 7, the TV drama devised by Dalek creator Terry Nation. The character was only expected to appear in one episode of the saga, but Pearce's electrifying performance ensured the character would survive far longer than the title character, appearing in all four series.

A cold, calculating, ruthless sociopath Servalan's main aim was to destroy the crew of the Liberator and the relish with which Pearce played the character ensured she would remain a fan favourite for the series duration. 

Her Doctor Who appearance came in 1985, playing Chessene of the Franzine Grig in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors. She later appeared in a slew of Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who audio adventures for for Big Finish Productions.

In 1991 she played Miss Pendragon in the Russell T. Davies series Dark Season. She also appeared in series such as Casualty, Doctors, Daniel Deronda and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Her theatre work included West End appearances in Harold Pinter’s Otherwise Engaged (Queen’s Theatre) and JB Priestly’s Dangerous Corner (Garrick Theatre); Shadowlands; Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry) ; and her one woman show A Star is Torn.

Jacqueline relocated to South Africa for several years, initially to care for orphaned monkeys, before recently returning to the UK. Her autobiography, From Byfleet to the Bush, was published in 2012. 

Alliance Agents who worked with the actress paid tribute.

Everyone at Alliance Agents are devastated to learn of the passing of our wonderful friend and client Jacqueline Pearce. Jacs was a glorious eccentric who enriched our lives during the time we knew her. She did everything "her way" and you never dared to stand in her way. She loved meeting her Blake's 7 fans and we are glad that we managed to give her a few convention appearances when she returned to the UK from Africa. We'll miss you Jacs. xxx

Script writer Russell T. Davies took to Instagram to remember his first encounter with the inimitable actress:

Jacqueline Pearce (1943-2018). What a woman. I worked with her on Dark Season, 1991. She walked into her first rehearsal - a room full of kids and a 15 year old Kate Winslet - and announced, “Sorry I’m late, I was up all night fucking a Russian priest.” Glorious. Night, darling xxx

Producer and friend John Ainsworth said, “Jacqueline always stood out from the crowd – both as an actor and in life. She exuded warmth, glamour, and charm like a Siren and people couldn’t help but be drawn to her. She had a unique talent and was a unique human being.”

Jacqueline Pearce, aged 74, died of lung cancer at her home in Lancashire on 3rd September 2018.