I'm doing the home-stretch with the A-Z Challenge here, minions! Whew! I'm tired. Anyway, my character feature for the letter "T" is "Sweeney Todd" from Thomas Peckett Prest version of The String of Pearls. Today, I wanted to highlight this all-time favorite of mine--a classic character that is so devious, twisted and downright demonic, it's no wonder he's referred to as The Demon Barber.
To give you an example of the true art of illustrating characters, here's a sample of Prest's initial description of Todd:
"The barber himself was a long, low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow, with an immense mouth, and such huge hands and feet, that he was, in his way, quite a natural curiosity; and, what was more wonderful, considering his trade, there never was seen such a head of hair as Sweeney Todd's. We know not what to compare it to: probably it came nearest to what one might suppose to be the appearance of a thickset hedge, in which a quantity of small wire had got entangled. In truth, it was a most terrific head of hair; and as Sweeney Todd kept all his combs in it--some said his scissors likewise--when he put his head out of the shop-door to see what sort of weather it was, he might have been mistaken for some Indian warrior with a very remarkable head-dress. He had a short disagreeable kind of unmirthful laugh, which came in at all sorts of odd times when nobody else saw anything to laugh at at all, and which sometimes made people again, especially when they were being shaved, and Sweeney Todd would stop short in that operation to indulge in one those cacchinatory effusions. It was evident that the remembrance of some very strange and out-of-the-way joke must occasionally flit across him, and then he gave his hyena-like laugh, but it was so short, so sudden, striking upon the ear for a moment, and then gone, that people have been known to look up to the ceiling, and on the floor, and all round them, to know from whence it had come, scarcely supposing it possible that it proceeded from mortal lips."
In that snidbit alone, you get an eerie and striking sensation about Todd and you know that tale promises to be a riveting one. Prest paints such a vivid picture in my mind that I have an instant image of what Sweeney Todd is like. He even lets us know what the patrons think of the strange barber.
Mina B.
