Dickens in New York

In ninth grade, my English class was given the task of reading Dickens's novel, Great Expectations. Most of the details of the plot now escape me, but vividly etched in my 15-year-old brain was the character of Miss Havisham.

Pip, the hero of the novel, was first introduced to Miss Havisham when he was around six years of age; she summoned him to be a playmate for her adopted daughter. She was wealthy, she was old, and she was peculiar: She wore an old, yellowed wedding dress. She kept all the windows in her house tightly boarded up. All of the clocks were stopped at 8:40.

As time went on, Miss Havisham eventually showed Pip the room where, long ago, a wedding dinner had been prepared. In the center of the banquet table sat a moldy wedding cake, half eaten by mice and enmeshed in cobwebs on which spiders ran up and down. Miss Havisham explained to Pip that this was the room in which, once she was dead, she would be laid.

The gothic horror of this scene would be enough to fascinate any ninth grader, I'm sure. But when you're a young introvert --harboring secret fears that you yourself are doomed to age into an eccentric old recluse -- well, Dickens's portrayal of Miss Havisham becomes well nigh unforgettable.

I thought of Miss Havisham this week, of course, as I read of the death of Huguette Clark, heir to one of the great American fortunes, a fortune accumulated by her father over his lifetime and originating from his copper holdings in Montana. Miss Clark died this week at 104. Unlike with Miss Havisham, Miss Clark's long-ago fiancé actually showed up for their wedding; he left her nine months later, however, and she found herself divorced at the age of 23. From that time on, she withdrew completely from society and lived with her mother in a Manhattan apartment.

She played with dolls and doll houses. She painted, and she played the harp. For lunches, she dined on crackers and sardines. For entertainment, she loved watching The Flintstones on television. She saw no one. After her mother died in 1963, she continued living alone in the same apartment until the 1980's, when she checked herself into a hospital where others could care for her. And that's where she lived for the last 25 or 30 years of her life.

Besides care providers, she spoke only to her attorney and her accountant. They allegedly fleeced her, not that she would have noticed any losses. Her will has not yet been made public. The main reaction of the public and the press to her death has been to speculate as to who would get her money.

Miss Clark came about as close to living the life of Miss Havisham as anyone could come in today's world. Unlike Miss Havisham, she did have nine months of wedded bliss -- although her former husband later claimed that their marriage was never consummated. Unlike Miss Havisham, who ultimately died of burns suffered when her wedding dress caught fire, Miss Clark died in apparent comfort under the best of medical care.

Miss Clark lacked a Charles Dickens to paint a picture of her presumably sad (although self-chosen) life. But she didn't really need him. Her life really speaks for itself. My 15-year-old self would have been stunned -- and no doubt unsettled -- to learn that a Miss Havisham really existed, a contemporary American woman, living in tragic isolation, surrounded by her money and her dolls.

A Miss Havisham for our times, she was, secluded in the heart of the Big Apple, marking time as the decades passed -- untouched by the bustle, the changes, the excitement, and the life of the great city all about her.