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| Why is Dickens’ legacy
neglected by London? |
We often forget we are walking on Dickens’
streets, say the staff at the author’s museum. Gerald Isaaman
sees how he changed the world
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The serialisation of Bleak House from The Dickens Catalogue
(see below)
Dickens, aged 25, when he lived at Doughty Street. Portrait
by Samuel Laurence
Cedric Charles Dickens (oldest descendant of the author),
Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (a writer) and Mark Dickens (the
official head of the family)
Nicholas Nickleby from The Dickens Catalogue
The Dickens Museum in Doughty Street
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CHARLES Dickens’ fame leaps forward into future generations
thanks to the recreation of his compelling sagas of life in Victorian
England that seem as pertinent today as they were when his quill
pen splashed over the pages.
On BBC1, Bleak House, his haunting expose of the legal profession,
was watched weekly by millions, so too the recent repeat of Nicholas
Nickleby. Meanwhile, David Copperfield is on Radio 4, the Royal
Shakespeare Company is presenting a stage adaptation of Great Expectations
and A Christmas Carol is back on the West End stage with Shane Ritchie.
Then there is the new Roman Polanski film of Oliver Twist to complete
the amazing bonanza which includes Dickens dramas dropping off the
bookshop shelves as his magical talents are rediscovered.
There is no doubt that Dickens is alive and well and still living
in Bloomsbury. Just drop into No 48 Doughty Street and you can undoubtedly
feel his presence as you climb the staircase to his study and see
the desk where his imagination came alive.
Indeed, you can do so at Christmas when the Charles Dickens Museum,
as it is now called, is open on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and
Boxing Day. Visitors will be greeted with a glass of mulled wine
and mince pies. And there will be readings from Dickens and films
on his life.
Sophie Slade, the new curator, will be there in Victorian dress
to greet you and the Georgian house illuminated with Christmas lights
and decorations.
“Dickens had quite a thing about Christmas,” says Sophie,
the curator since July. “He was undoubtedly a fan, as people
know from his work. We use what he wrote about Christmas in our
programme. Members of the family, like Lucinda Dickens Hawksley,
give readings too.
“And we have a special version of our one-man play about Dickens
and show film versions of Dickens novels and there are versions
from the Muppets to more highbrow movies.”
But Doughty Street has not exactly been overwhelmed with visitors
since the July bombs.
“We need to break through that hidden London barrier,”
insists Sophie. “People find Doughty Street from all over the
world, but Londoners much less so. People here can be very insular
to their history.” So the festive events are aimed at drawing
people in to feel the Dickens touch in a house full of remarkable
memorabilia you need to see for yourself, from the original monthly
magazine serials of his novels – they paid a shilling a time
for them – to some of the house’s original furniture.
“London more or less shuts down for Christmas and there is
little for people to do,” says Sophie. “Christmas here
is very popular – last year people queued down the street.”
Tickets cost £12.
Dickens arrived at newly-built Doughty Street in 1837 with Catherine
Hogarth, his wife he had married two years earlier, their first
child Charles, Dickens’ brother, Frederick, and his sister-in-law,
Mary Hogarth, plus servants. The four-storey, rented property was
appropriate for a young author gathering success from his Pickwick
Papers.
In those days, Doughty Street had gates at each end to preserve
a peaceful atmosphere, and during his two and a half years there
Dickens became the father of two daughters.
It was an area he knew well, as he did much of today’s modern
Camden, having lived as a child at 15 Bayhem Street, Camden Town,
long since demolished, as are the houses in Devonshire Place, St
Marylebone, and Tavistock Square, where Dickens lived later.
You find associations all over the borough, from the Spaniards Inn,
in Hampstead, as the venue for Pickwick’s rambles and the Heath
itself the scene for the hunt down of Bill Sikes to Brownlow Mews,
behind Doughty Street, popping up as Mr Brownlow in Oliver Twist
and Dickens’ amorous association with Baroness Burdett-Coutts,
the millionairess banker, at her mansion on Highgate’s Holly
Lodge estate.
Yet, surprisingly, Camden doesn’t promote the borough with
a Dickens’ trail or honour the memory of a man who fought for
schools for the poor.
Visitors to the museum often look for more about the trauma of young
Dickens working in a blacking factory and visiting his father in
debtors’ prison, events that influenced his passionate narrative.
“That was a very poignant time in his life,” Sophie explains.
Do people see him as a hero? “I think so,” she replies.
“He did so much good work. For Nicholas Nickleby he visited
Yorkshire schools where there was so much controversy about their
brutality towards children. He sponsored children at the Foundling
Hospital, here in Camden, and set up a hostel for fallen women.
“But what he did with his novels had more impact on society
than any of his specific acts of philanthropy.”
She believes that new adaptations of Dickens’ work, even if
not universally approved, are to be welcomed for keeping his name
alive.
“He had a message for the people and his work is still resonant,”
adds Sophie. “No doubt he would have a lot to say if he came
back today and discovered that so much hasn’t changed.”
Sophie feels his presence in the museum.
“I get a sense of him here,” she reveals. “I don’t
look over my shoulder and see the beard. But there are certain rooms
where I feel his presence, mainly the rooms that are most unchanged
since Dickens’ happy days here.
“Is there a ghost of Dickens about? I’m not sure. The
house is very atmospheric, especially in the evening when there
are no visitors. There is a very definite feel to it.
“A company called Paranormal Tours came here recently to find
out whether we had any paranormal activity. But they determined
that there wasn’t enough to warrant what they call a paranormal
tour.”
But the inspiration of Dickens remains. In the museum shop the best-selling
item are quill pens for £1.95. But you can buy a big one for
£3.95 and set yourself the task, just like Dickens did, to
conquer the world’s evils.
EXPLORE THE BACK PAGES
IT would cost £8,000 to buy a first edition of Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol in its original cloth, dating back to 1843. A
Tale of Two Cities, in red cloth, is £2,800 while you could
pick up a first edition of Bleak House for £1,250.
These are some of the little nuggets that can be found in the incredibly
comprehensive Dickens Catalogue that has just been published by
antiquarian bookshop Jarndyce.
Based in Great Russell Street opposite the British Museum for the
past 35 years, Jarndyce has developed a reputation for its scholarly
work on 18th and 19th-century books. The Dickens Catalogue, compiled
by Joshua
Clayton and Helen Smith, features more than 1,700 collectable items,
along with pictures and revealing details from his life – there
is even a reproduction of a letter sent to The Times by Dickens,
from his home in Devonshire Terrace, outraged at a public execution
he had just witnessed.
• The Dickens Catalogue, Jarndyce, £6.
DICKENS' PROLIFIC YEARS
Maybe it was because he was a parliamentary reporter and used shorthand,
but certainly Charles Dickens was most industrious while in Doughty
Street.
He wrote the following: the last six monthly numbers of Pickwick
Papers, 22 parts of Oliver Twist, and miscellaneous magazine pieces,
including The Mudfog Papers, and 19 monthly episodes of Nicholas
Nickleby. He also wrote Sketches of Young Gentlemen, his Memoirs
of Joseph Grimaldi, The Lamplighter, a farce written for his actor
friend Macready not performed in Dickens’ life-time, and a
few chapters of Barnaby Rudge. |
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