The best of times at the Dickens Museum

Today was Charles Dickens Museum day. After a short tube ride to Russell Square, we four met for coffee and then walked to the Charles Dickens Museum. The walk to the museum was longer than we expected, but led on by Stuart with Google maps, we made it in good time. On the way to the museum we passed the beautiful terracotta coloured building (now a hotel) where leading suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst lived for a time with her daughters. I was also intrigued to see a residential college called Goodenough College. For some reason the name tickled me as truth in advertising not usually seen in higher education!

Charles Dickens is a colossus of English literature and his family’s house at 48 Doughty Street now the museum spoke to me of the warmth and creativity of this early part of his married life with Catherine and in his writing career. It was all before them.

While living in this tall thin house of five or so floors, Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby and made a start on Barnaby Rudge. Not bad for just under three years! He made friends with William Charles Macready, Thomas Carlyle, and W. M. Thackeray. He also joined two important clubs: the Garrick and Athenaeum. And more importantly two of the couple’s ten children, Mary and Kate, were born there.

The Dickens loved to entertain and that was well captured in the museum. There was also no doubt in the disposition of the rooms that Charles’s writing was at the centre. He was the breadwinner and after being catapulted into national fame he was a successful breadwinner. My favourite part of the museum was Dickens study with its magnificent desk where his pen flowed so freely and passionately. I mean wow!

After the museum we headed to our separate homes away from home. The weather has been indecisive with some sunny patches, clouds, rain, winds etc etc. I was tired and just wanting to sit when I came home. The sun came out and I sat in the garden and then inside when the wind got up and read my book. This is such a heart warming place to be. I feel very blessed.Leggi altro