Dickensblog

Dickens the intrepid traveler

Lucinda Hawksley gave a nice long interview to The Sunday Post to promote her newest book about her great-great-great-grandfather, Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing. Here's an excerpt:

“The first trip on a steamship ... sounds absolutely terrifying. Dickens writes home and says that never again would he trust himself and his wife to a steamship, because it’s so frightening.

“It’s either far too heavily laden with coal at the beginning, or frighteningly unladen at the end. He also talks about the fact the chimneys belching out fire are so unstable that if you got caught in a storm, and they were knocked over, the whole ship would go up in flames.

“All these Victorian travellers were so brave. Today, no matter how much we think we’re intrepid, it’s nothing compared to putting yourself in these terrifying vessels and heading out to places unknown.”

Go here to read the full interview, and go here to order Lucinda's book!

From the book pile

• The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally (Atria Books, 2022)
  
  A novel about Edward "Plorn" Dickens, sent to Australia in his teens to try to make something of himself after doing poorly in school, is a great idea. And acclaimed novelist Thomas Keneally (Booker-Prize-winning author of Schindler's List) would seem just the person to write such a novel. His descriptive writing is beautiful, effectively conveying the wonder and enchantment of a young Englishman encountering the sweeping Australian wilderness for the first time. And he handles Plorn's and his siblings' complicated relationship with their father with both realism and sensitivity. So it took me a while to figure out why I wasn't enjoying the book very much. 
  
  I eventually pinpointed two reasons. The first is mainly a matter of personal taste: The book has a loosely episodic structure, without much of a story arc or narrative drive. It's not pushing toward any goal, aside from Plorn's rather vague goal to learn to apply himself and please his father. There's nothing inherently wrong with that sort of structure, but it just doesn't appeal to me much. (There's a reason I prefer late Dickens to early Dickens.)
  
  The second reason is more on the micro level: the often stiff and stilted nature of Plorn's narration. His sentence structure at times feels positively upside down and backwards -- for instance: "The question of whether Father had left the girl anything proved to be part of Alfred's musings, and many people would have said, why not?"  Even in 1869, a more formal period, it beggars belief that an undereducated adolescent would talk like that. And the stiltedness has the added effect of distancing us from the young man instead of feeling that we're really getting to know him. Keneally gets so much else right in this book, I don't know why he had trouble getting the voice right, but I couldn't help wishing he had made more of an effort in that direction. It would have improved the book so much.

Upcoming online talks

Tomorrow, April 27, Dr. Emily Dunbar of the Dickens Museum will give a talk on the museum's new Pickwick Papers exhibition at 10 a.m. Eastern. Go here to learn more and get a free ticket!

Also tomorrow, at 1 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Fellowship will sponsor Lucinda Dickens Hawksley talking about her new book, Dickens and Travel. Go here for information.

A few minutes with Lucinda Hawksley

Dickens's great-great-great-granddaughter, while promoting her new book Letters of Great Women in Dubai, answered some questions about her ancestor's life and works. Click here to learn which Dickens books she rereads, her favorite Dickens quote, and what surprised her most about him.

'Dickens and Staplehurst': A review

By Art Kilmer, Guest Blogger

On June 9, 1865, author Charles Dickens almost died. Pick up any biography of Dickens, and you will find at least a couple of pages about the Staplehurst Rail Crash. On that day, Dickens; his mistress, Ellen Ternan; and her mother were traveling by rail from Boulogne to London, when the train derailed at Staplehurst, Kent. Due to a miscommunication and negligence, the train plunged over a bridge that was only half finished. Ten people died that day, and many others were physically and, as in Dickens’ case, mentally impacted for the rest of their lives. For Charles, that would be another five years to the day.

Actor and author Gerald Dickens, Charles’ great-great-grandson, has made an effort to shed more light on this event. In his new book, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash, Gerald attempts to give full details of the event. Not only does he explain what happened to Dickens on that tragic day, but we also learn about the ten victims, some of the survivors, and the railroad employees who were involved with the crash.

As Gerald says of his book: “At its heart this is a story of a single moment in time: a biography of a day.” 

Mr. Dickens comes to the museum

The Dickens Museum is hosting a virtual filmed version of Gerald Dickens's one-man show Mr. Dickens Is Coming!, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on February 6. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets! 

A virtual 'Chimes'

Tomorrow (Friday) at 5 p.m. GMT/12 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Museum will host a Zoom performance of The Chimes by actor Dominic Gerrard. Gerrard and Lucinda Dickens Hawksley will take questions after the performance. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets!

Spotlight on 'The Cricket'

The Dickens Museum is displaying some of John Leech's sketches for The Cricket on the Hearth, to remind visitors that Dickens wrote more than one Christmas book! The Guardian has an article about the exhibit and the book, with quotes from Lucinda Dickens Hawksley about this and her ancestor's other Christmas books. 

Gerald Dickens, illustrated

This short piece about Gerald Dickens has some terrific photos of him performing his one-man Christmas Carol, taken by Ron MacArthur. You really get a sense of the energy and physicality he brings to the show!

Doings of the Dickens descendants

Mark Dickens will give a Zoom presentation on "Charles Dickens -- A Family Perspective" on Wednesday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern. And Lucinda Dickens Hawksley will give an online talk on "Charles Dickens's Christmas Books" on Wednesday, December 8, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Follow the links to EventBrite for details and to purchase tickets!

Meanwhile, Gerald Dickens is back in America to present his one-man Christmas Carol! Go to his USA tour page to see if he's coming to a venue near you. If you're in the U.K., check his general tour page to see where he'll be performing once he gets back there.