Dickens and London: a chance to celebrate

Arguably the most important novelist in the English language

THE CURRENT year is not just of international significance because of the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, 2012 is also the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth. This seems extraordinary in many ways. Dickens has never gone out of fashion, and a lot of what he has to say remains extremely relevant today. Charles Dickens was the first, and arguably the greatest, modern urban novelist.

I first encountered Dickens at school when it was compulsory fodder for us. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield , A Christmas Carol and others were offered up as standard fare as we progressed through the school. Scholastic force feeding would generally be enough to turn people against any novelist but I found myself a fan of Dickens from the outset. His powers of characterisation with unforgettable characters like Mr Micawber in David Copperfield, Samuel Pickwick in Pickwick Papers, and Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol made him a pleasure to read – quite apart from those wonderful Dickensian names un-matchable by any other novelist which was testament to his imagination and genius.

Furthermore, his ability to create an atmosphere is uncontested, amongst novelists. Who can forget the grim appearance of Magwitch materialising on the Kent marshes in Great Expectations, the obsessive demeanour of the hapless Miss Havisham in wearing her wedding clothes forever after she was jilted whilst dressing for the altar, the spine-chilling vicious nature of the school, Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby, or the death of little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop for example. These set him apart from virtually any other novelist.

This year we are promised a positive Dickens fest of events. Last year closed with the BBC indulging us with Great Expectations and 2012 opened with a rather good adaptation of the Mystery of Edwin Drood. Nor is this great revisiting of Dickens confined to Britain. In the United States, for example, at the Pierpoint Morgan Museum in New York there is a popular Dickens exhibition, and at the nearby excellent public library there are many Dickens items on display. Dickens played big in the US as well as the UK, indeed Dickens was lionised in the US. His reading tours were massively popular and people travelled hundreds of miles to New York to meet the vessel carrying the weekly parts of his novels. They were in this way rather like soap operas, with the audience on tenterhooks to find out how the storyline developed. This was notably true of The Old Curiosity Shop where masses of people gathered on the New York quayside to meet the boat and copies of the latest instalment to find out whether little Nell had died.

Dickens settled in Kent and much of his work features this county. Gad’s Hill Place his home is due to open as a Dickens Museum and in nearby Rochester many shops and restaurants bear testament to the Dickens connection. Most imaginatively, I feel, is The Tale of Two Cities Tandoori Restaurant. Elsewhere is the house that inspired Miss Havisham’s residence, Satis House , and the imposing Rochester Cathedral that features greatly in the Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens is very much associated with London. He lived in London for some time. His house in Doughty Street is now a Dickens Museum. Until her death, Edna Healey was an active chairman of the trustees and the house is well worth a visit. It surprised me to find out that Dickens was keen on amateur dramatics. His first love had been the stage, he wanted to act. In fact he missed his first acting audition because he was struck down by a cold. He decided to write after that. In adult life he spent much time on amateur dramatics particularly with Wilkie Collins, a close friend and author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White.

Until the middle of the year there is an exhibition at the Museum of London near the Barbican in London on Dickens and London. It is advisable to book in advance. I found when I went that despite pre-booking there were many people going round. This exhibition is already very popular.

Many of Dickens’ books feature London. London leaps off the page in these books and its geography is very often central to the story. It is hard to think of Oliver Twist, for example, being set in any other city than London so much is it interwoven into the story. This is true too of other Dickens novels like Our Mutual Friend and Dombey and Son.

Dickens was an insomniac who needed little sleep. He walked the streets of London, often through the night. It was thus that he developed his encyclopaedic knowledge of the streets and geography of London. These night jaunts would feed his creativity.

Dickens was a social reformer. Much of what he saw in London appalled him and is given voice in his novels. His aim was to improve and reform society. For example,he attacked the workhouse, he attacked bad schooling, and he attacked financial fraud. All of these are at the receiving end of Dickens’ critique.

The Dickens in London exhibition brings all this to light. Also on display are pictures of Dickens’ London and theatre bills featuring dramatisations of Dickens’ novels.

Central also to the exhibition is a film by William Raban, ‘The Houseless Shadow’. This is inspired by Dickens’ essay ‘Night Walks’ published in 1860 and it takes visitors on a journey through the darker side of Dickens’ London with vivid descriptions of the Victorian capital. The film demonstrates, alongside Dickens’ script, how many of his social comments are still pertinent today regarding homelessness and poverty. It is both moving and thought provoking.

London’s pervasive influence is captured in some lines from Master Humphrey’s Clock (1841):-

‘the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue,guilt and innocence,repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered around it. Draw but a litttle circle above the clustering housetops and you shall have within its space, everything with its opposite extreme and contradiction close beside’.

Dickens was the first international literary superstar, overshadowed in Britain and arguably internationally only by Shakespeare. His output was considerable, his social commentary perceptive and still very relevant today.

We are in for a very good year.