Mrs Gamp
Mrs Gamp is a sometimes nurse and midwife, who is happy to cure anyone for the price of a gin or two.
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Her favourite patient is who conveniently runs the Three Cripples Pub.
About Pauline Collins
Pauline is one of Britain’s best loved actresses. For her most iconic role - Shirley Valentine - she was Oscar nominated and won a BAFTA, Olivier Award as well as a Tony.
Her recent film work includes Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet, Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger and Albert Nobbs opposite Glenn Close.
On television Pauline was part of the original cast of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's Upstairs Downstairs, and its spin off series Thomas and Sarah. Pauline also played Queen Victoria in opposite David Tennant, and has starred in numerous dramas including , Mount Pleasant, What We Did On Our Holiday and Sparkling Cyanide.
In 2001 Pauline was awarded an OBE for services to Drama.
Charles Dickens's Mrs Gamp
Dickensian draws out Dickens’s rendering of Mrs Gamp as a fantastic, witty and imaginative (if grotesque) comic figure in Martin Chuzzlewit.
"She was a fat old woman, this Mrs Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond.In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about Holborn.
The face of Mrs Gamp - the nose in particular - was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish."
Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter 19
Read Martin Chuzzlewit .
