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Charles
Dickens was born in an England, whose people’s lives were dominated by a
life-and-death struggle. He understood people’s characters and peculiarities
that were depicted in his many well-known and loved books.
The illustrated Talk looks into the many faces of Charles Dickens, the Kentish man, the Londoner, the public and private man, the social reformer, and dreamer of characters, as well as the places where he lived.
Dickens loved to explore the streets of London at night and daytime and to absorb the atmosphere and character of the people in places such as Southwark, Covent Garden, and the river Thames which featured dramatically in his novel Our Mutual Friend. Whilst the church of St Olave’s Hart Street in the City was loved by Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens hated it and called it in his book The Commercial Traveller ‘St Ghastly Grim’.
It
is easy wandering down Fleet Street to come across familiar pubs or banks that
Dickens used in his books. For example, where would you meet at the Sign of
the Marygold?
Dickens was born in Landport, Portsea in 1812, now the Dickens Birthplace Museum but in 1822 his family moved to London where Dickens was obliged to take a poorly paid and unworthy job. It is said that his book David Copperfield is almost an autobiography by Dickens.
In later life he settled at Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, a place he loved, and daily he would walk for miles around its Castle, Cathedral, buildings and fields. He loved Rochester so much that he asked to be buried in the Castle’s grounds, but such a great man could not be left there, so he is buried in Westminster Abbey.
He
was also a Londoner and the Talk looks at this side of his life and works, as
well as Gad’s Hill Place at Higham, and the village of Cooling that starts the
first chapter in his book Great Expectations.
Dickens books are loved all over the world and the picture on the right is a little Dickens Museum in Holland, where there is often one or two Dickensian characters walking about the little village.