CHAPTER TWO: WHERE THE DICKENS?
At home and abroad
‘I am here, there, everywhere and nowhere.’
From a letter written by Charles Dickens, 1867
‘I can hardly expect you to understand the restlessness or waywardness of an author’s mind.’
From a letter written by Charles Dickens, 1855
Almost everyone who ever met Dickens agreed on one thing. The man was quick, lively, full of nervous energy, unsettled (and unsettling). He was restless. He could never sit still (even his writing chair had little wheels on it). He wanted to be free.
Dickens would have agreed, as well. You can read what he wrote about himself in the quotes at the beginning of this chapter. On both occasions, he was making polite excuses to avoid meeting people; but, at the same time, he probably meant every word. The huge workload he chose to burden himself with, the stifling demands of his family life, plus the need to provide for a great many people, all made him, at times, desperately keen to escape. He wanted to be able to get right away from emotional, social – and contractual – pressures, to think, to recharge his batteries. And he often did so.
Letting off steam
When his writing was not going well, or when completing a dramatic chapter had drained him emotionally, Dickens liked to go for long, long walks or rides on horseback – all night if necessary. Sometimes, instead, he went rowing – exhausting himself by covering over 20 miles (32 kilometres) at a time. Without such violent exercise, Dickens said, he felt like an inflated, but tethered, balloon.
Kill or cure
Here’s an excerpt from an urgent letter from Dickens to his friend:
‘I am not well – and want a ride. Will you join me – say 2 o’Clock – for a hard trot of three hours?’
Three hours’ fast riding without a break would have been very tiring.
Getting the habit
It is often said that Dickens’s restlessness stemmed from his early childhood experiences. Because of debts, his parents had had to move house a great many times, and even endure a spell in prison.
By the time Dickens was 12, he was not only working in the hated Warren’s Blacking (sticky polish) Warehouse, but also lodging alone, first with a ghastly family who ‘watered the hash’ (added water to the reheated minced meat they served boarders, to make it go further – ugh!), but then with a rather more kindly couple: ‘immensely stout’ and with ‘an idiot son’. They became the model for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop – but could never replace Dickens’s own family.
By the time Dickens had reached 22 years of age, he had had enough of his family’s constant changes of address and midnight ‘flittings’ to escape creditors. From now on, he would choose where he was going to live.
Onwards... and downwards
1812 Dickens family live in pleasant house in Mile End Terrace, Landport, Portsmouth.
1812 Debts increase. They move to smaller, cheaper house, Hawke Street, Portsmouth.
1813 Move to Southsea, Portsmouth.
1815 Move (for Navy work) to Norfolk Street, Marylebone, London.
1817 Move to Sheerness, then to Ordnance Terrace, Chatham (for Navy work – this means promotion and more pay).
1821 Debts. Move to smaller house (St Mary’s Place) in poorer part of Chatham. Take lodger.
1822 Move (for Navy work – less pay) to ‘wretched, squalid’ Bayham Street, Camden Town, London.
Fact and fiction 6
Later, Dickens used the Camden Town house – which came as a great shock to him (he was only 10) – as the model for the home of the poor but deserving Cratchit family, in A Christmas Carol (1843).
1823 Move (still with lodger) to Gower Street, central London. Debts increase.
1824 John Dickens is arrested for unpaid debts. Dickens family (except Charles and Fanny) live for months in Marshalsea Prison, London. Charles lodges in Little College Street, Camden Town, then in Lant Street, near the prison. Fanny is a boarder at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Dickens family, including Charles, live first in Little College Street, then in Hampstead (still a suburban village). Fanny has to leave the Academy; there is no money for the fees.
Dickens family move to Johnson Street in the poor district of Somers Town, London.
1827–1831 Dickens family evicted from Johnson Street for not paying bills. They move to rented houses in Clarendon Square, Norfolk Street, George Street (all in London) and two different addresses in Hampstead.
1831 John Dickens bankrupt again. Dickens family at Margaret Street, Marylebone.
1832 Dickens family at Bentinck Street, Marylebone, London.
1834 John Dickens arrested for debt (again). Moves to North End, Holborn. Helped by a friend, Charles pays to set him free – and moves out of his parents’ home for ever. He lives first of all in rooms in Buckingham Street, then in ‘chambers’ (small sets of rooms, for bachelors) at Furnival’s Inn, close to St Paul’s Cathedral.
‘We have a most extraordinary partiality for lounging about the streets. Whenever we have an hour to spare, there is nothing that we enjoy more than a little amateur vagrancy…’
Dickens, in an article for the weekly magazine Bell’s Life in London, 1835.
Instant Dickens 7: Martin Chuzzlewit
What is it? A novel, the only one Dickens ever set (partly) in America.
When was it published? In monthly instalments, 1843–1844.
What is the plot or subject matter? Disowned by his grandfather, and disgusted by smug hypocrite Mr Pecksniff, Martin Chuzzlewit and a friend go to seek their fortunes in America. There is a sub-plot featuring a really nasty villain, Jonas, and two delightful young women, Cherry and Merry.
How was it received? British readers were lukewarm, whilst Americans were hostile and offended by Dickens’s description of their frontier settlements.
Anything else? The book was dedicated to Angela Burdett Coutts, with whom Dickens was working to rescue ‘fallen women’.
And? Drunken midwife Sairey Gamp – and her umbrella – make a welcome comic appearance. For almost 100 years, big black umbrellas were nicknamed ‘gamps’ after her.
Married life, family travels
In 1835, after Dickens became engaged to marry Catherine Hogarth, he took rooms in Brompton, south London, to be nearer to her. However, his plan did not work; he was often away, travelling as a roving reporter for London newspapers. When he and Catherine wed, they moved back to a larger set of chambers at Furnival’s Inn – with a kitchen for servants in the basement – and then, in 1837 (after a brief stop-over in rented rooms), to a terraced house (now the world-famous Dickens Museum) in a smart, private development: Doughty Street.
Funny peculiar
On seaside holidays, Dickens – who was unpredictable at the best of times – really liked to let his hair down. He played practical jokes and children’s games on the beach, spoke nonsense language with his brother, alarmed complete strangers by stopping them in the street to tell them complicated jokes and puns, and pretended to fall in love with two most respectable maiden ladies, who were staying in a quiet boarding house to benefit from the sea air.
Sometimes, Dickens’s ‘fun’ stopped being amusing and veered towards danger. Once, pretending to be overpowered by loving feelings, he picked a woman visitor up in his arms, carried her down the jetty, and, as the waves swirled round their knees, declared that they must both stay there until they drown. The woman was thoroughly frightened – and her best silk dress was ruined (so were Dickens’s shoes). Dickens’s wife Catherine, who tried to stop the silly game (Dickens ignored her) was, understandably, very cross indeed.
Why did Dickens do it? For the thrill of shocking others, probably.
Like many other Londoners – at least, those who could afford it – the Dickenses liked to escape the smelly, disease-ridden city during the summer months every year. In 1837, they rented a farmhouse in Hampstead and rooms in Calais, France. They also took the first of many summer holidays at Broadstairs, Charles’s favourite seaside town. These summer excursions to the ‘bracing’ south coast of Britain, followed by many months further afield in France, Italy or Switzerland, set the pattern that Dickens and his family would follow for the next 20 years. Very often he invited London friends – fellow writers, artists, dramatists – to join them.
No place like home
After months away by the sea, or travelling to lakes, mountains and strange foreign cities, Dickens found that he needed the noise and bustle of London to provide a reassuring soundtrack while he worked – and the endlessly fascinating London crowd to intrigue and inspire him.
The opportunity – and anonymity – of London were endlessly exciting, and London itself was a character in several of Dickens’s most popular works.
In Sketches by Boz, for example, written early in his career, Dickens practised his gift for seemingly light-hearted social commentary. In fact, his depictions of the London scene almost always have an agenda. Some, like his blow-by-blow account of a family outing to a tea-garden, or his ‘diagnosis’ of an outbreak of mad, extravagant new fashions in shop-front architecture and design, are simply, gently, satirical. They delight in the rich variety of human behaviour, and urge moderation, not excess. Others, like his account of stupid, self-seeking politicians, or shamelessly greedy eaters and drinkers at a charity dinner in aid of starving orphans, are much, much more savage.
The same mixture of curiosity, disgust – and delight – sent Dickens to visit prisons, hospitals, asylums, reform schools and burial grounds, along with theatres and concert halls, whenever he was abroad, in Europe and America. He was positively cheered after one visit to the Paris morgue. The strangeness of death exhilarated him. Also, of course, he was always on the lookout for powerful new themes and extraordinary details to include in his next novel. His works are famous for the strong sense of place they conjure up – from windswept East Anglia in David Copperfield to a sleepy cathedral city (based on childhood memories of Rochester) in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Boz on slums
Most typical of all Dickens’s descriptions of London are of the streets themselves. Here, he is compaining about – and celebrating – the ‘rookeries’ (city slums occupied by poor people) to the south of Oxford Street, right in the heart of the capital:
‘The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those… who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper: every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – fruit and ‘sweet-stuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, and a charwoman (a woman employed to clean houses or offices) and five hungry children in the back one – filth everywhere – a gutter before the houses and a drain behind – clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot…; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing…’
Instant Dickens 8: A Christmas Carol
What is it? A very short novel, written especially for the Christmas trade. Produced in attractive gift editions – which were too expensive for ordinary people to buy. Dickens lost a lot of money.
When was it published? 1843
What was the plot or subject matter? A miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, is persuaded by ghosts to ‘enter into the Christmas spirit’, and be kind to his workers and other poor people. His mean soul is contrasted with poor, sickly, but angelic Tiny Tim.
How was it received? Fellow novelist William Thackeray described the book as: ‘to every man and woman who reads it, a personal kindness’.
Anything else? It helped to reinvent the ‘traditional British Christmas’ as a time of giving and goodwill. It was also said to have popularised the greeting ‘Merry Christmas’.
And? It’s now not so much a book as a national institution.
Putting on the style
Having learned in boyhood to equate moving house with stress and poverty, in his adult life Dickens seemed determined to relocate to show the world just how much his circumstances had changed. Now, he moved from house to bigger, better house, in smart, wealthy districts of London – on the edge of fashionable Regent’s Park; in select Tavistock Square. There were also practical reasons to move: Dickens always needed more space: to write, and to store his books and voluminous correspondence; or for entertaining writers, artists, thinkers, people fighting for good causes – all were proud to call him their friend. He needed nurseries, schoolrooms and playrooms for his fast-growing family, and attics, basements and back rooms for all the servants that his wife, daughters and sister-in-law found it necessary to employ.
Almost always, these smart new houses were rented; unlike today, few nineteenth-century people, apart from the very wealthy, owned property. Dickens did, however, purchase at least one very splendid house (Gad’s Hill Place). Almost always, as well, Dickens took a keen and very particular interest in their decoration and furnishing. He insisted on installing shower-baths (then a very new and daring invention) in all his homes – and on taking a bracing cold shower every day.
Sometimes, the women running Dickens’s household – to say nothing of the workmen they employed – must have found this obsessive attention to detail more than a little bothersome. Certainly, his children hated his regular inspections of their bedrooms to check that they were tidy. If Dickens did not like what he saw – especially in his daughter’s rooms (for him, neatness was a crucial virtue in a woman) – he would pin a note of complaint on their dressing tables.
America, America
In 1842, at the height of his new-found fame, Dickens, Catherine and her devoted maid-servant left their four children at home and sailed to spend several months touring the USA. Dickens wanted to see the proud, pioneering republic, which had won independence from Britain in 1776. He was fascinated by its promise of individual freedom, and by the idea of a wild, unexplored, ‘frontier’.
The Dickenses met President John Tyler Jnr., saw big city sights, toured new schools and factories, and were warmly welcomed into many famous people’s homes. They made steamboat trips down mighty rivers, crossed mountains in horse-drawn coaches, and visited virgin forests, settlers’ log cabins and wide rolling prairies (where Catherine was afraid of Indian attack). They marvelled at the majesty of the Niagara Falls.
At a personal level, the tour was a great success:
‘“Boz” was young, handsome, and possessed of wonderful genius, and everything relating to him and his family was of surpassing interest to them.’
The Atlantic Monthly, 1870
But Dickens was disgusted by the American habit of spitting tobacco – everywhere! – and appalled by the sight of black slavery. ‘This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination!’ he declared. The same feelings were clear in his travel writings about America, and in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit, published in 1843–1844, soon after his return.
By the time Dickens returned to America for a final reading tour in 1867–1868, these earlier criticisms had been forgiven and forgotten (slavery had been abolished by then), and the American people welcomed him with the same generous enthusiasm as before. As Dickens himself remarked, the country had changed – and so had he. Although vast crowds flocked to hear his readings (and he tried to enjoy himself, meeting old friends, taking sleigh-rides in new York’s snowy Central Park), the effort of long-distance travel, together with the strain of public performances, made him very unwell.
He completed the eastern seaboard tour (76 performances!), cancelled plans to travel further west, and, hardly able to eat, in great pain, and racked by ‘the true American catarrh’, headed for home. But he brought back with him what he went for – fees of over £20,000 (equivalent to more than £1,000,000 today).
A ‘stupendous property’
In 1856, at the height of his fame, Dickens enjoyed creating his very own ‘gentleman’s residence’ in the country. People with upper-class, old-style tastes called his alterations there ‘suburban’, but to Dickens, his final home was the undeniable sign that he had made a success of his career; that he had arrived.
Long ago, before he was 10 years old, Dickens had seen the house – it was called ‘Gad’s Hill Place’ – as he went walking with his father in the countryside near Chatham. It was a well-known local landmark; the hill itself had famously featured in one of Shakespeare’s plays (in Henry IV, Part 1, when old reprobate Sir John Falstaff plans a highway robbery there). With typically expansive – and (any onlooker would have said) unrealistic – optimism, John Dickens had told young Charles:
‘If you lived to be very persevering, and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it.’
Charles never forgot his father’s words and when, by chance, he learned that Gad’s Hill Place was about to be sold, he was determined to purchase it. It became his home for the last 10 years of his life.
Gad’s Hill Place’s country situation also suited Dickens. It was isolated; a pack of fierce dogs – and a gardener with a gun! – kept curious intruders away. A specially built tunnel, passing under the road that ran through the grounds, allowed Dickens to wander safely, deep in thought, from one half of the garden to the other. A pretty, romantic Swiss chalet (a gift from an actor whose career he had promoted) became the ideal workroom, especially in summertime.
So near, so far
Sad to say, once Dickens had found his ‘childhood dream’ (Dickens’s own words) home at Gad’s Hill Place, he seemed fated to spend surprisingly little time there. He often had to travel to London, to meet publishers and artists, to check on the progress of his magazine All the Year Round, for meetings and dinners with powerful people trying to change the world, or to enjoy a visit to the theatre (still his great passion). He still rented a London flat for himself, and a house for his estranged wife, Catherine, together with homes for Nelly Ternan, first in Slough, then Peckham. He visited those incognito, as ‘Mr Trigham’.
A summer retreat
Journalist Edmund Yates, a visitor to Gad’s Hill Place, describes the daily routine Dickens set for his house guests:
‘Delightful … Breakfasted at nine, smoked … cigar, read the paper, pottered about the garden … All morning Dickens was at work … luncheon at one … [then the guests] assembled in the hall. Some walked, some drove, some simply pottered … I elected to walk with Dickens … the distance travelled was seldom less than 12 miles [19.3 kilometres], and the pace was good throughout…’
On summer afternoons, there might also be croquet or cricket on the lawns. In the evenings, Dickens liked music, dancing, and party games, such as charades.
In 1858, Dickens began tours of Britain and America, giving public readings. He needed the money – not least to pay for all his different houses – but travelling and speaking kept him away from Gad’s Hill Place for weeks at a time.
A final puzzle remains concerning Dickens’s whereabouts upon his death. When he collapsed and died from a stroke in 1870, the world was told that this unhappy event had happened at Gad’s Hill Place. But years later, rumours spread that Dickens had in fact been with Nelly Ternan when he was taken ill, and that he had been carried, secretly, while unconscious, back to his dream home to die.
Instant Dickens 9: Four more Christmas tales
What are they? Four short books, also written specially for the Christmas market. Like A Christmas Carol, they were nicely bound and with beautiful illustrations.
When were they published? The Chimes, 1844; The Cricket on the Hearth, 1845; The Battle of Life, 1846; The Haunted Man, 1848
What was their plot or subject matter? All, except The Battle of Life, which is a love story, are fairytales, featuring ghosts, visions, spiritual lessons to be learned, social commentary – and happy endings. The Chimes, for example, campaigns powerfully for better treatment of the poor.
How were they received? The first two were extremely popular; the last two less so. But even 19th-century readers thought they were very sentimental.
Anything else? Described by Dickens as ‘a whimsical sort of masque (entertainment) intended to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts’.
And? Soviet Communist leader Lenin famously walked out of a drama production of The Cricket on the Hearth in disgust at its sweet, gentle, Christian message.
‘...there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church.’
from the introduction to The Chimes, 1844
‘It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it came about.’
from The Cricket on the Hearth, 1845
‘Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought.’
Opening to The Battle of Life, 1846
‘Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.’
Opening to The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, 1848
‘The Inimitable Boz’
In 1836, after The Pickwick Papers first won public fame for Dickens – though not yet a fortune – William Giles, his kindly former schoolmaster from Chatham, sent him a silver snuff box, engraved with just the three words above.
They touched Dickens to the heart – and they were true. There was no-one else quite like him.
