So Many Nells

Half of our local park has been closed for restoration for over a year much to everyone's frustration, but today the fences came down, a few city officials gave the blah-blah-blah and offered free cherries & strawberries, but Clark Park's most famous pair is what I'll share with a blip.

"Dickens and Little Nell" by Francis Edwin Elwell was created in 1890 and arrived here in the park ten years later. The prize-winning statue could find no buyer in England because the writer himself forbade any monuments to himself in his will (not binding outside of Britain). This city's parks department bought it and placed it here when this neighborhood was being newly developed from farms and woods into an affluent section. Dickens' birthday is still celebrated nearby each February and a little parade ends with a wreath being placed on his bronze head.

Nell is a character form The Old Curiosity Shop, and her likeness has always been at least as popular as the novelist's. I was charmed by the greeting the sculpture got from these living Little Nells today as we all enjoyed our park again in perfect, sunny weather.