Havisham bite awake. Love's hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake. Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon. Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks. Havisham "Havisham" is a poem written in 1993 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Charles Dickens' character "Miss Havisham" from his novel "Great Expectations", looking at Havisham's mental and physical state many decades after being left standing at the altar, when the bride-to-be is in her old age. It expresses Havisham's anger at her fiancé and her bitter rage over
Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens wedding in Toorak, Victoria, and with whom he had two daughters, Kathleen Mary (1874 – 1951) and Violet Georgina (1875 – 1952). Jessie Dickens died from her injuries on 14 December 1878 after having been thrown out of her carriage when a pony bolted. Alfred Dickens then moved to Melbourne, where he was persuaded by his younger brother Edward Dickens to start up their own stock and station agency, 'EBL Dickens and Partners'. In Melbourne on 22 June 1888 Alfred married again, his new wife, Emily Riley (1863–1913), being 17 years his junior. The marriage was not a happy one,