October 16, 2010

"Great Expectations, the Miss Havisham Cake" — banned from the Melbourne Cake Show.

In bad taste?



But it's literary!

A reading, from Charles Dickens:
The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"

8 comments:

Palladian said...

Best cake ever.

Unknown said...

Gee whiz, I wonder why.

Remember talking about it in English class in III Form.

That ghastly movie version of "The Wild, Wild West" ripped off the idea, but, like everything else about it, blew it to Hell and gone.

PS Black Rock is actually trying to resuscitate it; 5-O, the Defenders, now that.

They are really out of ideas.

WV "cohor" What the other lady is called if you want a sandwich.

The Dude said...

Great cake. I liked that book so much that I never clean up cobwebs in my house. Oh yeah, it's good to have role models.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

God. I hate that book. It almost ruined the enjoyment of reading for me.

Quaestor said...

Some candy floss cobwebs would have really been the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Peter Hoh said...

This cake totally deserves a spot in the Cake Wrecks hall of fame.

Shanna said...

I hate great expectations, but that cake is awesome!

Deb said...

No worse than the Halloween favorite, Kitty Litter Cake.

wv: keypol. Several are about to be history.