• Jo MayFrom Ripon to NiponPodróżnik
    The three musketeers walking from Russell Square to Doughty Street
    Emmeline Pankhurst used to live here!Christabel Pankhurst 2nd left and her mother, Emmeline (centre), on 21 Dec 1908 released from gaol!A peak into Goodenough College. Would you stay there?Charles and Catherine Dickens with all before them.Dining was important and the Dickens loved to entertain.The street view from one of the reception rooms- no cars back then.Ghosts in the Dickens' library.An image capturing Dickens' fertile imagination at work in his study.The actual desk!Dickens separated from Catherine in 1858 quite brutally in my opinion.Items from his youth.The garden at our digs this afternoon.This guy looks after the place by keeping the bad vibes at bayWhere I sat after the wind came up.1The view of the garden from my chair in the bedroom.

    The best of times at the Dickens Museum

    28 sierpnia 2025, Anglia ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    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.     Czytaj więcej

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